1935 Laurelton, Queens, New York

Zelda Jonas
Born 1930
Laurelton, Queens, New York
Interviewed on January 29th, 2019
by Jack Hilder

When I was young, I’d say between the age of five and ten, you had to attend the movies in the morning, Saturday morning, and they had a matron, in a white uniform, that would take care of the kids until the movie was over. They had double features — you always saw two movies — and one was a “B” movie; that was the one that was less acceptable…it wasn’t good. Something they threw in. They, they had censorship. You weren’t allowed to show people in bed together. Married couples together, they always had twin beds, with a night table in between. There was no profanity. And you didn’t have ratings.

Grandpa [interviewer’s grandfather, interviewee’s husband] and I loved the movies. Grandpa went with my mother to see Westerns. The two of them would go, and every time a Western came up with Gary Cooper, The Lone Ranger, they would go to the movies together. Also, one night a week, they would give out gifts if you came, aluminum pots and pans. That’s how I got my first cooking set — because we had no money. [Laughs.] So I had my first frying pan…it was aluminum.

[When I was a kid], I went to the Laurelton Theater. They used to call it “The Itch.”

Popeye [was the first movie I remember seeing]. I loved it. I must have been around five or six. “Popeye the Sailor Man.” With the spinach. “I yam what I yam.” I remember Popeye saving everybody, and he had a girlfriend, I forget her name. But he used to sing “I’m Popeye the Sailor Man,” and spinach made him strong. That was the thing that made him strong.

There was one story that scared me…it was called “The Invisible Hand” [sic]. It was a murder mystery, and I was so scared, it kept me up at night. At that time I was about ten or eleven.

But that was our Saturdays — we used to go to the movies. Almost every Saturday. There wasn’t much other things to do. And we could go by ourselves — our parents didn’t have to go with us. I went with my girlfriends…at that time I was about eleven. Ten or eleven. [When I went to Popeye the Sailor, person who went with me was] probably my older sister Gloria. [To get to the theater,] we walked. It was about ten blocks.

I never went with my parents. Never. I went with my older sister, or my girlfriends. When we got to be ten or eleven, we would go with my girlfriends. They weren’t selling candy at that time. There weren’t ushers on a Saturday morning. There were ushers, I believe, later on in my life…I don’t recall them in my childhood. I know the cashier — there was a cashier in the front of the movie, and you bought your ticket, she had a little booth, and you bought your ticket from the cashier — oh, I guess there was an usher, because you brought that in, and the usher collected it.

The closest thing I can remember being sexual was a movie called From Here to Eternity, with Burt Lancaster, and Deborah Kerr, and it was left to your imagination — they were on the beach — and it was talked about forever because of that.