1941 Chisholm, Minnesota
Trudy Rodean
Born 1941
Chisholm, Minnesota
Interviewed by Nicholas Herrera 1/21/18
There were two movie theaters in my home town of Chisholm, Minnesota in the 1940s. One, the Chisholm Theater, was the most popular. The Time Theater down in the lower end of Main Street did not keep the busy hours the Chisholm Theater did; so it puzzles me that my first movie was viewed at the Time. I was born in 1941 and the war was still on at the time of my first trip there to see a Shirley Temple movie.
I don’t remember the title… frankly, they were all a little nondescript as titles go. But I identified with the little girl with the blonde curls and a bow in her hair. My mother fixed my hair that way. In fact, most mothers imposed that on their children in homage to Shirley Temple. Later, I recall seeing “Bambi” there and was traumatized by the death of Bambi’s mother. Nothing unique there… so were all the little kids in my town and elsewhere. And even though the denouement of the movie moved beyond that scene, I remembered it vividly for a number of years.
As I continued through the elementary school grades, I could go with friends to (mostly) the Chisholm Theater… especially for Saturday matinees which were either Westerns or Marx Brothers movies. I adored Harp[o] Marx and still do to this day. His silent humor appealed to me. Chico was of interest because he played the piano at the slightest provocation. (I was learning to play that instrument also and minored in piano in college). But Groucho would have frightened me in real life. He seemed so brusk, abrupt…. something beyond my understanding. His unexpected actions, had they been directed towards me, would have been so unsettling. (Such was my identification with the movies I saw!) Of course today I still laugh at all of them, but I do watch most for Harpo’s performances, both on the harp and in the comedy routines.
The movie theater was never off limits to my friends and I. We could go to the evening show and be home by 9:00 which suited my parents. I remember seeing “Guns of Navarrone” with my dad. He had read the story in the Saturday Evening Post (I think) and I am still captivated by that film.
But maybe my all-time crystal clear memory is, once again, back to the Time Theater. My middle sister Peg, with whom I was always very close, and I went to see “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” with Charles Laughton in the title role. Peg, who is 6 years older than I and was in High School or beginning college at the time, was also a little frightened by it the first time we saw the film. But we always enjoyed discussing everything about the film and we sat in the movie theater and talked about it until the second showing started. So we sat through another showing. Better… really better when we knew what was coming next.
In fact, it was so much better we sat through it a third time. By now we were quoting lines and pointing out details in the background we hadn’t noticed before. We came to the conclusion that Quasimodo was NOT a threat but was a tragic figure, deserving of care and concern.
So, we sat through it a fourth time. Yes, the theater had all night showings of films some days of the week. By the fourth time through we were pointing out details in the story, speculating on back stories of the characters and such.
When that ended, we figured we had better head home. My parents were fine with our (almost) all night revel at the theater and didn’t reprimand us because we talked so much about the film. I still have an affinity for the movie, although I have not seen any of the remakes or the clips of the musical version and such. Charles Laughton will always define that role for me. I can still see the black and white images at this advanced age.
