1956 Wichita, Kansas

Glenda Foster

Born in 1940

Wichita, Kansas

Interviewed on February 11, 2022

by Philena Sun

Growing up, I didn’t go to the movies. It was a big no-no. I was a big teenager before I ever went to the movies. And then I got married, and my husband and I saw some of them together. But the first movie I remember seeing is To Kill a Mockingbird. I was around 13 or 14. I don’t remember much about it, except that it was about a prisoner. The next movie that I remember and still think about is The Godfather. This was the first movie that left a big impression on me. It came out in ‘72 (I did look that up) and it was the biggie movie of the year. My husband and I went. We got married in ‘60, so I would have been 32. I couldn’t believe that those things actually happened. I was born and raised in Texas in a little town, and then we moved to Wichita when I was a sophomore in high school. Things like that didn’t happen, other than New York, Chicago or maybe some places in California. My main impression after the movie was how horrible it was that a father would train his son to do the things that they did—and do it in the name of the family. I remember hearing about Bonnie and Clyde, and to think that someone would actually do that was horrific to me.

I had no idea what the movie would be about beforehand. If you knew me very well, you’d think “oh you sat through that?” Because whenever I did get to go to the movies, I always wanted to see a feel-good movie, and this was certainly not that. It was a lot of blood and guts, if you understand.

It was hard for me to realize that things like this actually happened. Hard to believe that people could be that cruel. I don’t know what other word to use. To go out and behead and kill someone just for the sake of their family group. And that apparently in this Corleone family, a father could ask his son to go do that. It was difficult for me to sit there and watch it. Multiple times, I wanted to leave. But my husband said “No, no you need to sit here; we’re here, and you need to watch it.” And I did.

The Godfather was a long movie, and there was an intermission during the showing. During the intermission, I didn’t talk to anyone. Usually, people would just hit the restroom. I probably said something to my husband about “I can’t believe this” and asked “Do I really have to sit through the rest of it?” or something like that. He just said, “Oh c’mon you can do it. Let’s just see what happens.”

I stayed because I really wanted to see what the end result was. The movie kind of whet your appetite. I think any movie does that to a point, and you wonder how it ends. But I have walked out of a few movies in my lifetime. But for The Godfather, there was a great big buildup to it. There really was a lot of advertisement for that movie.

The actors did a great job. Marlon Brando was a great actor—you always heard about him—and so was Al Pacino. The people that were in it… most of them, you had already heard of them. James Caan, Robert de Niro, Diane Keaton.

Back in those days, there were a lot of theaters. People don’t go to the movies like they did back in those days. The theater where I watched The Godfather was called The Tower. I believe it has been torn down. The building may still be there, but it has been repurposed it several times since. There were a lot of ushers in the movies, as theaters back then were fairly large. Kind of like how they do now, they take your ticket and show you where to sit. But there probably weren’t as many ushers then as there are now, since ushers now try to keep people quiet.

The movies always had a big concession stand. Popcorn, drinks, and boxes of candy that they still sell. We always had popcorn. My favorite candy was a Snicker, and it still is.

Another movie I can tell you that I saw is The Ten Commandments when it came out. And that was another long movie. I grew up in a very strict, religious family. I believe that is probably the only movie that I really remember my mom and dad going and seeing. It went straight to the Bible. I had just moved from Texas to Wichita, Kansas. I was 16. It was a long movie, and I don’t typically enjoy sitting through long movies. And I have often times got up and walked around during a movie and left midway through. Most of the movies that I went to when I started going were feel good movies. I didn’t see go to see the shoot-em-ups and the blood and guts and all that because I would leave the theater feeling depressed, knowing that these things actually could have happened.

But for The Ten Commandments, I thought the actors did a good job. My dad was a minister, and he felt it. We all thought the movie followed the Bible closely. The thing that comes to mind when I think of the movie is the water parting so that they could get away from the people. I thought “how in the world did they do that?” It looked so real. I hadn’t seen anything like that before. It still amazes me when I see beautiful cinematography like that. And growing up in a religious family just made The Ten Commandments feel more real.

I think I probably watched the movie with my older sister and my younger brother. The three of us were all really close. I’m from a family of eight children, and I’m the second oldest. We drove to the theater, which was downtown. There was a big concession there, as there always was. I got my usual—popcorn, drinks, and maybe some candy. We didn’t have much to spend on the movies, though. If we got popcorn or drinks, we would share that.

I stayed for the movie because I wanted to see how it followed the Bible. You wanted to stay because of the cinematography. They went through the commandments and showed how they all happened. I had been hearing about the Ten Commandments all my life, and here was the story of it. It had a lasting effect on me to see how these things came to pass, and how they put them on screen. That was just amazing. It helped me understand that there was a big God we served, and He would do things.