A paean to the Saturday matinee

An enjoyable essay today at Cinematical...

One summer, my home town's local movie theater got the bright idea to run a series of kids-only matinees. As far as I remember, it was the only summer that they did this...

When the newspaper ran an ad for a month of weekday children's matinees, my mother didn't need persuading. In fact, she approached me about it first... I now realize that it was a chance to get me out of the house for several hours every day so that she could have some quiet time, but for me it was like Christmas in July. I got to see movies! Every day! Without my parents!..

In an age before "stranger danger" and SUV-driving soccer moms chauffeuring their tots everywhere, before every ten-yard walk to the bathroom was considered a flirtation with kidnapping and molestation, the parents of Manhattan Beach saw this as a great opportunity during the long, long days of no-school summer vacation to get rid of their children every afternoon. No supervision? Nonsense! It was a matinee for kids, wasn't it?...

And so they dropped us off at the curb. Hundreds of us. Every day that there was a matinee, the LaMar was jammed to the rafters with unsupervised children, swarming in, climbing over the seats, hopping in the aisles. The snack bar was a madhouse...

And there was noise. Dear lord, there was noise. After the first show, the theater employees realized that it was fruitless to try and quiet some 600 or so unsupervised hellions hopped up on SweeTarts, so they stopped trying. Wrappers from drink straws flew about. Unsatisfying candy was taken, still wet, from spit-filled mouths and sent flying into another kid's hair a few rows ahead...

These days, I can't stand to see a movie in a noisy theater. But there's a part of me that would like to relive that again, sticky Hot Tamales in my hair, seat-kicking children, smooching noises and all. Being excited to be in the theater, seeing a movie. The curtain opening, the dancing popcorn box and hot dog entreating me to go out to the lobby, the orchestral bombast of the Looney Tunes theme announcing a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It was a thrill, one that I'm far too jaded to ever experience quite the same way...

Full text at the link. Via Robot Wisdom. The Shorpy photo is from an earlier era (the 1920s); click the Shorpy link to experience and explore the photo as wallpaper.