1940 Detroit Michigan

Sandra Frush

1940

Detroit, MI

Interviewed on January 25, 2025

by Ned Swansey

NS: What is the first movie that you can remember seeing?

SF: I saw so many movies it’s hard to remember which is . . . I’ll just give you one of the early movies. Bambi! [laughing]

NS: Do you remember how old you were, roughly?

SF: Oh, I must have been maybe like five. What year did that come out?

NS: Do you remember who you were with when you saw it?

SF: Probably my sister, my mother. My dad maybe.

NS: And did you like it?

SF: I felt very sad at the end. [laughing] It was very sad.

NS: Yeah, I was looking at some of the other submissions from previous years, and I think other people’s grandparents had said that they also remembered Bambi, and it was a sad moment for a lot of little kids at the time. Do you remember if your sister or anyone else was also upset at that?

SF: We both cried at the end. We felt very sad.

NS: Do you remember anything about the theater itself?

SF: Oh yeah. The movie theaters, of course, were very dark, and kids bought a lot of candy, and you could smell the popcorn. On Saturday, there would be two features, and we would see both features. And then there was another movie house across the street. We’d cross the street. We’d see two more! By the time we got out of there, our eyes were like that [wide open]. We went to the movies all the time. Saturday is when you went to the movies, period.

NS: Was it a lot of families?

SF: No, on Saturday afternoon, the parents wouldn’t go because they couldn’t stand all the screaming and yelling. The parents would take you there, drop you off [laughing]. No, parents really didn’t go that often, maybe just very occasionally. Maybe when we were very very little, but after that, no. By the time we were four or five years old, and I had an older sister [shaking her head].

NS: You mentioned all the different candy and popcorn. Do you remember if there was a specific candy that you liked?

SF: Oh, we used to eat Good and Plenty, they were pink and white. And we used to eat Tootsie Rolls. And those, they were suckers that would just take your teeth out, those long caramel-y suckers, I forgot what they called them. We had enough money for two treats! We didn’t eat popcorn that much, but there were two treats. And there were ushers . . . and my mother’s advice, very important: If a man sits down next to you in a movie theater, get up and call the usher! [laughing] I don’t know if you want to put that in there, but she said no adult would go to a movie theater on Saturday afternoon with all those screaming kids.

And sometimes in between the two features, they would have some kind of a serial thing, where cowboys and Indians, and it would come to the very end, and then, you know, everybody’s going to be killed, and then next week it would go, and then at the last minute, ta-da! They’d be saved [laughing].

NS: Do you remember any of the names of the serials or any of the actors?

SF: I don’t remember. None of the actors were big-time, but there were always cliffhangers, total cliffhangers. That’s how they got the kids to come back and see more.

NS: And on those Saturday times when all the kids were going, was it a mix of animated and live action movies?

SF: It just depended what was playing. You know, in the early days, it was Walt Disney, but there weren’t that many Walt Disneys after, you know, we got older.

NS: Are there any other movies that made a big impact on you when you were little?

SF: Oh yeah. The Red Shoes. It’s about a ballerina, and she wore the red shoes, and the red shoes were just magical. And at the end, the train’s going by, and she climbs up on the railing, and she just falls, and then she gets killed, and that was awful. She was a wonderful ballerina. I think it was Moira, what was her name? The red-haired woman who was a ballerina, and that made quite an impact.

That’s all kids wished to do, go to the movies. And when you were teenagers, you went Friday night. Little kids went Saturday; teenagers went Friday.

Of course, parents didn’t like that. They watched to make sure you came home okay and all that. And at a lot of the theaters, they allowed you to smoke. You could smoke and drink in the theaters. My father and mother, they loved to watch the news reels. When I hear that voice, it’s the same voice. And of course, the kids, we weren’t that interested.

We’d be at my dad’s office, downtown Detroit, then maybe we’d get a quick bite and then we’d go and see the newsreels. And every once in a while, they had one of those newsreels on, it’s the same voice and the same thing. It was a simple life then, it really was [laughing]. It was a simple life.

NS: They would drive you there or walk?

SF: Well, for us, mostly my mother didn’t drive, cause in those days mothers didn’t have cars, everybody was a one-car family. And so a lot of times we would walk or get a ride, maybe somebody else’s father would drive us. But movies were big time, always. It’s a very big part of our life growing up, going to the movies.

NS: And would you talk about them a lot with your friends afterwards?

SF: Oh yeah, yeah, it was good. And then there were the movie star magazines, which, you know, you’d see these and you felt like you really knew these people because you read their magazines, and, you know, you read in the magazines about their lives. It was very important.

NS: Do you remember who any of your favorite actors or actresses were from the time?

SF: Doris Day. [laughing]. I can’t stand her now! I’m trying to think who else. Oh, June Allyson and what was his name, she always used to play his part. You can see him played in It’s a Wonderful Life, who am I talking about? And then there was Van Heflin, and Gary Cooper. I’m not being very good, I’m trying to remember! [laughing]

NS: It sounds like a lot of fun to be little kids running around and every week going to the same place.

SF: It was a great babysitting thing. And my mother told me, when she was young, people would bring their babies in their carriages and leave them in the lobby. Leave the baby! And then every once in a while across the screen, it would say, “Baby crying in the lobby,” and somebody would go out [laughing].

NS: And everyone who had left a baby had to go out and make sure it wasn’t theirs?

SF: Can you imagine just taking your baby in a stroller, just sleeping, and leaving it in the lobby? The baby would be gone in two minutes now! [laughing] Things have changed, things have changed.

And then, I think it was a quarter to go to the movie, 25 cents. What is it now, seven, eight bucks?

…

And then there was one movie house in Detroit that was so beautiful, the Fox Theater. I think it might still be standing, it was the most beautiful, I mean it was just like something out of a dream, the theater was so beautiful. But the one that we would go to the most often, was called the Avalon. It was close to my neighborhood.

NS: Anything else that you’d like to add?

SF: My mother loved the movies. During the depression, my mother said that if she had any money at all, she would go to the movies. They would bring lunch, my mother, she’d take her younger siblings and sit them down, and she said, she’d have a big thing of chicken and they would talk, she would say, “Here,” and give them some chicken, and that would shut them up so she could see the movie [laughing].

Movies were great, movies were great.

Sandra Frush is the interviewer’s grandmother.