1939 New York, New York
- Carmen Sandmeyer
- Born in 1934
- First movie memory from New York City, 1939
- Interviewed on January 26, 2019
The first movie I remember seeing was Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. I remember that part of it scared me! The witch scared me! We used to have a friend of my family, a doctor, who would take my brothers and myself to Radio City Music Hall to see movies so it was a big, exciting thing. And they’d also show the dancers there at the same time. The Music Hall was a beautiful place to see a movie. The Rockettes, the dancers at the Music Hall danced before the movie. The Rockettes would always do a little show. I loved almost that more than the movie!
The theatre was very beautiful and grand. I don’t think you could see a movie in a theatre so grand like that these days. You would go to a fancy theatre for an opera, maybe. But movie theatres today are much more casual places; not fancy.
We lived on Staten Island, so going into the city to see a movie was a big deal. We walked from our home to the bus stop, and then we took the bus to the ferry, and then took the ferry boat to the city from Staten Island. Then we walked from the ferry landing and took the subway to the theatre. It took a long time to get there but that made it special when we did go.
Oh no, we didn’t get candy or anything like that! We didn’t get popcorn or candy or anything like that. But my grandmother was in charge of making the Sunday dinner while we were at the movie so we would have dinner when we got home. She had to prepare the meal and turn off the oven while we were at the show. If it was a special day when we went to see a movie, we would walk over to the Russian Tea Room after.
I fell in love with the actors when I went to see the movie. I fell in love with Clark Gable. Oh, I loved him. And when I was older, I loved to go see the Doris Day movies. And I loved the movie Lassie, Come Home. We had a dog like that. I also saw Song of Bernadette, which was about the life of St. Bernadette.
