As a nine-year old in the late 1940’s, heaven to me was a Saturday matinee at the Manos Theater or the Strand Theater or the Grand Theater in my Pennsylvania hometown, Greensburg. The Grand, behind the courthouse, was the seedier of the three and, therefore, the favorite of the munchkin set. With our silver quarter clutched tightly in our fists, it lured us onto its boisterous ticket queue with a western, a serial, a B-film (generally a comedy or a mystery), and a cartoon. One would enter this cavern of delights after lunch on Saturday and emerge squinting into the late afternoon sun. We never begrudged the squandering of our allowance and much of our Saturday on such frivolity. We were innocents ... we knew not of television or VCRs or Dolby sound systems or the Internet.
Invariably, we spent our whole quarter ... 15 cents to get into the magic shadow show and the rest for such nickel treats as Dots, JuJu Bees, Necco Wafers, Good & Plenty, Red Hots, and that requisite bag of popcorn. Good & Plenty was a favorite since the empty box made the best mouth-tooter to blow in between the features. If one sat in the balcony, half of your popcorn was generally showered on your screaming peers below. Too much popcorn or tooting invariably brought the matron usherette with her ill-fitting brown uniform and massive flashlight. The faded purple braid on her left shoulder rewarded her for what we knew not ... perhaps scowling.
The western proffered usually starred William Boyd (as Hopalong Cassidy) or Gene Autry (and his side-kick, Cannonball) or Lash LaRue or Roy Rogers (and Gabby Hayes). There was always a big posse chase, lots of ricocheting bullets and horse prat falls, but no kissing. If there were western songs, we usually hooted and hollered until the last stanza. The serial would be something like The Perils of Pauline (with Betty Hutton) or Flash Gordon (with Buster Crabb) or Red Ryder (and Little Beaver) or the Lone Ranger or Johnny Weismiller’s Tarzan. Then the main feature could be Charley Chan or Abbott & Costello (meeting Frankenstein or the Wolf Man or the Invisible Man) or Bob Hope and Bing Crosby (on the road to Rio or Bali or Morocco) or Errol Flynn as Robin Hood or Laurel and Hardy in the French Foreign Legion.
Often there was also a Movietone News short which highlighted recent world events in sports, entertainment, and of course, the reconstruction from the war in Europe or the Pacific. But it was the cartoon that took our breath away. Porkie Pig and all his friends coming out of that rainbow bulls-eye was our thrill of the week. And, if perchance there was a second cartoon, we squealed ... for we knew we had been gifted by the gods.
© Copyright George W. Potts
