1948 Toledo, Ohio and 1942 New York, New York

Mary and Ron Repetti

Born 1938 and 1934

Toledo, Ohio and New York City, New York

Interviewed on September 22, 2019

by Cecily Gao

[Mary] I began going to movie theaters with my sister when I was ten. On the weekdays, we read the newspapers and found advertisements to movies we wanted to watch. On the weekends, my parents would give us twenty-five cents each, and we would walk to the neighborhood theater. We always had popcorn.

My very film would have been one of Esther Williams’—I was quite the fan, watched every single one of her films while growing up. She was an incredibly talented swimmer (I can’t quite remember, but she might have even competed in the Olympics at one point). I was a swimmer myself, so I loved watching her on the big screen. Almost all her films had a scene of her diving off a board with her love interest. And what stuck with me is how perfect she looked in the water. She always had her hair braided—never wore a swimming cap—and usually had flowers in her hair. Every time, she exited the water looking exactly as she entered. Of course, they cut in different angles, so you didn’t see the in-between shots, but still—she looked beautiful. I wanted to be her.

[Ron] I wrote down about twenty-five films that I would have watched as a child or a teenager. The one I recall most clearly right now is Bambi, a Disney animated film. I must have been around eight at the time. It was a terrific in-color film, and the animals who were friends with the deer were delightful. Now, there was one scene that stuck with me—the horrible scene of the forest burning. It was very traumatic. I remember it very clearly to this day. I don’t do well with scary films, and that scene was no exception.

As for the theater, I believe it was a neighborhood theater, one of the Loews theaters in NYC, good chance it was the Woodside Loews Theater, which was converted to a church some years later. It would’ve taken us a good twenty-minute walk to get there. That may seem like a long time today, but back in the day, legs were your primary form of transportation, so that would have been a very manageable walk. There were always ushers in the theater, and films were shown continuously. Sometimes ushers would admit people in the middle of the film, so you would watch the latter half of the film and then stay after the film ended to watch the first half so you could watch one full film. Or sometimes, even one-and-a-half films. 

Our family was never in the habit to purchase popcorn or sweets at the concession stand. It was possible to bring outside food into theater, but I think theater owners soon realized that concessions made up most of their profits, so they put an end to that. If you think about it, for a young couple with a child to go on a movie date, the cost of two tickets, concessions, and a babysitter is a significant cost. It’s not a surprise to me why people turned to cassettes and DVDs and now to streaming films. Nowadays, a lot of theaters are multi-cinema complexes, which is an industry response to lowering costs and increasing profits by showing as many films as possible to attract as many customers as possible. Before, cinemas would have two or three films shown in a loop in any given theater. The primary film was mainly used to draw crowds and the secondary films usually starred less popular actors and actresses. Theaters did a lot to try to get people in their seats.

Now, as I was jotting down my list of films, I realized that I have a particular affection for Broadway musical-style films. I’ll just go down the list: Dumbo, Snow White, Bambi (all Disney films), My Friend Flicka (which starred Elizabeth Taylor and was a story about a horse), National Velvet (another Elizabeth Taylor film), Song of Bernadette (about a gal burned at the stake in France), Madam Curie (about a brilliant female scientist), Brute Force (my uncle grew up with the lead, Burt Lancaster, in NYC), Henry Aldrich Haunts a House (a very scare movie), American in Paris (with Gene Kelly), Pinocchio (another Disney film), Picture of Dorian Grey (a movie about a person who does not age, but a picture of him does, a very scary premise), some Alec Guinness films (Captain’s Paradise, Lavender Hill Mob), The Robe (a religious film with Michael Douglas’ father), On the Waterfront (with Marlin Rando), Psycho (a scary film), All Quiet on the Western Front, My Fair Lady, Sound of Music, Oklahoma, Meet me in St. Louis (with Judy Garland), Carousel, Sands of Iwo Jima (a World War II film), and On The Beach with Ava Gardner, who you would think from the title would include the actresses relaxing on the beach, but it’s actually a very somber film about the aftermath of nuclear war in the world. You might enjoy some of them.