1940 New Haven, Connecticut
Larry Lipsher
1940
New Haven, Connecticut
Interviewed on 9 February 2022
by Patrick Chu
You’re flattering me by asking me to remember my childhood! There were movies that all the little kids would see when I was young, like Bambi or Pinocchio, you know, very childlike movies. But I guess if I had to recall the important parts, my grandfather, who lived with us when I was a young boy, was in the Motion Picture Distribution business. He worked for a couple of the film companies, and he would sell these movies to the theaters. He worked in Connecticut and Massachusetts. So, I’d often go to the movies with him! He’d be doing business, and I’d sit in the audience.
I have to say, the thing that was emblazoned in my mind most clearly were the newsreels of the war. Remember, I’m still a young kid: only 4, 5, 6 years old. My grandfather would take me around to see all these movies, but the newsreels are what I remember now. When I was a kid, in the 40’s, not everyone had televisions. We had to either get the newspaper or go to the movies to see the newsreels. They showed very specific things about plans bombing sites in Europe and Japan. I remember it being very exciting, but also very scary. You have to also remember what was going on in New Haven. I lived in New Haven, not far from the Yale Bowl. At night, no lights could be shining out from the windows. It was blacked out. What I saw in those newsreels was also reinforced by what we had to do day and night. New Haven at the time was considered a prime target for attack because of the ammunition and firearm manufacturers here. So a lot of my earliest memories of movies have to do with the war.
Then, as I got a little bit older, around 10 or 12, there were bigger movies like The 10 Commandments or Ben-Hur. They were these dramatic, fanciful movies. There were a few theaters around New Haven I remember going to frequently. One of my favorites was on College Street right by Yale. Now, it’s a music place. There were probably 5 or 6 movie houses right in downtown New Haven and a few more towards the hospital. And there were neighborhood theaters that felt more comfortable. There were lots of theaters here! That was a central focus of our family activities as a kid. Then, as I grew up, it would be a fun thing to do with friends.
In those days, when you went to the theater, you’d actually see two movies. The first might be a “lead” movie, something advertised with a star, and the second would be some other movie. But in between those two movies were the cartoons! Just go down the list: all the Disney cartoons like Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck were there. There was one called Road Runner. That one was my favorite. He’d have to run away from the coyote. In fact, later, we used to buy film reels and I’d project them for my kids. Sometimes my wife and I would talk about how violent movies are today. But looking back, some of those cartoons were pretty violent themselves. There’d be people running into walls, getting hurt, or falling off cliffs. But I guess the appeal was that you knew they’d always be ok. But back then, there would always always be cartoons.
Movies must have started to get more expensive to produce, and theaters probably had less time to devote to those things. First, they took away the second movie. Then, the started taking away my cartoons. And frankly, that was part of the incentive of going there in the first place! The cartoons definitely stick out more in my mind than even the feature films themselves. I was so disappointed when they started going away. Then, after the war, the newsreels went away as well. Television had taken over that role.
I remember as televisions became more and more common, going to the movies got less attractive. Definitely in the 50’s, most people got TV’s. There were more things to do for kids on a Saturday afternoon or a Sunday. Nowadays, people can just sit on their butt and watch movies on their phones! It’s so different.
