1960 Defiance, Ohio

Laura Hawn
Born in: 1950
Movie seen in: Defiance, Ohio
Interviewed on: 9/24/19
Interviewed by: Hailee Lepley

1960 Defiance Ohio

The summer of 1960. A warm, sunny day. The kind of day when kids dangle out of car door windows and trace the air with their hands to stay cool and entertained for the ride. In one such station wagon, my grandmother found herself squished among her four other siblings as her father drove down the well-worn streets of Defiance, Ohio. It may have been sweaty, or too loud, or too cramped in the back seat. She doesn’t remember. What she remembers is the excitement of the car slowing to a stop, and the towering Valentine Theater that greeted them.

It was by no means a huge theater, but for a small mid-West town, any theater was better than nothing. Inside the movie room, there were no ushers, but the seats were divided between a ground floor and a balcony. My grandma, a boisterous ten-year-old, thought the balcony seemed like the best choice. Her father, however, attempting to keep his five rowdy children in line, thought otherwise. Before finding their seats on the ground level, he would steer them towards the concession stand for a brief pit stop. Candy was a little too expensive for the family at the time, but popcorn and soda were more than enough to satiate snacky mouths.

That summer, the Valentine Theater was playing Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. While the movie had already been released for some time at that point, my grandmother had yet to see it in a theater. What’s more—the film was shown in color, a magical feat compared to the black and white television back at home. She loved the movie; she thought it was funny, especially scenes such as Snow White’s nightmare in the forest that would likely be classified more as dark rather than humorous. What made the experience so memorable for her, though, was the fact that she could share it with her entire family. There weren’t many activities in which her father and all of her siblings could go out and enjoy together. The movie theater with its abundance of seating and all-encompassing screen quickly became a favorite.

A few years later, a drive-in theater opened up in Defiance as well. Although seated outside rather than in the close confines of a theater, my grandma and her family found themselves crowded together anyways whenever they gathered at the drive-in lot to watch the latest film. They would pile the car with piles of blankets, coolers full of pop, and armfuls of popcorn bags just to unload everything outside the open station wagon trunk into a makeshift picnic facing the enormous outdoor movie screen. They ended up going to the drive-in theater more often than the theater, but regardless of the location, it was the movies, the act of coming together for a communal yet individual experience, that brought my grandma closer to her family.