Hmmmm. It was a little rainy and muggy out. Why not kill a few hours in air conditioning that you weren't paying for?
Of course, the Pelham Picture House has been refurbished and treated like an old movie palace jewel these days. Except they've added an extra screening room by carving out what probably used to be a manager's office and adding a Blu Ray player and screen in front of about ten La-Z-Boys. A media room in somebody's basement suddenly morphs into a little movie theater and that will be nine dollars, please, for admission.
On this drippy Saturday afternoon, about eight of the recliners were warm. Not a bad crowd. There was a mom and a dad with two youngsters. They were obviously being treated to their parents' childhood. Yet, as the movie unspooled complete with Blu Ray menu on the screen, there was complete silence all around. There was probably more noise at George Harrison's wake.
I sat musing about it all. With my feet up, of course. I mean, it was a complete recliner. And thinking about the first time I saw "A Hard Day's Night." It was all very different.
Back then, I really hadn't formed any musical tastes. I listened to the radio stations that my parents listened to. In the house, my mom was the maestro, flipping between the Top 40 hits on WMCA and WABC. My mother was one of those ultra-modern parent who would listen to the radio and then run out to buy the latest 45 rpm record. She'd then play it on our record player. Over and over and over. Usually singing and swaying along. To this day, I can remember her warbling "The Name Game" by Shirley Ellis.
I told my mom that the kids up the block had adapted the song to include the name "Chuck." She had to think for a moment before getting the joke.
"You do and I'll wash your mouth out with soap."
Things were quieter on my dad's end of the radio dial. In the car only unless, of course, if it was Saturday night and he'd be eating his kielbasie while listening to the Polka Party. My father preferred the more subdued tunes found on WNEW AM 1130. Frank Sinatra. Ray Conniff. Steve and Eydie. It was a quick way to put me asleep in the back seat of a Buick LeSabre.
But, with all this music around the house, I was adopting none of it. I heard it all but nothing was uniquely mine.
Of course, for lots of kids my age, the Beatles changed that. They were new. They were unique. They were ours. And all the older teenage girl screaming their acne off were perfect evidence. Indeed, I don't really know why I liked them. I just did.
So, as they were fresh off their first US appearances on television, we heard that they had made a movie and it would be out during the summer. Sure enough, the word spread like wildfire that our beloved Loews Mount Vernon, New York movie house would have the film. Starting Wednesday. As all features did back in the day.
Life was different and safer then. You didn't need your parents to go to the movies. All you needed was their money. The theaters always opened at around 1230PM for the first picture to begin at 1PM. On Opening Day, I was going! I'm pretty sure I went with my neighborhood pal Leo. I think there were kids from my school there as well. The memories are as blurry as that day was for me.
I need to scoot quickly to get there in time. As usual, I made my rapid exit through my grandmother's portion of the house downstairs.
"Where are you running like a lunatic?"
I explained the totally viable reason for my haste. The Beatles' movie. One more time, a fuse was lit on Grandma.
"Oh, those ugly things. That Ed Sullivan ruined America!"
She would repeat that pronouncement for the rest of her life.
At that first showing in that very first day, we were not alone. The Loews palace was full of screaming kids. Well, make that screaming girls. I didn't know there were that many girls in all of Mount Vernon. They must have bussed in some of them from New Rochelle and Bronxville.
They had major coronaries every time there was a close-up on the screen. Paul, of course, was deemed the cutest and got the biggest reaction. Truth be told, I remember very little of what was actually in the movie. The Beatles would sing a song. They're run around a bit. Then sing again. Then run around again. Over and over and over for ninety minutes.
I recall walking home along Stevens Avenue and I was still a little confused about what I had seen. And what the fuss was all about.
Indeed, I never really saw the movie in its entirety again until I sat down in that room at the Pelham Picture House last month. And it all came to me.
The screaming. The frenzy. The unabashed love. It was all a release. Pent up emotions from months and years of repression. The Beatles arrived here about three months after President John Kennedy, the true hope of America and the world, had been killed. In a strange way, the Beatles were providing us with an outlet. It was okay to be happy again. Or to think about something else.
When you get right down to it, all movies serve as time capsules. Etched on celluloid in their year of original release, you can revisit the time and the era over and over. Watching "A Hard Day's Night" was one more way for me to reconnect with my childhood and my parents and my sneering grandmother. I feel it all. One more time.
And, here on this Sunday decades later, what am I doing tonight? Going to Dodger Stadium to see Paul McCartney perform. I'm guessing some of the songs just might have been from this very movie. And who's in the group of friends I am going with? My neighborhood pal Leo.
The more things change...the more WE stay the same.
Dinner last night: Beef lo mein from Century Dragon.
1 comment:
Amen!
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