1965 Montreal, Canada

Gilles Carter

1952

Montreal, Canada

Interviewed on 02.21.2021

by Liviu Mosnoi

It was a very, very popular Hollywood movie in 1965. My mother loved it so much that she took us, all the kids, five times to watch it. I was 13 at the time. The movie starred Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, and, by sheer coincidence, he turned out to be our next-door neighbor at our farm in Wilton, CT. In the movie, Plummer plays the role of a very strict cornel, he’s widowed, has a lot of children, and he hires a governess that he later falls in love with. I saw the movie for the first time in Montreal, my parents moved there from Providence, RI. The thing I remember the most about going to the movies in Montreal is the fact that in Canada it was supposed to be ok to smoke like a chimney in the theater. Each seat had an ashtray, it was dangerous, but they didn’t want to give up the tobacco because everyone was so addicted in the 60s. I’ve seen The Sound of Music so many times since then, it was the most popular and most viewed Hollywood movie of all time at the time, in other words, it surpassed everything that had come before it. It was broadly popular across all age groups. Kids liked it because it was a singing movie. It was taking place in Austria and it had, of course, an evil backdrop, which was fascism, nasty nazis, everybody knew they were bad. It appealed to the kids because they sang all these very clever songs, they were immensely popular, we could all sing those songs. A 33 LP Vinyl Record came out along with the movie, and families would sing all the songs. I think it had the same kind of appeal as The Wizard of Oz, another well-known movie with songs. I, actually, was in an all-boys school choir and we sang at a lot of different events, and back then I could still sing those songs, and all of us sang those songs from the movies.

*Gilles clears his throat and proceeds to sing Do-Re-Mi by Julie Andrews*

Doe, a deer, a female deer
Ray, a drop of golden sun
Me, a name I call myself
Far, a long, long way to run

These childhood memories are embedded in millions of people, you could make allusions to these movies and everybody would know what you’re talking about. It was an incredibly corny movie, in retrospect, you know. The set ups were taking advantage of, not necessarily cheap feelings, but easy-to-manufacture feelings. You, essentially, feel sorry for the little kids at the appropriate moments, you hope that the young man wins the heart of the young girl. All these story-telling aspects that we recognize, at the time. I thought those were very original aspects. Like, for example, going to Austria, shooting movies on the high meadows, the cultural aspects of Europe, I think they were appealing to many Americans. It’s what we would describe today as a “feel-good movie.”

I remember that we had to drive across town to NDG (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce) and that we saw many other movies at this particular theater. We would pack a car full of kids, eight to ten, without seat belts, and go to the theater. Another thing I remember associated with this: we also saw a movie about the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, which were actually very gruesome, and I remember being horrified. I remember this scene where the little boy sticks a bone through the cage to demonstrate that he is very thin and the witch feels it and thinks that he is too thin to eat, and I was like “ughh, that’s strategically correct, but gross.” I can’t remember if there were ushers at the theater, but in most cases, there were people who had flashlights and they checked tickets, and if you came a little late, they’d seat you, but, in general, the protocol was: you get there, and you got to be there.

Popcorn was not a huge deal in my family, none of us really loved it, but it was definitely a big part of the movie-going experience. It was an easy way for the theaters to make a whole lot of money really quickly. And again, there is something mildly compulsive about butter and salt. You got greasy hands because back in the day they used real butter and they salted everything heavily, because, again, that might make you buy a drink. Those things are certainly embedded in the experience. I also have a recollection about certain larger boxes of candy. Back in those days, liquorice candy was pretty popular in Canada. The other thing we had in Canada, which I don’t think I had seen in the United States, they had these big bars of toffees, and you could break out an inch square of toffee and it was designed to pull out cavities from your teeth – Mackintosh’s Caramel Toffees bars, a Scottish name. We had very particular candy that was different in Canada, the caramel toffee was one of our favorites, no question about it, it’s a very English kind of candy.