1965: East Los Angeles, California
Lucy Romero
January 22, 1955
East Los Angeles California
Interviewed on January 28, 2025
by Aimee Perales
Aimee Perales (AP): What is the first movie you remember seeing?
Lucy Romero(LR): The first movie that holds a memory for me was when I watched The Sound of Music with my mom. I wanted to watch it because I heard other people saying, “Oh my goodness, It’s really good. You have to see it.” Because others highly recommended the movie, I asked my mom if we could see it. She agreed to take me, but only when we had enough money.
AP: How old were you? What town and year was this?
LR: I was about 10 years old. I saw the movie the year when it came out because there were no playbacks before. Not like now, where you have streaming and DVD. The movie theater was all we had. I saw this movie in the Golden Gate Theater in East Los Angeles. Their library was very limited though. You would see the same film at the same time Monday through Friday, but on Sundays, the movie was shown twice.
AP: Where was this theater located?
LR: This movie theater was the one on Atlantic, which is now a CVS. A committee wanted to prevent the theater from being bought and make it a historical landmark. Later on, from all the gossip I heard, the reason CVS bought it was that there was not enough money to fund to keep the movie theater- transforming it into the CVS you see today.
AP: Were there ushers?
LR: Back then, you would only have ushers on the balcony, which you had to be 21 to enter. You would never see them walking up and down the aisles. The kiosk was on one end and the other side, you would walk the red carpet into the canopy- that’s the concession stand. It was in a clam.
AP: You mentioned that the concession stand was in a clam, which is pretty cool and you don’t see it often in today’s movie theaters. What was your go-to or favorite snack that you would buy before going into the movie theaters?
LR: If we [my mom and I] had money, we would buy the peanut butter brittles- the ones where the individual peanuts were covered in the candy. That is what I used to buy from the concession stand. If we had enough money, we would buy soda. Now, if we had a lot of money, we would have both. When we would buy snacks from the concession stand, we always shared.
AP: How was the movie experience then compared to now?
LR: Those years we had previews, cartoons, and then two movies. That was your experience. When I went to go watch Sound of Music I don’t remember what the second movie was.
Another difference was that the movie ticket prices were different, they had children, student, adult, and military categories- no senior citizen category back then. For me, my mom would pay 50 cents and for her, it would be $1.25. If you were 12 and under, a kid, you paid 50 cents. If you were 13 through 18 years old, you paid the teenager price of 75 cents. If you showed that you were in school or college you could buy a student ID to go into the theater. Now, if you were in the armed forces or the military, you paid a teenager price of 75 cents.
AP: Okay, now, put yourself back into the Golden Movie theater. What do you remember about the movie The Sound of Music and what made this movie so special? Was it because you went to the theater with your mom?
LR: It was not so much because of my mom. It was because it was a movie that I wanted to see. It was the first musical that I wanted to see. This is where it started my love for musicals. The cinematography was beautiful, and it was in color. Visually, it was very stunning to see the opening scene where she is in the hills in Austria,
AP: Walking out of the movie theater, What did you think of the characters, actors, and story?
LR: What stuck out was the song “Do Rei Me”, which was the one everyone sang along to at the theater. It is based on the true story of a family who came to the United States and lived in Vermont. The Von Trapp singers open their Lodge, the Trapp Family Lodge. When the movie starts it’s the beginning of Hitler, and Maria and the Von Trapp’s flee from Nazi-occupied Austria. At first, Maria wants to be a nun. However, the nuns thought she wasn’t suited to be a nun because she didn’t obey the rules and was possibly too free-spirited. It was Julie Maria’s dream to be a nun and probably unrealistic.
AP: You mentioned a lot about the nuns, what was it about them that stood out to you, and why do you remember them?
LR: The nuns were funny. In the movie, they help the Von Trapp family hide during the Third Reich. They’re escaping because they were offered positions in the Nazi regime, but the Von Trapps refused to serve in the regime This is why they use the nuns, which help them escape to Switzerland. In the second song in the nunnery where they are talking about Maria leaving the convent to sing in the hills and, while they’re singing, they’re late into the next prayer. The Mother Superior is deciding what she wants to do with Maria and believes they want her to experience the world. Mother Superior doesn’t want Maria to become a nanny for the von Trapps, but they believe that her right path is to be a governess to the children.
AP: What was it about the songs that made you enjoy the film?
LR: I thought that the music written by Rogers and Hammerstein was very, very catchy. If you’re into musicals, the music is very schmaltzy. Well, it was written in 1965. I didn’t rewatch the movie again until the 50th anniversary. Sometimes, I have the movie running in the background for white noise but if I hear “Do Rei Mi”, I will pop in and listen to the song in its entirety and then go back to cleaning or working. I enjoyed the movie because it is still very prevalent and wholesome. There are no drugs, no shooting anyone, and no gore. When people think wholesome, they think that it will be boring because there is little to no action in terms of war and violence.
AP: You mentioned that people have seen this movie many times again. Would you see the movie again?
LR: No. If you were to say, “Let’s see this movie,” I would do it, but not by myself. I’ve seen it again, but only because it was the 50th anniversary. I wanted to see what the actors were doing now because when they were filming the musical it was 7 children. One of them was 20 and plays a teenager. The youngest was 5 and now she’s 55- I guess it was a retrospective segment.
AP: Now that we’re getting to the end of this interview, were there any memories that have stood out to you about other movies or going to the movie theater?
LR: There were different events of going to the movies with my mom or sister. One moment that I also remember was when I went to the movie theater to see Gone With the Wind. So, we went to the theater and watched Gone With the Wind, and the second movie was called Vanishing Point. It has nothing to do with the first movie. In Vanishing Point, the protagonist is speeding through town, and this DJ picks up on his story and becomes his cheerleader and he continues speeding through. Then, more police chase through different towns in different states. He puts these big bulldozers on the road, and he’s going down the road. These bulldozers are there and then you don’t see him anymore. Why on god would you put this movie with Gone with the Wind? This was in a movie theater in Alhambra, but it is no longer there due to the 1987 earthquake. It was the first multiplex movie theater in the US. So, we’re getting out at 3 am. We walk the runway. I am the only car in the parking lot in the mall. All by itself. We would say to each other “Where’s the car? Who are we going to call, how are we going to get home? If we have to, can we find a pay phone?” That’s a memory that has stuck with my sister and me.
Note: Lucy Romero, who retired after 43 years of teaching at James A. Garfield High School, continues to coach the academic decathlon team, a position she held while coaching Aimee for two years. She enjoys musicals, with Les Misérables being one of her favorites.
