1958 Los Angeles, California
Laurie Galaty
1952
San Gabriel, California
Interviewed on February 8, 2024
by Anna McKee
I didn’t go to the movies that often…because of certain circumstances and just not having much money…but I would go when I visited my crazy grandma around Santa Monica. And sometimes me and my sisters would walk to the theater in San Gabriel.
I don’t entirely remember the first time I went to the movies because I know I used to walk over to the theater with my sisters when I was 4, 5, maybe 6, but I can’t actually remember what movies we’d see. On Saturdays, all of us kids would go to the movies with my older sister and spend the day there. All movies were 25 cents, except Disney films which were 50 cents. So I’m sure I saw a lot of Disney movies. Then there were the newsreels and double features, two for the price of one kinda deal. We saw a lot of those. The first film I actually remember seeing is The King and I. And mostly because there was this hilarious thing called Vic Tanny that we used to go. Vic Tanny was a body builder and started basically the first gyms in Los Angeles. There weren’t really gyms back then. My crazy grandma would go to Vic Tanny, and so any time we’d visit her, she’d take us with her. There were two of them and one had a skating rink and the other had a movie theater. I remember the movies more here because it was such a thing for us to go to Vic Tanny. The main thing I remember thinking about The King and I at that age was that I really didn’t understand much of it. And then I looked back and realized that it was about the King of Siam, and understood more why it was so controversial. The truth of the original story was definitely lost and the film didn’t fully communicate that. I really remember thinking I don’t understand all of this, AND how beautiful and opulent the production was. It might’ve been a musical, I’m not sure. Yul Brynner was in it and he’s bald – well he’s dead now – (laughing) but he was bald and there weren’t that many actors at the time who were bald. He was supposed to be Asian but all the actors were White at the time. He was the king. I don’t remember the name of the actress who played the tutor but there was a lot of extravagant costuming. I can really see her face when the two of them were arguing. There was a lot of arguing. The story is based off of something that really happened but I think the movie got a fair bit of flack for actually making a lot of it up. There was a woman from the West and the king had hired her to come in and tutor his many children – to westernize them. The king would argue and fight a lot with her. I really remember that. And the scenery was beyond extravagant. I saw the movie with my older sister and maternal grandmother. Our grandmother drove us because we were visiting her and we’d go to Vic Tanny. If we’d been home, we would’ve walked. I remember walking with my older sister to the movie theatre a lot when we were little. And we’d go get ice cream after the movie because there was an ice cream shop just outside Vic Tanny. So we’d go and make a last stop before heading home. I’d have Baskin Robbins chocolate chip or chocolate marble. Baskin Robbins was high end back then and pricey. So yeah… I remember going to drive-in theaters and to the theatre that would show Disney films but the first film I actually remember watching was The King and I. It was the first non-kids movie I saw too. And so opulent.
Laurie was like a second mother or a grandmother to me growing up. I had a single mother who worked full time and Laurie was a friend of my mom who took care of me for much of my young life.
