1943 Manhattan, New York

Marty Munitz
1943
Washington Heights Manhattan
Interviewed on September 20th, 2019
By Zakaria Gedi

When I was a kid…I was probably eight or nine, I used to go to the movies every Saturday morning with my older sister and my cousin who lived next door. We grew up in Washington Heights in Manhattan…there was this one movie theater, it was called the RKO Coliseum, that we would always go to, probably a 15-minute walk from where we lived. They would show tons of coming attractions. They would have a newsreel that would show some highlights about what was going on at the time, and there were cartoons. I loved the cartoons. Then they would show two feature films, not just one. In fact, growing up we used to feel cheated if we only had one. Today you will never see that. In any event, this was the one activity that I looked forward to as a child. No adult was around, we were allowed to go to the movies by ourselves when I was about eight or so, maybe nine. My sister was five years older, so she was 14 maybe 15. It was always considered safe to go. And we’d probably sit in the movie theater for about, I would guess, four to five hours. It also gave our parents a break. They had a serial, one of which I remember was called The Perils of Pauline and it was a series that they would show once a week and it would have a cliffhanger effect where she would literally be hanging off a cliff and the movie would end and you would have to come back to see the following version. Mostly we had westerns, and I loved the westerns. The movies had kids in mind so they had cartoons. The newsreels were probably meaningless to us, but we saw it anyway. It didn’t really matter; it was entertainment.

[The RKO Colliseum] was my go-to theater when I was a kid. I knew the format and the kind of movies that would be shown, but I never knew the name of the movie until I got to the theater. I knew it would probably be a western and then a comedy or romance…Back then any romantic movie was safe.

Nothing was automated. You would get your ticket from outside, a small ticket, then you would hand it to someone inside. We definitely had popcorn and some sort of candy…they did have a large display of candy. And then you would sit in the theater. It was a very large theater. It had a balcony that overhung the orchestra…At that time of day and I think the movies would have started at 10 in the morning…The newsreels were interesting because you don’t have them today…There would be news not about the United States only, but about the world, even the Korean War which was in the early fifties. We would see the highlights of war going on in Korea. The movie theater was very empty there were some kids…and they will show 5 to 6 cartoons, then some news and then the coming attractions and then the two movies. You can imagine how much time that would consume. We’d be out probably mid-afternoon…I must have brought lunch and that was a time where you were allowed to bring in food…because I’d be starved if I hadn’t eaten. I brought a sandwich or two to the theater.

The theater was only one room…it’s similar to a Broadway Theater with the orchestra seating upstairs and the balcony…there was nothing modern about it. I remember when Technicolor was a big deal. You didn’t have wide screens until sometime later. I think it was first called cinemascope with a wide panoramic shot…The Acoustics were fine. Mind you also, I didn’t have the television. So this was really my only real visual entertainment and my aunt would take me here. The theater was old with class and style with a lot of architectural relief along the sides of the walls. It was really pretty.

There was something else it was called Todd-AO…it was a new way of filming much like cinemascope. There are very few similarities between today’s films and filming…you didn’t have ratings. I certainly didn’t see anything. The first movie that I saw that had any sexual content at all was called Peyton Place…it was about a town…this was the first movie that I recall captured my imagination…and then afterward there was this French movie star named Bridget Bardot, and she was kind of like a sex symbol and people my age went to that movies for no reason other than to see her.

When I come into a movie theater today popcorn is the first thing I smell. But I don’t recall that. Smoking in the theaters was permitted, but at 10 in the morning no adults were smoking at that time of day. They didn’t have, I think, sections set aside for smokers and non-smokers.

We lived in Manhattan. There wasn’t any public transportation that could take us from where we live to the movie theater. There was none that would take us directly to the theater. It was simply a walk. It was a neighborhood theater so I doubt people took public transportation. Back then there was a Subway not too far from the movie theater and buses going north and south of Broadway. The theater was on 181st Street and Broadway in Washington Heights. Most people who went there I think we’re local and didn’t need transportation.

You know the two theaters Radio City and the Roxy, those theaters had the ushers dressed in how you would think they would be dressed. And they were all over the place, but this is in Downtown Manhattan and these were huge theaters, and Radio City is still there with the Rockettes and so forth. It probably held a few thousand people. My theater was considerably smaller. It was still decorated. It was kind of like the old architecture and you see in old buildings as opposed to the metal and glass you see today.

It wasn’t until many years later…the first movie that comes to mind…actually there were two: one was Gone with the Wind and the other was much more recent and that was Schindler’s List. Schindler’s List was the movie that had a really great impact on me from a psychological perspective. In personal importance and in terms of the power, the brilliance that was displayed on film…I had family that died in the Holocaust and when I grew up it was something that my grandmother and mother spoke about… actually I had some family who left London and came to Pittsburgh during the war to escape possible harm. It came close to showing me some examples of what life was like during that time. The movie also was very compelling. Schindler’s List evoked a lot of emotions that, I mean, I grew up with and it sort of crystallized at that moment when I saw it…I know I remember weeping very very much so and was very thoughtful about it later on afterward.