1956 Newark, New Jersey

Thomas Mattia
1946
Newark New Jersey
Interviewed on Jan. 29, 2018 by Mae Mattia

The first movie I saw was the Ten Commandments in Cinemascope with color, starring Charlton Heston as Moses. I went with my mother. She saw it as religious entertainment, sort of like Christian rock concerts today. I was nine years old, it was 1956. We took the 82 bus to one of the big movie houses in downtown Newark, the Paramount on Market Street, rather than something local. Because it was a religious thing, it was a big deal. There was lots of advertisements around it. They even sold hardcover books with scenes from the movie. I had one for a long time, for many years.

We were Catholic, so it had some resonance. We talked about it with the nuns at school. It was very reverential conversation. Everyone was talking about it. The Church wanted you to go. The Church even organized groups to go see it together. It was sort of like when Mel Gibson made the Passion of the Christ, except that instead of being a pet project, all of Hollywood was behind it. Hollywood was part of everything – part of government, part of religion.

We all dressed up; it was a day out. There was a great big screen with curtains, theater boxes along the side, and an orchestra pit. It still had an organ, but no one played it anymore.

When I went with my mother, I wasn’t allowed to have candy, because the movie was already expensive enough. But later on, when I went out to the movies with my friends, sometimes I got enough money to buy popcorn. There was a local theater around the corner, and Saturday matinees were popular in the winter, and cheap; you could see two or three B-list or C-list movies in one sitting. But it was a complete mob-scene; everyone was throwing their popcorn in the air. Sometimes the whole bucket. Sometimes the managers would have to say “Calm down or we will stop the movie!”

In the Ten Commandments, though, Moses was taking the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt. There was another famous guy who was Pharaoh, Yul Brynner. Very moving, big musical stuff. I remember Moses talking to the burning bush, and coming down the mountain with the Israelites dancing around the golden calf. Yul Brynner refused to let the Israelites go until all the plagues were over. I mean, the pharaoh did. Moses ran around slapping lamb’s blood on the doors of the Egyptians. I remember the Angel of Death, too: a foggy smoke came in and killed who it was killing. There was also a big scene where Moses parted the Red Sea. On either side were walls of water: Then they crashed down.

Not long after, my parents had their first television set delivered to our house.