My first movie going experience was in the early '60s. I was 5 or 6 years old the first time. My mother would dress us both up a bit (no one went to the movies in jeans in those days), we would ride down town on the bus, and visit one of 3 grand old movie houses that had been converted from vaudeville houses. Tickets were purchased outside from a clerk behind a curved glass window. She spoke to you through a microphone and if it was noisy, you had to lean down and speak to her through the hole in the glass through which she would push out your tickets.
Most of the movies we saw were musicals, and always the matinee showing, which usually began at 1:45 pm. Mother always liked sitting in the mezzanine, which was actually the first balcony, and there were two balconies above the mezzanine. These balconies were usually occupied by a handful of teenaged couples who necked throughout the movie.
The movies were on reels, and you could hear the clicking of the projector in the seats so you knew the movie was starting soon. If the movie ran long and the reel had to be changed, there was a short intermission where they brought up the house lights and there was a rush for the restrooms.
The theatre was always deliciously cool in the summer and toasty warm in the winter. Nothing felt better than the rush of cold conditioned air as you entered thd theatre on a hot and humid day.
Mother didn’t allow any snacks at the movie, but we would always stop afterwards at a cafe she liked while we waited for the bus home.
I think smoking was allowed in movie theatres in London long after it was banned in the US. Also someone on the staff came around selling ice cream during intermission so you didn’t even have to go out to the lobby.
I don’t remember anyone smoking in the theater when I was growing up (central Pennsylvania, 1960s and 1970s). Possibly because I tended to be at films targeted at younger attendees, but it’s possible I simply didn’t notice it since my parents both smoked (blech).
Near us, there was one theater (a single), another (also a single though I think it was later divided), then in the early 1970s a double theater opened just 2 miles away. It actually had something like a little stage; our large Catholic church actually negotiated a deal to hold two Masses each Sunday there, and since it was so close, we often went there. They had a portable sound system that was susceptible to interference - I remember one time when “The Lord Be With You” was rather startlingly followed by “Breaker, Breaker, One Niner” :D.
There were two theaters downtown. One actually still had a balcony. We basically never went there - I think I went to the one once.
Then in the early 1970s the multiplexes started - one near us had (gasp) 3 theaters.
I definitely remember times where I came in at the end of one showing and stayed for the next showing. Movies back then even sometimes had intermissions.
Google Fox theater, Atlanta or Arlingon theater, Santa Barbara for a look at what it was like.
The Fox is faux Moorish decor, with stars and moving clouds in the “sky” aka ceiling.
Along with a massive theater organ and something like 4,500 seats.
If I recall correctly, there was usually a “matinee” which likely featured films which might interest younger people, and an evening showing, sometimes the same film, other times something more substantial.
Most cities had at least two or three major theaters. Atlanta had the Fox and Lowe’s Grand, where “Gone With The Wind” debuted, and perhaps another, can’t recall. SB still has Arlington and Granada (which I think is now mostly for live shows).
Quite majestic, and you didn’t have to take out a loan to afford popcorn and a coke!
as a kid Due to problems with my hearing I couldn’t see a movie in a theatre until I was 7 or 8 so my first movies were the drive in … and the first one I remember seeing was star wars and sat on the roof in my car seat
But here we had like 8 movie theatres all owned by Cinemark until they built the ultiplex (as in the ultimate plex ) and closed all but one down for the dollar show … but I must say having pizza and ice cream while watching a movie is great
My earliest movies were in the early 80’s. I saw Return of the Jedi when I was 5(cool parents). Fortunately, I was able to see many movies at the Quo Vadis in Wesland, Michigan.
A true movie paradise from 1966. Beautiful marble floors in the bathrooms, high-end carpet throughout, and gargoyle’s outside. Cocktail lounge(more than one, actually). Two story building with an “over 21 club”. Really a great place.
Floors were sloped, so people were not on eye level with you. Nothing like the huge stadium seating of today. It had “movie theater lighting”, little strips that ran along the floor. Floors were sticky; all food went on the ground. You could just dump out popcorn when you were done. Drinks were spilled, too.
Smaller screens. The “big screen” has gotten much bigger since then. Regular sound instead of blasting us away.
The last movie I saw there was Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners in 1996. It closed in 2002 and was knocked down in 2011. I wish they had preserved it.
Nowadays, had they just waited a few years, it could have been turned into an Alamo Drafthouse style place. Shame.
Yes, this was the case. Watch 12 Angry Men and you can see that one juror literally can’t remember what movies he saw the night before. He clearly had seen more than one and probably did this often enough that it is easy to forget, even overnight, what specifically you’d seen.
My parents didn’t follow magazine ratings, but I couldn’t see R movies. I was a little scandalized as a 15-year-old when my cousins suggested we go see an R-rated (no one under 17 unaccompanied by an adult) Robin Williams movie.
Of course I went along but I was really surprised that no one asked us for proof of age. I remember hating the movie.
That really varies by the theater; as a kid we’d go to an out of the way theater in Sugarland rather than the SW Houston ones (Southway 6, Galleria, Town & Country, Gaylynn Theater (by Sharpstown), Westwood mall) that were often super-full, while our semi-rural one was not.
That old Sugarland theater had nearly stadium seating- it was surprisingly steep, and had an old-timey balcony and everything. It was built in the 1930s, I believe.
Anyway, the biggest difference between being a kid (1975-1985 for me) is that back then, you had to find a theater showing what you wanted to see- most were 4-6 screens, and didn’t have every single movie. Second, the refreshment offerings were limited to a handful of candy options and popcorn in large part.
Beyond that, there wasn’t much difference until you got into the late 1990s with megaplexes and Fandango/web listings. Until then, you had to look in the newspaper to see what was showing where and when.
(an aside; I think people under about 35 have no idea how dependent we were on newspapers back in the day. Just about everything you’d look up online- movie times, restaurant reviews, events, etc… was in the paper, not online.)
I don’t, either. This is in Chicago in the 60s and late 50s. I could be wrong, but I think that was covered by fire laws, not for the effects of tobacco smoke on others.
When I was a kid (late 60s/early 70s) the local newspaper published movie ratings of the Catholic League of Decency, for both theatrical releases and movies shown on TV. I don’t remember the good ratings, because we children used the listings to troll for smut and violence. It was a red letter day when a TV Movie of the Week was rated C “Condemned as morally objectionable to all.”
And no, at the time it didn’t seem odd that a secular newspaper published ratings by a religious organization. My parents weren’t interested in censoring our viewing or reading, but I had friends whose parents were more straight-laced.
My hometown built a brand new Jerry Lewis twin Cinema in 1970. As the name implies, two movies were shown.
No smoking in the theater. I think it was allowed in the lobby.
We still had an older theater downtown.
We also had two drive-ins.
The drive-in had a seating area similar to grandstands at a ball field. Or you could stay in your car. Sneaking in by hiding in the car trunk happened occasionally.
I’m sure no one smoked in theaters when I was a kid. My father told me it had been outlawed after some bad fire incident in a crowded theater. I had assumed that was federal, but reading this thread, it must have been a state law.
In Green Bay, WI, in the mid-to-late 1970s, here’s what it was like:
There were three old-time movie theaters in downtown Green Bay: the Bay, the Vic, and the West. I actually never went to a movie at the West, but I went to many at the other two. The Bay and the Vic both had balconies, though the Vic’s balcony was nearly always closed when I went. Both of those theaters were fairly ornate; the Bay had an organ, as well – my high school music teacher had played the organ there when they did kids’ cartoon shows in the 1970s.
By the time I started going to movies there, around 1976 or so, the Bay had been subdivided into three screens: one screen used the balcony’s seats, while the main floor was cut in half, each half getting its own screen.
The West (and the De Pere, just south of the city) were, IIRC, somewhat smaller, but still older, single-screen theaters.
We also had two “multiplexes” on the far east and far west sides of the city. They were both owned by the Marcus Corporation, probably built in the late 1960s or early 1970s, and each had 3 screens.
When the original Star Wars had its first re-release (around 1978), my cousin and I went to an evening showing of it at one of the Marcus theaters. Just before the showing, the theater manager came out, and announced that they had just finished installation of a Dolby sound system in that theater earlier that day, and that we were about to see the first showing of a movie in Dolby sound in Green Bay. He apologized in advance, in case the sound system didn’t work properly.
air conditioning. The first movie that I remember seeing was “Pollyanna” in August 1960 and that was because we were moving the next day. So Mom and Dad said everything is packed, let’s go to a movie. No air conditioning in my parents home until 1999…fans, trees , home built with a hill to the west.
I can’t remember if smoking was prohibited or not. Tobacco advertising was a major feature on commercial tv until 1971 so it was largely seen as only mildly irritating to bystanders (which is what a woman from the American Cancer Society told our class in 1968ish).
Movies took a couple months to reach the suburbs. Things like “Godfather” and “Patton”. ‘‘Star Wars”took a couple weeks in 1977.
Large screens until the mid 1970s when movie theaters divided into several to get more business.
In the 1970s when it became okay to have X Rated films in many communities (although prudes in New York City banned “Deep Throat” while the sophisticated people of Binghampton allowed it), the dirty movie theater called itself an arts cinema and advertised they were fighting for our first amendment rights. A group of us went to it once. The two films were not on the Golden Age of Porn list and the one young woman who danced topless between pictures looked bored out of her mind.
The James Bond films were super popular in thre mid 1960s. You would hear the Shirley Bassey song “Goldfinggggggeeeerrrr” all the time. There was a brand of bread by Bond that feature a “James Bread from Bond” type secret agent in commercials.
Learn about movies from trailers, tv ads and reviews in newspapers and on tv.
My family never saw too many movies…maybe one a year. Big stuff like “Sound of Music”, “Mary Poppins” and “Music Man”. Some kiddie fare like Dick van Dykes “Lt Robin Crusoe, USN”. “Those magnificent men in their flying machines”
no cartons, shorts or newsreels except TMMITFM which had a brief film on various hare brained flying machines that inventors tried. Or that could have been attached to the movie but cut out when it came on television
Smoking has been forbidden in theatres for as long as I remember:…but other people remember differently. I’ve been negligently searching for information on when and how it was regulated in Melbourne, but I don’t actually know how or where to search, so I haven’t had much luck.
I was listening to a podcast talk about the 60’s movie going experience and the thing that most stuck out for me was there were far more second-run theaters which would air double or even triple features of years old movies for the price of one and people would go because there was almost no other way to watch old movies otherwise. You could see a John Wayne film followed by a Giant Monster film followed by a Romance movie because back then they would just throw whatever they could get ahold of together.
Heh, I do remember my family making that expression (in Spanish though) when I was a kid going to the movies with them, but I wanted to comment that recently I found a new reason to use it.
A few years ago me and my brother were looking a clip of the Adventures of the Baron Münchhausen (the old German one made in 1940s) it was a clip with the almost naked girls in the pool of the sultan and we got interested on watching the whole movie.
So after a search we found it available and began to watch that very curious fantasy made by a German study in the middle of WWII, and when the scene of the clip appeared on screen I commented:
