Friday Night at the Movies (standard:non fiction, 1250 words)
Author: Lou Hill	Added: May 06 2002	Views/Reads: 3353/2244	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Remeber the days when watching a movie meant going out of your home.

FRIDAY NIGHT AT THE MOVIES 

Over the years my hometown, Enosburg Falls, Vermont, has had many things
that made it unique. Surely one of the oddest had to be the Playhouse 
Theater.  Where else could you walk into a movie theater and find 
yourself facing the entire audience? For a couple of teenagers on their 
first date, it could be an intimidating experience.  All of their 
friends sitting there, watching them, as they tried to walk 
nonchalantly up the aisle.  So much for secret love affairs. 

I went to movies at the Playhouse from the time I was six years old
until after I graduated from high school. During that time nothing 
changed.  Leslie Thomas sold tickets, Mrs. Vincent was the "enforcer" 
who could quiet a bunch of rowdy teenagers with a look, and the theater 
was always cold in winter. 

The format for the week was always the same too.  Sunday and Monday
nights featured the new releases with the big name stars, Tuesday, 
Wednesday and Thursday nights were "B" romances, dramas and thrillers 
and Friday and Saturday nights were reserved for westerns. 

I started going to the Friday night "oaters" when I was six years old. 
At that time the price of a child's ticket was about 14 cents.  At 
first my mother would accompany me saying that I was too young to go by 
myself.  It took me a while to realize that she enjoyed the old 
westerns just as much as I did.  I don't think she ever missed a Roy 
Rogers movie.  I also remember that she used to call John Wayne, one of 
my particular favorites, "Old Corkscrew Head."  My mother had nicknames 
for everyone (mine was "Stinky') which is another story in itself. 

Weekends were special because they always showed the next chapter of a
cliffhanger.  Those old serials kept people coming back week after week 
to see how the hero would escape from what ever life-threatening 
situation he had been left in at the end of last weeks installment. 

Friday night audiences were usually made up of kids from	 the village
with a scattering of adults.  Saturday night was Farmer's night.  A lot 
of farm families would come to the "city" on Saturday evening after 
chores to do their shopping.  In those days it was the only night of 
the week that the stores stayed open late. 

Many of them opted to take in a move after completing their grocery
shopping.  I remember that on the rare Saturday night that I went to 
the movies there was a distinct aroma of "barn" in the Playhouse. 

Those cowboy movies were a big part of our early education.  The good
guys always wore white hats; the bad guys always wore black hats.  
Nobody's hat would fall off in the middle of a furious fistfight.  Gene 
Autry holds the record for most shots fired from a six-shooter without 
reloading (28).  Western heroes are unbelievable marksmen-you try 
hitting a moving target when both of you are mounted on a galloping 
horse.  Good always triumphs over evil and the bad guy always got 
punished.  The hero never dies and he only kisses his horse. Maybe 
that's not such a bad idea today. 

When I saw "Star Wars" for the first time, I realized that the same
formula was used to make that movie that was used for the old westerns. 
The bad guy (Darth Vader) was dressed in black, the hero Luke was 
dressed in white, Obi Wan Kanobi's hood never moved when he fought 
Darth Vader with light sabers, Luke and Han were fantastic shots with 
their laser cannon even while gyrating all over space, the good guys 
won and the Death Star was blown up.  Han Solo, like the western heroes 
who only kissed their horses, just exchanged meaningful looks with 
Princess Leia. 

As I matured so did my taste in movies.  Unfortunately sometimes my
actions and those of my friends weren't quite so mature.  I remember an 
impressive documentary film released in the early 50s called "The 
Fighting Lady".   A group of us went to	 see it and proceeded to 
disrupt the whole theater adding additional dialog and sound effects to 
the battle scenes. Even Mrs. Vincent gave up trying to quiet us down. 

I also vividly remember a movie called "Strangers on a Train", one of
Alfred Hitchcock's great thrillers that I saw during my teens.  Two 
things stick in my mind about that film: Robert Walker is asked by his 


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