1955 Maquoketa, Iowa

Winnie Willcox

1949

Maquoketa, Iowa

Interviewed on February 22, 2021

By Sarah Chute

It was definitely a young person movie, maybe Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. I was probably 5 to 6 years old when I saw it. What I remember the most about it is that it cost 20 cents to go, and in those days our babysitter worked the concession stand. My father gave us each 50 cents for the movie which meant we could get popcorn and pop. And because our babysitter worked the concession stand, she always gave us the popcorn free, so we had enough money for another movie actually if we wanted.

You just walked up the street, it was just very easy, you got your ticket at the window out front and indoors and of course pop was out of a machine at that time where a cup came down and then the soda went into the cup, you didn’t have any other method of distributing soda in those days. And then the popcorn was a box of popcorn and it wasn’t buttered at the time. Then of course they had the normal kind of candy bars as well. I think yes (I had a favorite): junior mints. Because what we loved to do was put those in the popcorn box and then shake up the box and as you’re sitting in the movie watching the film, you’d come across a mint every once in a while. (laughs) It sort of cleared your palette and all and it was just kind of fun. But I can remember that as just the most fun thing to do. I mean we really had a good time. My brother was a couple years older than I was and my sister was three or four years younger. We just walked down. We lived within the small town and you’d walk up the street 5 or 6 blocks into the downtown area and there was the movie theater.

You remember obviously Snow White falling asleep and going into her kind of deep sleep and the prince kissing her and that being the end of it. Of course early in the film you were meeting the wicked mother or the step-mother and her daughters who were really kind of homely and unattractive both in their physical well-being as well as in their attitude. Oh no, I meant Cinderella, not Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. 

This is the beginning era of movie theaters in these small towns. You’d get a new movie every Wednesday and then that movie that would run through the weekend. And then the following week a new movie would come in, and so the movies had a broader appeal to a larger group of people because you didn’t have 4 screens or anything like that. It was a small town, so the movie would get shipped in on the reel, and the theaters were small and intimate and you’d sit in there and hear the ‘click click click click click’ of the movie reel going all the time. It was a big deal because TV wasn’t as stand out as it is today. There wasn’t a lot of competition. This was the entertainment of America. I can remember this was the same way living in Fargo, North Dakota, or Syracuse, New York, or wherever we grew up, movies were run like this. So you couldn’t wait for the new movie to come. It wasn’t the show as it is today, which actually made it nicer in many ways. 

As a child you were only permitted by your parents to go to a certain film. There were a few more restrictions in those days, although there wasn’t a lot of lewd behavior in the majority of films, they were all pretty proper. But still, there were some subject matters that maybe weren’t appropriate for a younger person. Again, you look at the revenue side of it and you have limited availability of  material, and you want to have it appeal to the broadest audience that you can. And if one of your audiences was at the Saturday morning movie for young people, you certainly wanted to be able to take advantage of that as well as people who did dates during the week or evenings. There were no ushers because the theater was very small. That is, nobody ushered you to your seat, but there were one or two ushers who would handle each of the aisles and walk up and down with a flashlight and if anyone was misbehaving they’d shine the flashlight and they would tell you to settle down. Typically at the movies you walked in the front door and out a side door when you left so that there might be another group of people who would come in behind you for the next showing, which isn’t too much different than it is today. 

It’s one of the better experiences when you think back; we lived in a small town. My dad had a job out of town but in the small town you walked into the downtown to do any of your shopping or go out to dinner or anything like that. You didn’t always just jump in the car because it was so close, so you’d pull your wagon to go get groceries. You knew everyone and they knew you, so the girl who babysat you was the girl behind the concession stand. I remember it like it was yesterday. 

Image Credits:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042332/mediaviewer/rm3251141120/