Texas Theater

[Lightning Rod]

It's funny how we remember things. In my memories of childhood, everything is larger. I suppose that is because I was smaller.

When I was a child my grandparents lived on the South side of the Trinity in Dallas. Oak Cliff was a largely working class wholesome section of town. My grandfather would take me by the hand and we would walk the four blocks up to Jefferson Blvd. It was the 1950's version of a strip mall, three miles of shops and department stores and theaters.

Our destination was usually the Texas Theater. On Saturdays they ran Bugs Bunny cartoons. I loved that rabbit.

Oak Cliff is not the neighborhood it once was. Along Jefferson Blvd. where there were once nice stores and businesses there are now used car lots and pawn shops and dollar stores.

I ran across this picture of the Texas Theater. It used to have neon lights and a marquee that reached to the street. It was a grand place with paisley carpet and a permanent smell of popcorn.
But from the picture I see that it's now not as grand as I remember. I don't know whether to chalk it up to depreciation or the vagaries of childhood memory.



231 W. Jefferson Boulevard

This theater, when opened in 1931, was the largest suburban theater in Dallas. This Spanish Eclectic Theater was part of a chain of theaters once owned by Howard Hughes. In November of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was apprehended here after the Kennedy Assassination.

[Zlatko Waterman]

Dear LR:

Nice, compact little snippet you've written here which must touch the hearts of all us fantasists who used to live for the sweet dark of theaters when we were kids.

Frank O'Hara wrote a fine poem on the subject ( a little later).

Before I went to work as a theater usher in 1963 at the El Rey theater I used to have the same feelings in the dark I had later with girls. Movie theaters engender sexual arousal, even if you're just sitting there by yourself when you are ten without even your hands in your pockets.

The popcorn smell is important-- for me, so were the 1930's murals on the walls of nymphs swinging back and forth in a mystical forest on swings made of leaves and grape vines.

Later, when I worked for this 30's vintage place, the nervous strain of having to challenge people and order them to put out cigarettes on the loge floor ( I was eighteen, talking to a sweaty construction worker in an undershirt with a damp Camel in his well-bruised fist) deflated part of the fantasy.

So did seeing "The Sound of Music" over 200 times. Watching "Dr. No" ( particularly the scenes with Ursula Andress-- known as Ursula Undress--) 59 times wasn't so bad, however.


"Und Zo Mister Bond-- I Vhant you to DIE!" Later Gert Frobe became rather familiar to me through my friendship with Fritz Lang. Herr Frobe turned out to be a gentle, rather funny man.

http://www.jamesbondmm.co.uk/bond-villa ... -frobe.php


Here's the Frank O'Hara masterpiece:

( paste of poem)




AVE MARIA



Mothers of America
let your kids go to the movies
get them out of the house so they won't
know what you're up to
it's true that fresh air is good for the body
but what about the soul
that grows in darkness, embossed by
silvery images
and when you grow old as grow old you
must
they won't hate you
they won't criticize you they won't know
they'll be in some glamorous
country
they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or
playing hookey
they may even be grateful to you
for their first sexual experience
which only cost you a quarter
and didn't upset the peaceful
home
they will know where candy bars come
from
and gratuitous bags of popcorn
as gratuitous as leaving the movie before
it's over
with a pleasant stranger whose apartment
is in the Heaven on
Earth Bldg
near the Williamsburg Bridge
oh mothers you will have made
the little
tykes
so happy because if nobody does pick
them up in the movies
they won't know the difference
and if somebody does it'll be
sheer gravy
and they'll have been truly entertained
either way
instead of hanging around the yard
or up in their room hating you
prematurely since you won't have done
anything horribly mean
yet
except keeping them from life's darker joys
it's unforgivable the latter
so don't blame me if you won't take this
advice
and the family breaks up
and your children grow old and blind in
front of a TV set
seeing
movies you wouldn't let them see when
they were young

--Frank O'Hara



--Z

( my idea of a MAJOR American poem, if anyone asks . . .)

[Lightning Rod]

ah, Z-ko

again our karmic threads converge. When I was in college, I had a job as a projectionist in a small theater in Denton. I must have watched Fahrenheit 451 about fifty times, and Blow Up 200.

We still used the old carbon-arc projectors and you had to watch for the cue marks in order to smoothly shift the projectors. Yes, and the smell of the popcorn. That's what paid my salary.

I love the new DVD thing where you can watch a movie in the comfort of your home, but there is also something to be said for a majestic, ornate theater with a panoramic screen and gargantuan speakers.

Movies are the unified field theory realized in art. They are a combination and a culmination of the arts, sheer experience realized through illusion.

Ok, I'm a movie junkie. We just watched The Color of Money last night. It's the sequel to The Hustler. Paul Neuman is a marvel.

Maybe I'm off subject.

[tinkerjack]

Reminds me of the best job and the worse boss I ever had. Projectionist in a drive in movie up in the Shenandoah Valley. Three-platter system double feature, thousands of feet of film on the platters over a mile of film. Xenon bulb burned like a nuclear reactor.

I saw each move three times for three days in a row. Oh Brother Where Art Thou? and Chocolat two I liked a lot.
Thanks for the memory jog.

[Zlatko Waterman]

to LR and Tink:

I'm sure both of you know the marvelous Italian film "Cinema Paradiso"?


"The Color of Money" is a good film-- "The Hustler" is a great one. Having George C. Scott, Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason together in a film was a once-in-a-lifetime treat.

LR:

Have you seen "Nobody's Fool" in which Paul Newman plays a construction worker trying to reconcile himself ( at 60) with the wife and son he abandoned?

http://www.bestprices.com/cgi-bin/vlink ... 146IE.html

It's a tender and subtle film, with Newman working at his best level. I suspect you might like it. The supplemental performances are also very good-- from Melanie Griffith, Bruce Willis and Jessica Tandy-- the young man who plays Newman's son is also superb.

Try it-- maybe you'll like it-- Newman in a later incarnation.

As Newman said in an interview:

"I'll never understand why they wanted me to play action heroes and cowboys. I'm actually a rather quiet guy from Connecticut . . ."


--Z