1945 New Albany, Mississippi

Guen Brown
Birth Year: 1936
Interviewed on 9/14/19
By Aarohi Srivastava

I can’t remember the name of my first movie, but it was a cowboy movie – a Western.  I was nine years old, and it was 1945 in Mississippi.  I watched it when I was visiting with my aunt, uncle, and cousin.  This was my favorite cousin, and he was two years older than me.  They lived about 60 miles away from our small family farm, in New Albany, Mississippi.  I would spend a few days with them in the summertime almost every year while growing up.  That was my great vacation in the summers growing up.  It was a long trip, but either my parents would take me there, or they would come to see my parents and I would go back to New Albany with them.  New Albany was very small – I think the population was no more than 3,000.

I was really looking forward to seeing the movie.  It was during the daytime, probably a Saturday matinee.  The movie theater wasn’t far from my aunt’s house: it was downtown, but they lived close enough that I do remember walking to the theater.  For me, seeing my first film was a real luxury.  I hadn’t done this sort of thing before, and even after this particular movie I didn’t see another movie for a few years, but I believe my cousin and my aunt would go to the Saturday afternoon screening frequently.  Admission must have been a quarter.  It wasn’t considered expensive, but watching movies was more difficult for our family, living on our farm.  It really didn’t matter what the movie was.  You would enjoy the movie, and you would enjoy the idea of going to the theater to see a movie.

Going to see a movie was a dress up occasion.  We didn’t wear shorts then, so I probably had on a cotton dress.  It wouldn’t have been something to wear while playing outside, but it also wouldn’t be formal enough for church.  It was in between.

We had popcorn at the movie.  Although we had popcorn quite often at home, this was a treat for me.  There was something about eating popcorn at the theater.  You weren’t making popcorn on a stove in the kitchen.  Seeing the popper and smelling the popcorn even before entering was very exciting.

There was no assigned seating in the theater.  My cousin wanted to sit way down towards the front, so we walked all the way down the slanted floor of the theater.  If we had sat further back, it probably would have been difficult to see.  I was always very short, so I would want to sit closer to the front.  At that time, the theater felt like a very big room, but I’m sure now that it was a very small room in comparison to theaters today – there must have been fewer than a hundred seats.  It was not air conditioned, but everything was hot in the Mississippi summer, so I don’t ever remember feeling hot.  Of course, the film was in my cousin’s home town, so he recognized some kids he went to school with in the audience.  The audience was mostly mothers and children.  There weren’t men.

Before the movie started, the room was completely dark save for a ray of light in the air.  The projection stand had a big wheel with a continuous film strip on it.  They had the light from the projector shining on a small screen.  There was a lot of dust in the ray of light, and I thought it must not have been a really sanitary room.  There was a curtain in front of the screen, which was opened by someone pulling a cord off to the side of the stage.  After pulling the curtain, the movie would be projected onto the screen.  But first, preview tapes were presented, followed by a news reel.  The news reel for this movie had national and international news.  Since it was 1945, a year after World War II, the news reel showed airplanes and war content.  I must have gotten apprehensive, because while the news reel was playing my aunt clarified to me, “This is not here.  This is in some other country.”  Everything was played at a very loud volume.

Of course, it was a black and white movie, but it was a Western, with cowboys and guns and horses and runnin’ around.  I remember a character similar to what John Wayne would have played: a cowboy smoking cigarettes.  I don’t know who the bad guys must have been.  In many, many movies during that time, the bad guys were the Indians.  I don’t know if this one was a cowboy and Indian movie, though.  But there was definitely a lot of shooting.  Because I must have been feeling a little nervous, my aunt reassured me, “There are no bullets, Guen.  They’re not shooting each other, it’s just pretend.”

After watching the movie, I must have spent a long time speculating about what may have happened to the characters.  I remember talking extensively about the movie with others, and when I got home after leaving my aunt’s house for the summer, I told my sisters and parents all about the movie.  It made a real impression on me.  75 years later, I still remember the movie.