1957 Manhattan. New York

Stephen Blum

Born 1952

Manhattan New York

Interviewed on 01/23/2018

by Maria Velicu

The first time I remember going to a movie was with my mother, possibly with my father as well. I was about 5 years old. It was probably on a weekend, as I had school during the week. It was a Roy Rogers movie, unfortunately I can’t remember the name. But in his movies there was always a romance, Indians they were fighting off, things like that.

There were two movie theaters we would go to. They were really close to each other, in a neighborhood that probably had ten theaters at that point. Nowadays there are only two or three left.

One of them was The Trans-Lux 85th. It was in Manhattan, where I was living, in the most luxurious part of the East Side. It was an amazing theater: art deco, filled with spectacular design. It had a very intimate feeling, you could almost hear the breathing of everyone in the room and it was quite small, probably seated two or three hundred people. It only had one screen, a distinct feature of theaters back then.

The other one was the RKO 86th. It had a completely different look and feel than the Trans-Lux. It was a grand, Broadway kind of space. There were boxes above the main seats that weren’t used anymore and a large stage that was probably used for vaudeville before movies took over.

We went to movies almost every week. A frequent permutation would be one parent from my school would go with two or three kids. When we were old enough we started going without an adult. That was fun, but we were mugged a couple of times, those are less pleasant memories,  once in the movie theater actually!

The first time I started tracking names of movies was a couple of years later, when the James Bond movies appeared. He was probably my first movie hero.

My mother took me to see the Beatles movies when they came out, I was about 13 or 14. I was surprised she took me to see them in the first place, not because she wouldn’t want me too see them but I couldn’t believe she would waste her time seeing them. But she loved them! I thought it was so cool that my mother liked the Beatles movies.

Movies were less difficult to watch. There were some codes of conduct. For example if there was a scene with a man and a woman sitting in bed the woman had to have at least one foot on the ground at all times. Movies started to attack your senses more probably around the late 60’s, with more blood and gore.

There were newsreels at the beginning of movies and even though movies were mostly in color by then newsreels were still black and white.

Of course there were concession stands at the theater, that’s something that hasn’t changed. I would have chocolate. But something that might surprise you is that there was smoking inside.

I remember when I went to the RKO they would show double features. After I turned 12 I could go to movies alone and I saw many science fiction movies like that. 

A ticket was 50 cents to a dollar, adjusted for inflation that would probably be between 5 and 10 dollars. There were Sunday matinees when the tickets were half price.

There was a bakery very near the Trans-Lux and after the movie we would get cookies and bring them back to the house.