1955 Brooklyn, New York

Linda Stern
Born in 1946
Brooklyn, New York
Interviewed on February 7, 2021 by Madeleine Stern

I don’t remember the first movie I ever saw, but I know we saw a lot of Alfred Hitchcock movies. I definitely remember seeing To Catch a Thief—that would have been when I was nine, and that was when I was going to the movies. Starting at nine, I would go with friends; we would walk to the movie theater from our house. Seeing Alfred Hitchcock movies was so scary, we would actually scream, and clutch each other, and hold each other… Then when I would have my friends over during the week, after school, we would tell each other Alfred Hitchcock movies and we would be screaming again! [laughs] We would review the movie, and be hugging each other and screaming again because they were so suspenseful and so scary, especially for young people watching these movies. Alfred Hitchcock also had a television show—I think it was a half-hour show, and we would talk about those, too. We would literally be in my kitchen eating ice cream after school and screaming, because he was so scary, and it was so suspenseful.

We were sort of just so mesmerized by the movies, because don’t forget that at that time we had black and white box televisions, so seeing movies on a big screen like this was so amazing and memorable—it was exciting. Also, it was a way of staying out of trouble on a Saturday afternoon. We’d go to the movies, and all the other kids from school would be at the movies, from 10 years old to high school. Parents weren’t going to the movies in the afternoon on a Saturday, so it was filled with high school kids, eating popcorn. I know we definitely had popcorn, and I think they had Jujyfruits. They also had Chuckles, nonpareils, M&Ms, and Mars Bars. I always went with friends. I just don’t even ever remember going to the movies with my parents. They would go out in the evening, on a Saturday night with friends, and leave my brother and I home or with a baby sitter. I don’t know what they did—they went to movies, they went to friends’ houses—but I would go to movies with the other kids in my class, my buddies. And we’d see all the other kids. Either just a bunch of girls, or boys and girls. It was a real social thing to do.

We would walk, always walk. This was the neighborhood theater. We would walk to school, walk to the movies, walk to the library. And we crossed big streets to get there. I wish I could explain it to you—Ocean Avenue, that I lived on, and this movie theater on Kings Highway, which was a very busy shopping street. Oh my gosh, it brings back such memories of Brooklyn. It was the Avalon Theater, East 16th Street and Kings Highway. A big theater. The ushers were always little old gray-haired grandmas in white uniforms—I mean, I’m sure they were my age, but they looked old to me because I was 10—and they always had a flashlight, they would always walk you down the aisle with the flashlight, and then they shushed you! We called them the “shush ladies” because they were always shushing us. Because we weren’t really there so much to see the movies. We were really there to hang out, to socialize, to flirt with the boys; if you were with your girlfriends, the boys were always sitting behind you. It was just the way Brooklyn teenagers socialized, because we all lived in apartments, so you sort of couldn’t be in your house with a bunch of kids. We didn’t have community centers, so the movie theater was where young nine to 17 year olds would go socialize. And it was a whole afternoon, because it was newsreels—I don’t remember if they had coming attractions, too—but they had newsreels, and then a double feature. We’re talking four, five hours, you know, you’d go in at one and come out at five, or it’d start at twelve and you’d come out at four. And then they’d get the theater ready for the older people who could come out on a Saturday night. I don’t remember why it wasn’t Sunday, maybe Sunday was more family days for people, but it was Saturday afternoons. Or Friday nights. Then I got older and I could go out at night. But I remember as a younger kid going on Saturday afternoons.