1947 Brooklyn, New York
Miriam Golob
born 1940
Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York
Interviewed on January 21st, 2023
by Clara Yuste-Golob
You know, I lived in a modest community in Brooklyn [Bushwick]. It was working class, it was a mixture of working class people and we had some professionals, we had beautiful homes along the main avenues there doctors and lawyers lived, we had beautiful apartment houses on those avenues. So it was a nice mixture of people, and we had a movie palace. We had two theaters: we had an RKO theater and we had a Loew’s theater, and the Loew’s theater was absolutely unbelievable. It was marvelous. The marble staircases that went up to the balcony level, the chandeliers…
I do remember seeing The Yearling, which was based on a book by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and it was about a little boy who adopts a little fawn, and his parents allow him to raise the deer. I’m sure that the father was Gregory Peck, who ended up in Roman Holiday. I don’t know what year that film was, but it’s one of the films that you remember. Don’t forget that back then, we didn’t see films the first year they were out. Films would open at first-run theaters in Manhattan– people dressed up to go see the movies. Then it would come to Downtown Brooklyn theaters, which were the second run. They were the big theaters: the Brooklyn Paramount… they were beautiful theaters. We didn’t see the films until they came to the neighborhood theaters. We waited— well, I didn’t wait, but older people, who knew what was going on, they waited.
That’s one of my early films. But I did see cartoons. I did see Disney movies in the theater— I don’t know, Pinocchio? Things like that. I don’t know what years they were, but I did see Cinderella, Snow White, Dumbo. We saw Bambi— I cried my eyes out with Bambi— yes, so that’s what I remember. And yes, we always bought candy. When I was little, I think I liked Dots, or Chuckles. I don’t know if they had them there, maybe that was my candy store, I don’t remember.
We didn’t go to the movies that often. And I had to be taken. I had to sit in the children’s section, with a matron. She was dressed like a nurse, she had a white coat-dress on, white shoes, and she had a flashlight, and she was a meanie! We sat in the children’s section… I don’t remember going to the movies with my parents. I went with my sisters, and all the kids, we would all go. I remember Arlene taking me, and she didn’t like it. She didn’t want to take us to the movies! She was a bit older. And then I got tall, and the guy who was taking our money, the cashier— you know, there was a box outside, he was in a box— he would say “How old are you?” When I got to be — I don’t know what the age change was, twelve, ten? — I was five feet tall already, I was almost as tall as Arlene. We’d have to swear on a stack of bibles that I could pay the children’s price. And then, of course, we went and sat in the children’s section. No one could sit still, everybody was jumping around, it was bad. But, it was wonderful, going in and seeing that big screen, the thrill of it. The Disney movies, that I remember, but I do remember The Yearling.
It was when I got older that I started to see movies— boys used to take me out on dates to movies in Downtown Brooklyn. To go out on a date, let’s say you were 13, 14, you’d go to a movie most of the time. It was nice! And then Grandpa started taking me to movies in the city, in Manhattan. You always dressed up for dates. We went to the Roxy one time, you and I, Norm, and we saw a show on the stage, and then the movie came on. Radio City had those dancers, who couldn’t dance. They weren’t so good back then.
There’s one other thing that you wouldn’t know: the shows were continuous. Not on Saturday, on Saturday they had special shows. Sometimes you walked into a movie, and you didn’t know if you were coming in in the middle, and then you’d have to watch it all, you’d have to wait for it to start again, and you could see the beginning of it. But if it was a double feature, you’d have to wait for the second film to end. And then you’d have to wait for the beginning of the film to start. It was horrible! We didn’t know exactly when the show would start. Maybe it was posted outside, but it wasn’t in the papers, we didn’t know. It wasn’t very nice. I remember one time Grandpa took me to a double feature, and by the time the second feature came around, he couldn’t sit any longer. He was so skinny, he had no tucchus. Even though the seats were padded, he couldn’t sit through a double feature!
Norman Golob
born 1939
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York
Interviewed on January 21st, 2023
by Clara Yuste-Golob
I can’t remember, but I think [the first movie I saw] was Tarzan, with Johnny Weissmuller. We used to go every Saturday for the first show, for the matinee. All the kids went on line, and we went in with out bags of penny candy, we brought it in from the candy store. All the guys on the block, we all went. Well, the first show for the kids, it was mostly kids who went: we saw two movies. We saw a serial, and we saw about three or four cartoons. So you were there for like, 4 hours. The movies were an hour and a half or so. Than the cartoons, the serial. So you were there from 12 o’ clock to almost 5 o’clock. That’s all we did on Saturday.
I went to a theater [The Kismet, Bedford-Stuyvesant] that was on a main drag where I lived, it was on DeKalb Avenue. It was one level, there was no balcony. The theaters that Mom went to were big, they had balconies. It was much cheaper than hers. Hers were chains, mine was owned by one guy. Friday night, they gave away dishes. My mom used to go with her friends on Friday nights. It was a neighborhood place. But those chain theaters were gorgeous, marble staircases, chandeliers. These people who owned RKO and Loews, they built a lot of them in the 30s during the Depression. Labor was cheap, so they could build tremendously gorgeous things for a whole lot less money, and they had money because the one thing that wasn’t depressed during the Depression was movies. Because people always had a nickel to go to a movie, so that’s what they did. So they weren’t hit as hard as other industries during the Depression. And that’s why they built these magnificent theaters all over the country, and they were there for years and years and years. I mean, you know Radio City Music Hall. It’s a monstrous thing, fits 8 or 10 thousand people, has more than one balcony. A lot of the great movies used to come there.
I remember I had to get tickets in advance to see The Ten Commandments, and I took Grandma. It had Charlton Heston, her favorite actor. We used to go to Manhattan all the time to see movies. Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn. I can’t even remember ever taking her to her local movie theater, it was always Downtown Brooklyn or Manhattan. We’d go out to eat somewhere, and then go to a movie. I remember we were in line one time, around Christmastime, we went to a movie with Frank Sinatra, where he played a drug addict, and it was very good. And as we were walking out of the theater, we ran into my brother and sister-in law. You’d see people, that’s what it was all about. And then we’d go home, we’d ride the subway late at night. No matter how late it was, her mother would be on the other side of the door, ready to take the garbage out, she was always checking up on me. After a while, I’d say, “Go to sleep, for god’s sake. I’ll take your daughter home, everything’s fine.” Yeah, we’d go by subway, I had no car. It was a whole different life.
