1958 Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Marty Engelmann

1941

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

Interviewed on 1/28/19

By Nicolas Trigo

Well, you only remember classics. So if I remember, back in my days when I was 10, 11, and 12 we would go to the movie every Saturday and they would have serials and you would follow it every Saturday. So my father or somebody would drop me off and I would watch something like the mask of Zorro. If I want to remember as a kid, I would go back to those short 30-minute sequels that they had every Saturday of Zorro, or The Lone Ranger, or stuff like that. The full-length movie that sticks out to me dramatically would be Gone With The Wind.

I mean, it’s an old film. It came out before I was born. But I didn’t see it until probably 15 to 18 years old, something like that. If I was 18, then I was probably back down here in Ft. Lauderdale, just getting out of military school. I was probably 17 or 18, so I was probably you know, in my last year of high school or something like that. Now that i think of it, it was probably 1958 or 1959.

Well, first, Clark Gable was good. First of all, it was an epic film as far as the scenery and color, it was the first major color movie—the scenery was vivid. Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable were icons. He has a famous saying at the end of the movie when he walks up to the big colonial, or whatever house that she was in, where she pleads with him saying “please come back” or whatever. She thinks she’s got him and then he turns and he says “frankly my dear I don’t give a damn” and turns and walks off. So that was dramatic. You remember certain things. The scenery was wonderful, the casting was excellent, and that final scene makes an impact on you. But that’s all I can recall it must’ve been 60 years ago.

I have no clue who was with me when I watched it. I don’t really remember the real world when I watched it, just the movie. When I was 10, 11, and 12 and I’d go every weekend I would be driven and picked up. But then, once I graduated from high school and got my own car, I would drive myself to the movie.

They didn’t have those specials back then like we do now where you get a candy, a coke, and a this and a this and a this. We would go and your mother would give you a dollar and you’d buy a drink and whatever was favored back then. I don’t remember if it was M&Ms. I think if you had to go back 50 years and had to pick only one, it would be M&Ms. And you know, popcorn was always the staple. Popcorn and M&Ms, lets say.

Back then I think the only theater which we would go to would be The Gateway, which was just a couple of miles from the house. I don’t remember if there were ushers back in those days. I’m sure there were people coming around telling us to be quiet, sure, there had to be a few. But we didn’t have cell phones back then to disrupt people like you have in today’s theaters. But if you have a bunch of kids watching a matinee then yeah sure you need to have an usher. There’s just nothing distinguishable about an usher that you would remember 60 years later.