Can you imagine a world without TV? Can you imagine a world without wi-fi? Can you imagine a world without the internet? Can you image a world without handheld devices that you use to make phone calls, listen to music, take pictures, or find your way?
I can! I actually don’t imagine it, since I remember it! But I can’t imagine a world without movies!
When I was a child, living in the Bronx (the northern borough of New York City), there were movie theaters every several blocks on most of the main streets.
Every Saturday afternoon, I walked around the corner from the apartment house where we lived, to the nearby Loew’s theatre. At the most, I’d carry a quarter, but children’s admission was only a little over half that!
In those days there were usually two feature films, a cartoon, an episode of a serial, often a sing-along short, coming attractions, and a newsreel—and an occasional charitable appeal and collection.
As a kid, you didn’t pick your picture, you just picked the day, the time, and the theatre. (Usually the double-feature changed twice a week. You could never see everything.)
Of course, I had to sit in the children’s section, the right hand section of the theatre, near the front. There always was a uniformed matron on duty to ensure good order in the children’s section.
(There was something like that at the children’s Mass in church on Sunday, but there the matron was a nun!)
The cartoons were great, every episode of the serial usually ended with a real “cliff-hanger”, and the action movies were best. A Tarzan film beat out a romance film hands down! But, some of the aquatic ballet type films could be pretty neat!
In those days, most movies were black and white, although special technicolor films were shown from time to time.
The newsreels were striking, especially during the war years (1941-1945). Outside of the movies, you only heard about the war on the radio or read about it, with an occasional photo, in the newspapers.
The newsreels sometimes were shocking, but they were about real life. Hopefully they shocked enough people to think deeply and realistically about the real, human costs of the war.
Saturday afternoon at the movies was as much a part of my growing up in the Bronx as going to school on the weekdays.
In the movies, you saw things. At home, you could hear things, radio programs. And they were a big part of growing up, too. There were plenty of children’s programs on the radio, and I would be glued to the living room radio late weekday afternoons and weekend mornings listening to my favorite programs.
Growing up, even more important for me than radio programs or movies were books. I was an avid reader, and often I had read the book before I saw a movie version of it.
I was reading books even before I started school. I learned to love books, starting with the picture books they read to me when I was very small. A visit to the library to find new books to read was a ticket to hours and hours of entertainment at home.
Movies, radio programs, books—they all provided pleasure and they all taught me about life, both real and imagined.
Looking back, I’m grateful for the imagined worlds of books, radio, and movies that I loved to live in. Without imagining, it’s hard to change and develop. It’s hard to progress—and have faith—if you can’t imagine something better.
15 June 2021