1960 Chicago, Illinois

Fred Brooks 
1949 
Chicago, Illinois 
February 7, 2021 
By Amy Brooks

I was probably ten years old. The whole fourth-grade class took a bus or two to downtown Chicago and went to the theater and sat together to watch the movie. I believe it was called Goodman Theater. Oh, the theater was huge and beautiful. It had red carpet, red velvet curtains—I remember seeing the color red a lot in the theater. There were quite a few theaters back then like this.

I went to school in a suburb of Chicago, called La Grange, so going to the big theater downtown was a big deal. It was the first movie I remember I ever watched. There were maybe thirty kids in each of the two classes that went. It was also the only time my grade school ever went to see a movie in a theater. I don’t remember much about the concession stand, but I think my mom gave me some money to buy a snack or two. When I was a bit older, like in high school, I would always get popcorn and candy called Nonpareils, which they don’t sell anymore. Sometimes I got Milk Duds.

The movie we saw was Ben Hur—I must have seen it in the early 1960s. Probably 1960, since the movie came out a year before in 1959. It was a huge production, around three hours long. Iconic movie. It grossed even more than Gone with the Wind, actually. I remember that there were really cool chariot races. They were exciting, especially to a ten-year-old kid. There were these big spikes on the chariot wheels, too. Gosh, I think these were the best chariot races that has been in any movie that I’ve ever seen. The movie was set in gladiator times; it was a very biblical movie. And the main guy, Charlton Heston—I remember that he was a real tough guy, who fought a lot in the movie, and he won those fights. I wanted to be just like him. All us boys wanted to be like him. He was a very popular actor in real life as well—one of the leading actors at the time. The audience was always cheering him on.

The movie was in color, which was uncommon, so that made me even more excited. In 1959 and 1960, there were lots of black and white movies. Ben Hur was one of the first big productions in color. In the mid-1960s, there were a lot more color movies. Ben Hur was a very famous book for many years, so that’s probably why they made such a big production out of it. Charlton, the main actor, was Ben Hur, a Jewish prince, who was enslaved by the rulers of Rome, or something like that. And he had to fight his way out in revenge; that’s how he got involved in chariot races and fights. The whole thing happened around the time of Christ. I don’t remember much else about the plot, or really any of the other characters. At that time, plot wasn’t really a big deal to me. I was too focused on the chariot races!