Let's go to the movies

Movies in the 50s and 60s had allure, almost as big as going to the theatre back in the depression riddled 30s and 40s.  VCRs had not come on the scene, and the TV stations were good to show the older and tired movies, but if a new flick was coming out, nothing replaced driving to the theater and settling into your cushioned seat for a ride through pure fantasy, with popcorn or Jordan almonds at hand.  Corny was not only expected, but embraced.  We were an unsophisticated and easy to please audience.  We even dressed up to go to the movie theatre, and only got to go a couple of times a year.  It was an infrequent thing, and pretty much a reward such as a birthday.  
Part of the movie allure came from our parents’ background.  Movies for them truly were spectacular entertainment from a childhood much more deprived than our own.  Many of our parents had never seen a movie until they were much older children or even adults.  Movies were still thrilling to them and they passed that enthusiasm on to us.

We enjoyed our movie expeditions to the Broadway Theatre, the elegant Majestic, the Laurel, Josephine, Texas and Aztec.  Each was unique in its own way, especially the Majestic with its dark red art deco complete with gargoyles and the Aztec with its Mesoamerican mosaics.  Many of our early childhood movies revolved around dogs and Disney.  Dog movies were not always uplifting.  You would think we would have learned sooner or later.  We would see a new dog movie advertised in the paper and clamor to see it.  Surely it would be some good clean entertainment, my mother would think.  Then inevitably, we would exit the theater crying our eyes out, especially after Old Yeller.  It seemed like the hero dog was either dying, or getting hurt by some insensitive human.  My mother would have to maneuver two sobbing youngsters out of the lobby, and down the street to the parking lot, feeling like an insensitive dolt. 

Science fiction movies were a little more dependable not to break our hearts, and we gobbled up Buck Rogers and anything else that was offered.  With all of the UFO sitings of the 1940s and 50s, Hollywood was cranking out spaceship fantasies at a high rate.  Monster movies were also a huge favorite.  We craved being frightened out of our wits by Godzilla, Mothra, Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man.  We didn’t even mind the Japanese production style of the Godzilla series with hordes of screaming Japanese extras running down the street for their lives.  In one of the Mothra movies, Barbie dolls were used as props for a couple of Japanese princesses being kidnapped by the giant moth, but what did we care?

The 50s Disney movies were always dependable for quality entertainment.  We enjoyed Snow White, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Swiss Family Robinson, and 101 Dalmatians.  Wes was so enamored of Swiss Family Robinson that he would sit through it repeatedly.  It showed for months at the Broadway Theatre.  My mother could easily drop him off at the curb and he would enter the theatre and stay there two to three hours.  He would then call her on the Luby's pay phone next door to be picked up.  The next Saturday, he would be dropped off again.  Disney movies did more than draw us into the theatres.  They sold us a lot of merchandise such as thermoses and lunch boxes.   The Dalmatian movie launched the breed as one of the most popular of the time despite the fact that Dalmatians are not really good family dogs.

Movies of the 50s were fairly predictable (though movies of the 60s would shake things up a bit).  50s plots often followed the patterns of the second world war.  The sleeping giant America had flexed its muscles and saved the world.  Movies of the 50s, with some exceptions, usually featured a male American hero (usually handsome) who was presented with conflict and adversity, stumbled a bit (heroes are human, after all), then overcame and triumphed.  The reluctant hero was also a common theme.  He just didn’t want to fight, but finally became angry enough to wade in and mop things up.  We watched John Wayne, Kirk Douglas, Gregory Peck and others fulfill all these roles in one form or another.  Females of course, were not forgotten, but they usually played subservient roles, supporting their men if not being rescued by them. 

Movies of the 60s shifted off into different directions.  Heroes took on different forms.  Some were not heroes at all.  Female characters became stronger.  Many 60s movies had to have a theme or lesson and it was not always uplifting.  Movies strongly paralleled the social upheavals that were starting to take hold.

 

Cleopatra was a scandalous movie far before it was even released.  A successful soap opera could have been based on the production brouhaha, which was years in the making.  First, great blocks of film were shot in London, and then trashed.  Later, Elizabeth Taylor took pneumonia and nearly died in London.  Well, according to her, she actually had a white light experience, went down the tunnel and was sent back by Mike Todd, husband number three (of seven).  Then production moved to Rome and lumbered on, racking up bills and time.  And then …. came Richard Burton,  who formed with Elizabeth probably the most infamous duo in the history of Hollywood.  Openly, they carried on an affair while blithely married to other people.   Of course, Elizabeth already had a rep as a husband thief after stealing Eddie Fisher from sweet little Connie Stevens.  Eddie was promptly dumped and off she went with Burton to make headlines for the next 10 years or so until they divorced.  Then they made headlines again when they remarried and divorced again.  Scandal after scandal dogged them, including alcoholism, suicide attempts and monumental public battles.

Back to the subject at hand, the movie.  I was never allowed the watch Cleopatra as a child.  Was it the first movie that had a rating unsuitable for children?  That made it even more tantalizing.  We gazed at Cleopatra lounging across the marquee of the Broadway Theatre for years, knowing that it was “inappropriate.”   There was one girl at Wilshire Elementary whose mother actually took her to see it.  Were we impressed!!

I finally saw it as an adult, and there were moments like the bathtub and massage table scenes which were understandably shocking  back in the 1960s.  But the semi-nude scenes were tastefully done.  It was just that such had never made it onto the big screen.  We were all used to Lassie, Tarzan and Bonanza.

I personally admired Elizabeth Taylor, but as a good Baptist girl, I had to keep it well hidden.  She had spunk.  She didn’t care what people thought and did exactly what she pleased.  It was refreshing in an era where young females were encouraged to defer to all things male and make sure we were always compliant and polite.  Elizabeth tore through six or seven husbands, even marrying one young enough to be her son.  She was beautiful almost to the end.  She was in her 60s when she did the white diamonds commercials and she looked incredible.  Poor Richard Burton did not fare so well, descending into alcoholism and making movies that he could not even remember making.  He should have stuck with Elizabeth.

The Day the Earth stood still (the Michael Rennie version, not the wretched Keanu Reeves remake).  This one has to be watched in the context of nuclear war and the possibility of global annihilation.  Made in 1953, only eight years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it’s giving us a message:  shape up, humans, or you are rapidly coming to your end.  It was one of the first movies where America was depicted as less than the honorable master of the universe which was almost unthinkable at the time.  After the dramatic landing of the flying saucer in DC, what’s the first thing we do?  The US army surrounds it with heavy weaponry and tanks.  When Klaatu steps out and raises his hand, he gets shot.  Not a good beginning.  We also meet Gort, the giant metal sentinel who effortlessly takes out a couple of tanks with his death rays and then freezes into menacing immobility.  The plot progresses to the point where Klaatu is shot again!  And so seriously this time that he croaks!  Holy cow, these Americans are trigger happy!  Patricia Neal is sent by the dying Klaatu to summon Gort to life in one of the most terrifying scenes I ever saw as a child.  Gort backs the petrified woman  up into the fence as she tries to blurt out the alien message that Klaatu taught her.  That visor was opening and those death rays were flickering to life.  We knew what was coming next:  Patricia Neal was going to be toast.  She finally unfreezes, delivers the message and Gort goes into action with Patricia under one arm, restoring Klaatu to life and setting up for the final message:  get your act together Earth, or Gort  will be back to do away with you all,  and he’s bringing his friends.   This was not a merry movie, but it was certainly well-written and entertaining and got us thinking about our future as the human race

2001: a space odyssey.  Now why didn’t they prepare people before they see this movie, especially the youngsters?  I got off to a rocky start with 2001 though it did evolve into one of my all-time favorites.   There was much hype beforehand and we were excited to finally get to see it.  Little did we expect what was coming.   We knew nothing about Stanley Kubrick.   We loved all things science fiction, but we had been reared on the predictable and heroic plots of  Buck Rogers and other rocket men, or screaming Japanese fleeing Godzilla.   Most of us were totally unprepared for all the symbolism and totally slack-jawed by the middle of the movie.   Excuse me, but could someone pause this and explain why that black monolith is flying all over the solar system?

 Now the devious  HAL scenes were cool.  What an evil computer!! 

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.”

 

At least we understood what was going on during those scenes.  The Jupiter stage scene at the end, and that star baby were enough to give a kid nightmares.  The psychedelic light show before Dave made it to the surface of Jupiter was also pretty impressive and new, although it smacked of LSD.  Did Stanley Kubrick drop acid?  I went with friends, including her younger brother and the kid was furious and sputtering as we walked out.  I was still scratching my head over what I had seen, though I was suspecting I had seen something destined to become an icon.  If I could just figure it out ….The music was fantastic and our high school precision dance team performed to the theme for at least one whole football season.

Revisiting the movie as an adult was a little better.  I had come to understand that the appearance of the monolith signaled a quantum intellectual leap on the part of living things.  And it was not a good quantum leap.  It definitely was linked to the knowledge of good and evil, with evil coming out in front.  Reading Arthur C. Clarke’s book upon which the movie was based made it even more understandable.  That star baby was powerful, not nice, and it was headed for Earth!!!

Mad Magazine (yes, I read it faithfully) did a great take-off on 2001.  At the end of their version, the monolith was revealed to be a book:  How to make incomprehensible science fiction movies, authored by none other than Stanley Kubrick.    Old Stanley was notorious to the end, with Eyes wide shut, for making confusing movies.  I saw that one too and scratched my head all through it (when I wasn’t hiding my eyes at what was appearing on screen!!!)

Anne of the Thousand Days began my lifelong fascination with all things Tudor or Elizabethan.  This was a truly excellent movie, though a bit lengthy.  I knew vague facts about Henry VIII, such as he had six wives and was prone to divorce or execute them when a new lass caught his eye.  But this movie really brought the era and important history into perspective.  Anne Boleyn’s claim to fame was not only that she the mother of the Elizabeth I, but  Henry’s desire to wed her was the direct cause of the splintering of the English Catholic Church and England’s eventual move away into Protestantism.  Many of us have an impression of Henry VIII as a fat, lecherous slob, but that was only during his final years.  He was actually a charismatic hunk in his late 30s and 40s when he and Anne were carrying on.  There’s good history in this movie (unlike the racy Tudors on Showtime which I watched faithfully) and it’s worth watching multiple times.  The acting, writing, costuming and directing were all excellent.  Richard Burton did his usual fantastic job of interpreting King Henry, and Elizabeth even had a brief walk-on role.

Romeo and Juliet (the Franco Zeffereli version).  This was an achingly beautiful motion picture, from the costumes to the directing to the breathtaking beauty of the two teenaged unknown leads:  Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting.  A momentous job was done following the actual lines of the Shakespeare play, though heavily edited so viewers would not get too bogged down.  Shakespeare is so refreshing when it is performed well, and it was performed beautifully in this picture.  Romeo and Juliet has the least complex language of all the plays, which is probably why it’s one of the first ones we study in high school.  Unfortunately Leonard Whiting all but disappeared after the movie, but Olivia Hussey went on to make many motion pictures, looking lovely in all of them.  But nothing could match her as a sixteen year old Juliet.

In both decades, we never tired of the huge epics which threatened to bankrupt most of the major studios.  We were still attending movies regularly, but ticket sales were not enough to recover the millions upon millions of dollars that directors such as Cecil B. DeMille and David Lean were churning out.  These monsters were well over three hours long, and difficult for even the most die-hard fan to sit through without going numb.  Sit through them, though, we did, with numerous restroom breaks and a welcome intermission.

These blockbusters included The Ten Commandments, Lawrence of Arabia and Dr. Zhivago.  All were excellent films in their own right, but most took years of syndicating and sales in video form to recoup their costs. 

In 1969, Gone with the Wind was released for the second time.  It became almost as popular as its first run nearly 30 years in the past.  People still streamed out of the theaters crying for Miss Mellie who had unfortunately expired in the last scenes.  Vivien Leigh's on screen persona had not diminished in any way.  Audiences still both loved and hated her.  We understood yet again the raw appeal of Clark Cable.  No one could have been more perfect for the role of Rhett Butler.  Hattie McDaniel was by far my favorite character, whether she was hanging out the upstairs window of Tara and scolding Miss Scarlett, or slack-jawed in the back of the carriage as Scarlett starts her moves on Frank Kennedy.  It is a sad reality that Hattie McDaniel received an oscar for her performance, but was not able to attend the original premiere of the movie.  It was held in Atlanta, and the year was 1940.  It would be another 25 years before black performers would get the recognition they had earned.

For years, an author by the name of Ian Fleming had been penning novels about a British secret agent.  In 1963, film rights to his works were purchased and the first James Bond film, Dr. No, appeared.  The Bond films were a cultural icon which would continue decade after decade, morphing into different forms with different actors.

But the first Bond films set the standard.  They were perfect for their time.  Their themes embraced the current Cold War, and the world’s increasing fascination for all things technology, including the iconic Aston Martin with its bullet proof shielding, machine guns, on demand oil slicks, and a handy passenger ejection seat.  The films also featured jet packs and one man helicopters.

James Bond films had something for everyone.  The instant star, Sean Connery, was an almost unknown Scottish actor who had done film work such as Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the little people.  Sean, or “Tommy” to his friends and family, was a totally working class bloke who could transform himself into one of the most smoldering and understated cool screen personas of the century:

The name is Bond, James Bond.

Sean Connery mesmerized females, both on screen and off.  The films left the boys and men slack jawed as well, but for different reasons.  The cars and gadgets were unbelievable, but those were far surpassed by the Bond girls.  Each film featured stunning actresses, usually in a state of semi-undress and a feast for adolescent males.

Movies, movies.  I can still sit through most of those old movies even today.