1942 La Jolla, Califorinia

C.S.
1942
La Jolla, CA
Interviewed on Jan 27, 2019
by Dale Zhong

My earliest film experience, which I have dim memories of, happened in Southern California when I was taken to see Bambi, the Disney animated film, before I could talk. The film came out in 1942 and I was talking about the end of it as soon as I had words to discuss it. But how old was I? I do not know, but I think I was probably a toddler, so it might have been in in ‘43-‘44.  My mother told me that I was talking about the big fire that kills Bambi’s mother but it wasn’t clear to her at first so we’d go back and forth until she figured it out or I learned enough clear words.  As my own mother had been very ill when I was nine months old, I am sure that there was more than one reason why I was worried about the death of a deer mother! And when I close my eyes now, I see the forest on fire, Disney style. I never went back to see it when I was older, perhaps because of its profound effect.  I would have been taken by one parent or both; I do not believe that they owned a car then so I suspect they may have gone with friends who did have a car but this is not within my memory; it would have been a matinee. I believe it was probably La Jolla, California (down near San Diego) but it could have been in Santa Monica, California – we moved back and forth because my father was a graduate student doing his PhD work for UCLA but his study area was the ocean around La Jolla, hence my vagueness.  There was no TV then.

I can’t answer the concession question because I do not specifically remember that, but throughout my childhood there was always a concession stand and movie programs were much more elaborate. There was sometimes a double feature, sometimes not, but screenings were always a program put together with a feature, a serial, mostly melodrama with live actors, a newsreel, previews, and some cartoons. A little later, when I was more sentient, I remember Shirley Temple movies that impressed me greatly and gave me images of a resourceful little girl. When I looked up her filmography just now, the titles that seemed vaguely familiar were all of films made before I was born, so I suspect I saw them as reruns. We moved to Brooklyn in 1948 and my father frequently took me to see Marx Brothers films which would have been in reruns as well. While we lived in Brooklyn my father took me to see a Mario Lanza film that I was so taken with that I refused to leave and my father let me sit alone through the next screening. All I remember was singing and a lot of romantic yearning. I do not know the title – could have been That Midnight Kiss which was released in 1949 (per IMdb) but there was also another one in 1950 – the only two that came out when I was living there. And that film opening was a big deal and the theater was packed.

The biggest change in going to the movies came about when we went back to California. There were movie theaters like palaces with velvet and gilding and crystal chandeliers. But because we had a car as did my parents’ friends, we had more options and did not have to see films close to home. Not only could the car take us to the theater instead of the buses and subways of New York, we could take the car to a drive-in movie theater, generally outside of town where land was cheap. Families or groups of friends could have their private viewing parlor with a sound system screwed to their car window frames. The drive-ins had concession stands, quite elaborate ones, but mostly we took our own treats, usually a bag of fifteen cent burgers, fries, and a milkshake. Gas for the car was nine cents a gallon back then. So, going to the drive-in was affordable and families could eat out and get entertained together; teens could go on their own. My two favorite candies from the concession were the Sugar Daddy sucker and Neccos wafers which are actually still available! The post war boom and expanding middle class could enjoy a common mass culture that is being shredded now with concentration of media ownership, the loss of the fairness doctrine that stipulated that diverse points of view needed to be reflected in programming, that some public service programming needed to be included to justify controlling a public good in the form of the public airwaves. We were not all in information silos. It was a different world.