1951 Brooklyn, New York

Leni Liftin
Born in 1944
Gravesend, Brooklyn NY
Interviewed on February 9, 2023
by Silver Liftin

The first movie I saw was Bambi. Traumatic. Very traumatic. How old was I? Oh, I don’t know. If I had to do a wild and crazy guess, I would say… seven. I’m only saying that because my parents weren’t big on taking us to the movies. I know I saw it in the movies. I don’t know if that’s the first year that it was out. When there was a fire, and Bambi and his mother were running because she said, “Man!” meaning that there was a human being, and Bambi ran as first as he could. But then he turned around and his mother was gone. And it’s clear that she was shot by the man. There was a lot of weeping going on in the theater when that happened. “Mother, mother…” Running all over the place, frantically looking for his mother. And then his father, a big gorgeous stag with, you know, enormous antlers, said, “Bambi, you have to be brave” or something like that. And then, at that point–I think, this is all memory from a seven year old–he walked away and then, of course, in the rest of the movie, Bambi grew up to be a beautiful stag like his father. I’m surprised I remember that much. I know he had a best friend, a rabbit whose name was Thumper. And a skunk… I don’t remember the name of the skunk. Or maybe it was a squirrel. Skunk or squirrel. I was with my brother and my mother. My parents didn’t bring me a lot to the theater. I don’t think they were particularly interested in movies. I don’t think they wanted to spend the money. It was expensive. I think my mother didn’t think that was particularly good for children. I wasn’t allowed to read comic books or watch cartoons. [Interviewer’s note: my great grandmother was a brilliant Ukrainian Jewish immigrant who became a fourth grade teacher and who was diligent about her own children’s education and brains.] I had a favorite candy. Two favorite candies. Junior mints and Jujubes. But I never ate the yellow ones (chuckles). They had ushers. The name of the theater was the Claridge Theater.

Another movie I remember going to see with my mother was at the Radio City Music Hall. I went to see White Christmas. That’s with Vera-Ellen and Rosemary Clooney. And Bing Cosby. I loved going to the movies. It was exciting to me to go to Radio City because it was in Manhattan. I would get excited to go into Manhattan to go to the movies. Most of the time, it was a theater either in the Village or on the Upper East Side or in Radio City. Sometimes there were movies that played there that you couldn’t see in our local theater. When you went to the movies, you usually saw a double feature. So you saw two movies. And then there were selected shorts. So there could be a travel log, or a news thing. And then sometimes they also had a cartoon if you went to the afternoon movie, for the kids. And of course, since I wasn’t allowed to watch cartoons at home, I loved seeing cartoons in the movies.

But the thing is, there was usually the feature film that was the popular movie with the big stars and then there was another movie that nobody really knew about very much. It would be in black and white, you know it was sort of a B-movie. So you have an A-movie and a B-movie. So it was an entire afternoon when you went to the movies. It wasn’t for a couple of hours. Could be four hours. Then sometimes you went late because you didn’t want to see the B movie but then you didn’t know if you would get a good seat. I do remember that movies cost 25 cents. When I got into my teen years, I went with my friends and then I went more often. That was a favorite thing to do on Saturday afternoon. As teenage girls, we liked movies that had romance in them. There were certain actors that we liked. Sometimes we went to the movies just because it had an actor that we liked. We went to see some war movie starring Tony Curtis and Frank Lovejoy. I don’t remember the name but we went to see if just to see Tony Curtis (laughs). There was no intellect involved, let’s put it that way. In college, there was a lot about intellect. The Virgin Spring comes to mind. That’s when we liked to go foreign films because those were more involved. French movies. Ingmar Bergman movies. Hollywood doesn’t like this, but we liked the French actors. Jean-Paul Belmondo. Alain Delon. He was very good looking. 

[Interviews note: then I started telling Leni about the films on our syllabus, which she loved hearing and remembered details from.] You know when I was a kid, I didn’t like westerns at all. Now I love westerns. So shows you have taste can change. Same thing with Clint Eastwood. Nothing bad ever happens really. They’re almost like rom-coms with music. I’m thinking about the really classic movies. I loved the Greta Garbo movies. She was one of few silent stars who became a star even after there was talking. I liked the Gene Kelly movies: Singing in The Rain. Sometimes I watch them again but I don’t watch them in their entirety. I loved all the Fred Astaire movies. He is an amazing dancer. He’s not classically handsome, but he sort of did the debonair thing very well. He wasn’t good looking in the movie star sense, like Rock Hudson and Cary Grant. Clark Gable. They were all considered handsome. Clark Gable… But the skinny mustache… I never liked the skinny mustache (laughs). He was very handsome in Gone With The Wind.

I just want to say, going to the movies is one of my favorite things to do ever, even now. In fact, Herb [her boyfriend] always teases me because I always turn on an old movie when I’m cooking or something. He thinks I’m addicted to them. Which I am. I love them. They introduce you to other times in our society, what it was like in other times. It’s a great escape from stress in your life, so it’s relaxing and it can make you not think. And think. I’m so glad there are movies. I don’t know what I would do without them. Even when I was in college and used to come home we had a TV and when my parents would go to sleep I would turn on old movies in the middle of the night.