I regret the death of movies on the big screen, but I think Covid has just about killed the theater experience.
My favorite entertainment as a child was going to the movies at the Varsity Theater on Saturday. In fact, what I expected about real life was heavily influenced by what I saw on the silver screen every week for much of my childhood.
My early favorite movies (we didn’t call them “films” back then--films were what you put in your Brownie camera) were westerns. Watching Roy Rogers and Gene Autry every Saturday convinced me that as an adult I would spend much of my life riding the range, roping cattle and galloping over mesas.
I’d have a sidekick like Gabby Hayes, who would not be as smart as I was. I’d have to get a rope, tie it to my horse Trigger Jr., and haul Gabby out of quicksand about once a week. But it would be worth it to have such a devoted follower.
We would spend a fair amount of time on cattle drives, but when all the little dogies were back on our range, we would switch to chasing bad guys--rustlers and bank robbers and such. We’d rough them up a bit before turning them in to the sheriff. He’d be amazed at the smart tricks I had used to trip up those criminals and at my ability to pummel them into submission.
As I grew, I kept watching for my parents to buy our cattle and announce that we were moving to Texas or Montana to start our real lives. When was I going to learn to ride and shoot from the saddle?
We did move from Mississippi back to California when I was nine years old, but our new back yard was too small for cattle, and the horses would have had a tough time galloping over the paved streets. I never met any rustlers or bank robbers, and my new school didn’t teach roping or shooting from the saddle. Maybe I’d have to wait awhile longer to get my ranch and my palomino and my hand-tooled leather saddle, but I was sure they were in my future.
Meanwhile, musical movies got popular, and I began to believe that adults sang and danced their way through their daily lives. After all, in West Side Story, the rival gangs fought whole gang wars accompanied by stirring music, and they fell in love and traipsed around Brooklyn and even died singing to each other.
I longed for the day when someone would tap dance up to me, grab my hand and dance me off into the sunset with a full orchestra playing in the background as Fred Astaire did with Ginger Rogers. I figured a lot of that singing and dancing must be going on in real life because every movie showed people doing it.
I didn’t actually see it in my neighborhood, but I figured the people I knew were just not good dancers or singers and didn’t want to embarrass themselves by tapping clumsily up to me. After all, I took dancing every Saturday morning for a year and was sure I could tap dance circles around anybody else. I was ready for life as a singing, dancing adult! Where was my partner?
I also couldn’t wait to wear the fabulous clothing that I saw on Audrey Hepburn and Lauren Bacall in their movies. When I grew up I would slip into a sequined gown, throwing on my ermine wrap, and hop into a limo to be whisked off through New York City to Sardi’s for dinner.
I have eaten at Sardi’s, as it turned out, but I was whisked in on a bus, not a limo, and I didn’t see a single sequined gown. The glamorous people must eat somewhere else these days. Actually, I don’t know of a single restaurant in Mississippi now where you can’t go in jeans and a teeshirt, and most people do. Alas, not a sequin in sight.
All the movie love stories in those days had the same plot: boy meets girl, complications arise, girl spurns boy, they get back together, and “they lived happily ever after.”
So I took that as my pattern too. Once I had met a boy, I worked up a good “spurning” to make him more interested in me. I played hard to get because that’s what Doris Day did.
Unfortunately, I found that, unlike Gary Grant, the boys I knew were easily discouraged. Once I put a good spurning on them, they didn’t come back. It took me a lot longer than it took Doris to get to the “happily ever after.”
I also loved cinema comedies, like Abbot and Costello Meet the Mummy. I looked forward to the Bowery Boys movies and the hilarious Ma and Pa Kettle escapades. In a comedy, no matter how difficult the problem, it could be solved within an hour and everyone left laughing.
Well, today I am an adult without a hand-tooled saddle, much less a horse. I was never waltzed away by Fred Astaire. I’ve encountered many problems that couldn’t be solved in an hour and didn’t leave me laughing. I learned that “happily ever after” takes a lot of work.
So here I sit in my jeans and teeshirt, no sequins, no dogies, no dancing, no limo. I feel cheated.
