1964 Lansing, Michigan

Harry Sherwood
1951
Lansing, Michigan
Interviewed on February 4, 2026
by Rachel Dai

HARRY: I think I was 12 or 13 years old. See—back then we were so poor, we never went to movies. We went to the drive-in. But I was so young, I don’t remember the movies that we went to. It was really whatever my mom and dad wanted to see—my mom loved Elvis, so I think my real first was Jailhouse Rock with Elvis. But we were in the backseat. We didn’t see hardly nothing, so I couldn’t really tell you about that one.

I was home, now, back in Lansing, Michigan. This was in 1964. I was 13 years old, and my brother, three years older than me, was 17. On Saturday mornings, they had 25 or 50 cents to go to the movies at the downtown Michigan Theater.

My brother had already asked Mom if he could go, and he rode his bike downtown all by himself to the Michigan Theater, which wasn’t far from my house. He watched the movie A Shot in the Dark, with Peter Sellers, and he called the house and said, “Mom, bring Harry D down here. He’s got to see this movie, it’s so funny.”

So I did—my mom drove me down there in our big station wagon and said she’d come get us after the movie. We sat through that movie and laughed so hard, we just couldn’t believe how funny it was. It was so good that we… he watched it a first time, then watched a second time with me and a third time. You didn’t have to repay, you know what I mean? So you got to stay right there. And there weren’t a lot of people there on a Saturday morning.

What do you remember of the characters, actors, and story?

HARRY: Peter Sellers was probably one of the funniest character comedians. Back in those days, it was all about facial expressions and little quick lines that he would say—he was just a funny, funny man. This was the sequel of the Pink Panther movie, and there was an Asian guy in it—they would follow each other around, and they both knew karate. They were constantly trying to surprise each other, and then they would get into these horrific, crazy fights, but they never got really hurt.

A Shot in the Dark was about Peter Sellers’ role—he was Inspector Clouseau, and he was investigating a murder in this rich, rich house of whodunits. He was doing his inspections around the house, and every time he would try to get to the bottom of it, there would be something crazy funny—for instance, he was trying to act cool in front of all these people. When he leans back on the doors, he falls. And then all of a sudden, you see him come flying back up. And he tells them, “This was all carefully planned; everything I do is carefully planned.”

He finally figured out who the murderer was, but it took a whole series of just absolute craziness. He was so haphazard, like an absent-minded professor. He finally solved the murder, and it was actually the chief inspector for the police department. What a plot twist.

Every time you’d watch it again, you’d see something you missed that was funny. Because he was so subtle.

How many times did you watch it that day?

HARRY: I watched it twice, and my brother watched it three times. Back to back, we didn’t leave the theater. We stayed right there, back to back.

Now, let’s talk about the theater. Were there ushers?

HARRY: Yeah, there were ushers, but they didn’t usher you down to a seat. They were just there for if anybody had a problem. It was open seating, so you just went wherever you wanted.

And was there a concession? Did you have a favorite candy?

HARRY: Oh, absolutely. Milk Dots, Milk Dots. My mom gave us just enough money to get a big box of milk dots and a small thing of popcorn. So we sat there and we had popcorn and milk dots.

Now, if you really want to talk about the first really great movie I saw as a young man, it was The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman. There was a lot of movies playing back in my day, but like I said, I was so poor, I couldn’t really go to them. Shortly after I saw that movie, A Shot in the Dark, I left home, so I didn’t have any money. I was working just to have enough to pay rent.

But I’ll tell you the truth. There were TV shows that I watched—I knew I liked Westerns like The Lone Ranger, which we never missed, and The Adventures of Superman. They were all in black-and-white when I first started watching, and then at the end of the series, they came out with a little bit of color.

Would you say you feel more connected to the TV shows you watched in your childhood, compared to the movies?

Absolutely—and the reason being, we just didn’t have any money.

Harry Sherwood is my longtime neighbor from my hometown of Chandler, Arizona.