1950 St. Joseph’s, Missouri

Marnie Monge
Born in 1938
First movie memories from St. Joseph’s, Missouri, population 85,000
Interviewed on January 29, 2018 by Cole Rianda

I can’t remember a trip to see a particular movie, but I do remember that when I was a young girl – somewhere around 13 years old – my father would give me and each of my siblings 27 cents. With that 27 cents we would get on the bus and ride downtown to go to the movie theater; we would buy a ticket, a Coke, and a bag of popcorn; and we would ride the bus back home. All on 27 cents apiece. This must have been in 1950 or 1952.

I don’t remember the name of the theater we would go to (there was a slogan for another theater
“Let’s go to the Joe’s!” – but that wasn’t the one that we went to), but I do remember the interior. It had these velvety seats that were set at an angle, and if you looked up and toward the back of the theater you could see the projector sticking out, pointed toward the screen. The screen had these big, big velvet drapes that would pull open at the start of the movie. You would always get excited when the drapes wooshed apart because that meant that the movie was about to begin. And it definitely had the ushers that would walk you down the aisle with a flashlight, now that you mention it, I had forgotten all about that.

When the drapes did open to show the picture, they would first start off with a serial, a short little story that would continue from week to week. See this part this week and then the next part would be shown the week after. After that would come the news reel. Then after the news reel the actual movie would be shown. And you have to remember that all of it – the serial, the newsreel, the movie – all of it was shown in black and white.

I remember my favorite movie being Cheaper by the Dozen. I think it starred… Marjorie Main and Percy Killbride? You’ll have to double check and make sure that that’s right. [Interviewer’s note: Cheaper by the Dozen starred Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy; Marjorie Main and Percy Killbride were Ma and Pa Kettle.]

Norm and I went to St. Joseph’s to visit and look around a while back. At this point it’s much smaller than it was back then. It was a good sized manufacturing town right on the Missouri River. Now it’s pretty empty. Many of the old Victorian houses that were so beautiful growing up are now run-down and bedraggled-looking. My high school – the Convent of the Sacred Heart – isn’t there anymore; it was an old, old building. I don’t think that the movie theater is there anymore either, or at least it doesn’t look anything like it once did.

What has stayed the same is my neighborhood and the park system. My old house looks almost exactly the same as it did when I was growing up: red brick on the first floor and then the second floor – well back then it was white shingles – is some sort of white siding now. And the parks those were a favorite of mine when we weren’t at the movie theater – these long strips of green that followed alongside the main boulevard. And the boulevard stretched from the North of St.
Joe’s, through the main part of town, and all the way down to the South. It was a big boulevard, so you can get a sense for how many parks there were.

Yes, yes you’ll have to visit at some point. Let me give you my old address – I still remember it. I’m sure if you put it in your phone it’ll tell you where to go to find it.