The Moviegoer

Fifty years ago today was my 18^th birthday. It seems all week I’ve been hearing about birthdays—on the 15th, Harry Potter’s friend, Hermione (Emily Watson) turned 18; on the 16^th, Pope Benedict XVI turned 81, on the 17^th, Bob Beilstein celebrated his 68^th, the 18^th was Conan O’Brien’s 45^th, and the 19^th, moi. And according to today’s newspaper, tomorrow on April 20, Edna Parker of Shelbyville, Indiana, the world’s oldest person, will turn 115. The same newspaper also carried an AP story about recent sociological research revealing “the happiest Americans are the oldest.” That should help me keep my longevity in perspective.

For the life of me, I can’t remember exactly how I celebrated on April 19, 1958. Probably the best present I received that week was the letter from the Allegheny College Admissions Office letting me know I was accepted. That year April 19 also fell on a Saturday, so a good guess is that I did what I most enjoyed on a Saturday night: I went on a movie date.

Getting dressed up and going into downtown Pittsburgh to a first-run theater— now that was really a first-class evening in my book. I fondly remember those movie palace’s: the Stanley, Fulton, Loew’s Penn, and Warner—the Loew’s Ritz on 5^th had closed a few years earlier, and the Art Cinema was far too risqué in those days (although I did sneak furtive looks at its posters on shopping days on my way down Liberty Ave. to the Harmony bus station).

I loved those early 20^th-century facades on the theaters and the absurd decadence of the interiors: ushers wore maroon uniforms; there were red plush chairs in the lobby, marble staircases led to the balcony (remember Loew’s Penn?), crystal chandeliers, and vaulted ceilings with ornate designs in the plaster. Even a trip down the thick carpeted stairs to the restrooms provided more opulence. When I was inside those theaters, I always felt I was born too late and had missed out on the decades when Pittsburgh was really voluptuous. (Little realizing that 50 years later none of these cinema's would even exist as I knew them. They would either be gentrified into the Benedum Center (Stanley), Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Byham (Fulton, see interior photo above), Heinz Hall (Loew’s Penn), or totally wrecked by a 2-story shopping center sold at sheriff sale in 2005 (Warner, see below). Ironically, the former porn peddler, the Art Cinema (at the right), has been refurbished by Pittsburgh Filmmakers as Harris Theater now showing arty films.

I also liked waiting behind the cordon of gold braid while the last audience filed out from the movie we were about to see. I watched for their reactions: tears, smiles, and chatting to each together was good, if they stared ahead blankly, I feared the worst. Then we entered the magic darkened world, my eyes riveted to the big screen, and the totality of escape from everything else began for a few hours.

I’m not sure which movies would have been playing in Pittsburgh on April 19, 1958. We might have gone to “Bridge on the River Kwai,” which had recently won 7 Oscars or “South Pacific,” released in March. I know I saw “Gigi” that summer (at the Warner—after they finally gave up showing those plot-less Cinerama features). Other films on my list that year included Hitchcock’s “Vertigo,” “Auntie Mame,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “Long, Hot Summer,” “Sayonara,” and “Three Faces of Eve.” I doubt we went to “Peyton Place.” I’d sneaked home a copy of Metalious' novel the previous year (probably in a paper bag to avoid my mother’s scrutiny), and I knew they’d sanitize the movie.

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I realize I have a lot more to say about other movie memories (those Laurel & Hardy’s we watched in Ingomar School when we weren’t in ballroom dancing class. The matinees of oaters at the Girard and Perry Theaters. And those pits of iniquity, the drive-ins—Starlite in Wexford, Ranalli’s on Route 8, and Brookside down in the Franklin Twp. valley). But, hey, it’s my birthday and I need to go celebrate!

Just in parting, I’m providing a link to a cute poem "The Land that Made Me Me" (author unknown) that Marge Downer Arciniega sent me (click here). Hope you like it as much as I did.