1941 Bennettsville, South Carolina

John Newton

Born 1935

Bennettsville, South Carolina

Interviewed 9/22/19

By Christopher Poston

Oh, that? Alright, let me… let me explain. Now, this movie I saw when I was six years old and I’ll never forget it. It was called The Wolfman.

This was in 1941. And… it scared the heck out of me. I was sitting in the seat and I’d go down as low as I could in the seat. In fact I wouldn’t even look at it – I can remember it, I wouldn’t even look at the screen at times. The music was very eerie. And every time the Wolfman came out the moon was full and it was always foggy and dreary… it was a real horror movie. It was Lon Chaney’s first big movie. It might have been his first movie, I don’t know. I know I didn’t go see another one of his… (chuckles).

Basically, it was about this guy that came back home from somewhere. And on full moon nights he’d turn into a wolf, and he’d go around killing people! I can remember in the movie at times they would lock him up on full moons – because he was going to change into the Wolfman, you know. And then he’d figure out ways to escape, and he’d get out and he’d maul somebody. Then he’d change back. And he was perfectly normal when he changed back. He’d fallen in love with this girl and all this stuff. I recall he had a cane with a wolf head on it that he had gotten somewhere. Now, I can’t remember exactly what happened… but the secret was that a silver bullet could kill him. I don’t remember who kills him or anything, but I do remember that he died in the end.

I don’t know how I felt about it. It was one of those things where it scared the heck out of you, but then it was sort of thrilling for me too, you know? And I don’t remember exactly how I felt, but I was a little sad that he couldn’t be saved some way, that he had to be destroyed. Because I liked him when he wasn’t the Wolfman.

There were some people in the movie who later became real famous. One was Claude Rains, another was Ralph Bellamy. And Bela Lugosi, you’ve heard of him I’m sure. He played Dracula. And Lon Chaney Jr. became famous for starring in horror movies. But The Wolfman, a lot of people say it was the original horror movie. And it was a horror movie!

Actually, I went to see The Wolfman with my father. Why he took me, I don’t know (laughs). Maybe he had something against me that day! We lived out in the country, and of course he drove us to the theater. It was only about seven miles from our house to Bennettsville where it was, where your grandmother lived. That’s where we both went to high school.

It was called the Carolina Theater. It was the only theater we had… I haven’t been to Bennettsville in so long, I don’t know if it’s still there or not. It had a balcony. Sometimes people would sit up there and throw things out on you down below and that type of thing. The manager of the theater, seems like his first name was Woodrow. He was kind of a skinny looking guy. The theater itself didn’t look like much. It was a brick building, and it had just a small screen. We didn’t have Cinemascope or anything like that back then. The seats were not like you have in the theaters these days, they were more like just a cloth seat with a back, you know, nothing fancy. Just – connected, all in a row. They had armrests, as I recall. They didn’t recline or anything, no cupholders.

They mostly just had popcorn at the theater. I know that the movie and the popcorn and everything wasn’t more than 25 cents, because I can remember Daddy would give me 25 cents to go and I could get everything. So that was the good old days. It was a great place. We had our graduation there, all that good stuff. And I can remember going to see Gone with the Wind there. We took in great big bags of popcorn from home, because it was so long, you know.

If I had to guess, as to why my father took me… two nights a week, the theater had what were called serials – continuing shows. And there were Saturdays, that was the main thing. You had to go on Saturday because the Durango Kid was on, or Hopalong Cassidy, or Lash Larue, all the serials at that time were basically westerns. That might’ve been the reason we ended up seeing The Wolfman. The serial would come on and the movie would follow, usually. I don’t remember what serial was on at the time I saw The Wolfman. But I do remember The Wolfman! That’s the movie I’ll never forget, until I get senile, I guess (laughs). And maybe not then. It was a scary movie.