1960 Detroit, Michigan 2

Sandy Barresi (featuring Frank Barresi)

1946

Detroit, Michigan

Interviewed on February 5, 2022

by Michael Barresi

The first movie I remember seeing was Operation Petticoat. I must have seen a million movies before that but that’s the first movie I actually remember. It was my first date with your grandfather. We saw a double feature that night– the other movie was about Franz Liszt[1]. He was a pianist. I must have been, oh I don’t know, 15 back then, so Papa would have been 17. Yeah, that’s right, he was 17, I was 15.

The first thing I remember about the movie was getting into the theatre. It was Woods Theatre on Mack Avenue just north of 7 Mile in Grosse Pointe Woods (suburban Detroit). Right by the hospital where your dad and uncle were born, actually. It was the huge local theatre. I mean, it was huge. Years later, they broke it up into two or three theatres.

I remember getting in so vividly because it was the first time I went in through the front doors. My parents used to give 35 cents each to my brothers, my friends, and me to go to the movies. 25 cents for the tickets and 10 cents for snacks. There used to be these black curtains in front of the emergency exit. Whenever I went to the movies, a friend of mine would pay his money and go in by himself. He’d come down the aisle to the curtain on the right– the one that was closest to the street– and open to the emergency exit door, which opened from the inside, but not the outside. We would scoot in real fast. And of course, when you opened the drapes, light showed through, so we would crawl down real low under the curtains. People had to have seen us doing this. I just can’t imagine getting away with this more than once. But we did. I don’t ever remember getting caught. That way, we could spend all our money on the snacks, and I could afford one and sometimes more than one bags of M&Ms. Papa’s favorite snacks were Jujubes. They were chewy and tasty, and, according to him “fun to throw.” Who he was throwing them at, I don’t exactly know. But I remember that on that Saturday, Papa drove me to the theatre, and we went right through the front door. It was unforgettable.

The movie itself was about navy ships. I think it was a comedy. Oh, I can’t think of the guy’s name. Rickie Nelson was the star. But who was the other one? The military man? Was it Cary Grant? I don’t remember too much about the movie itself, but anything with those actors in it– especially Cary Grant– was great. Of course, it was my first date with someone who I really wanted to go out with and my eventual husband, so I probably remembered more about him than I did about the movie.  The movie, oh, it was just a silly little movie, but it was cute. If it had a plot, I don’t remember it. The other movie though, the Franz Liszt one, that one was a drama. I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I do remember being pleasantly impressed by it. I really enjoyed it.

The movie I really remember vividly is The Best Years of Our Lives. I must have seen that a couple years later, in the early sixties. It was about three guys coming back from the war. In one scene, a Bombadier that flew B17s during the war goes to an aircraft junkyard. He climbs into one of the planes and reminisces about the war when a construction employee finds him and gives him a job. The acting was just wonderful. All three of the main characters do a wonderful job. Acting in those days was, I think, better than now in a lot of ways. There wasn’t the reliance on special effects and computerization like today. It was just acting.

[1] I believe this movie is “A Song Without End” directed by King Vidor