1960 San Diego, California

Pamela Jo Smith
Born in 1952
San Diego, California
Interviewed on 22 September 2019
By Shannon Linder

I think I did see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the Fox Theater in Downtown San Diego. And that was back in the day, well, now it houses the symphony and they do a lot of concerts there I understand. But the theater, actually, I just remember being in awe of that theater. The Fox Theater was on 7th and B Street in Downtown San Diego. The design inside was taken from French design, and I think they’ve maintained that design inside the theater— a lot of the original woodwork is in the theater itself today. The woodwork is very beautiful and I don’t know about the chandelier, or the light fixture from the dome in the ceiling, but I just remember as a kid walking into that theater and I felt like I was walking into a palace. The staircases to the mezzanine, and all this beautiful carved stuff, and even the frames around the posters were beautiful. I do remember that.

Outside the Fox Theater, image from sandiegohistory.org

I was very, very young when this happened— now, it would have been Steve, Suzy, and I. Mark was too young to go with us the time we went to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs because I want to say it was in the early ‘60s. Probably 1960. I do remember getting excited to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I was probably in the second grade. I remember the street we lived on— we used to watch the Walt Disney Channel, or Disney Presents every Sunday night, so we would see all these clips from movies he’s done already, you know, Cinderella and all that. But we did not have a color TV. So to go into this beautiful theater with this huge screen and to see it in full color was just absolutely amazing.

It had to be a re-release. Sometimes for the re-releases, well, I don’t remember ever seeing The Sound of Music or Mary Poppins. We didn’t see any of those movies because they cost more when they first come out. It [Snow White] had to be a re-release because originally it was released in the ’30s. So, anyway, it was just really wonderful to see that in color. 

I know I went to the Fox Theater on subsequent visits because I remember being familiar with it, but there’s one theater that was closer to us— the Linda Theater— in Linda Vista. It’s no longer there, but it was a very plain theater in a little shopping center that was built during the World War II era. A lot of the housing around there was for military families. So, it was the Linda Theater and I do really remember seeing a lot of cartoons there and probably a Godzilla movie. I remember the Godzilla movie scared me to death. I used to have nightmares about Godzilla coming down Melbourne Drive and I thought— which way do I go? I don’t know where to hide from Godzilla. *laughs*

Outside the Linda Theater, image from cinematreasures.org

But what I do remember about that theater specifically was, well, it was a very plain theater and in the back it had these glass windows people could stand behind and watch the movie. I think it was designated for smokers, because they didn’t want people smoking in the theater itself to smoke up the room. I do remember not too far away from the theater there was a drug store where we’d go in with our little pennies and dimes to buy some candy for the movies. We used to get jawbreakers and those candy necklaces. And also, jujubes! The hard candy. I used to eat those all the time! That’s why we had to get dental work. *laughs*

I do remember the Linda Theater— it was kind of cool because it was close to our last name “Linder.” In my own little mind, I thought this was our theater. I remember going there on several matinees and I can just picture our parents dropping us off. I can picture taking my younger brothers wherever they had to go. That’s what babysat us for a while! We might have even had our Aunt Jo drop us off. She had a little Volkswagen. 

The mall of the Linda Theater had already kind of declined, and wasn’t very clean, so the contrast of going to the beautiful, opulent Fox Theater in Downtown San Diego was just really impressive. We were pretty well-behaved— we just wanted our candy! Some really good memories. Really really good.