by John Mooy
In Marcellus during the fifties and sixties you would sometimes announce, “we’re going to the show.” You weren’t going to the theater or the big screen or the cinema. You were going to the show. That took place on Friday night, Saturday night or Sunday afternoon for the matinee.
I recall the theater there on Main Street located between the tavern and Pantale’s Dip and Dunk. It was there during all of my formative years. No matter how many times we attended the show it was always entertaining. Usually, you would plan to go with your friends or meet them there. I recall my parents making the comment that they always enjoyed our going to the show because they didn’t have to worry about us. Today it would be referred to as a safe place.
Mr. And Mrs. Darnell ran the theater. He was quite tall and she was quite short. They were a wonderful team. Once you were at the theater, you stepped up to the window and purchased a ticket. Then you steeped to the right and entered the door where Mr. or Mrs. Darnell would take your ticket, tear it in half and give you half and drop the other half into a big wooden box with a slot in the top. It struck me as rather funny when sometimes you would buy the ticket from one of the Darnells and the same one would then meet you and take your ticket.
Financing the evening was rather uncomplicated. Usually, my dad would give me a quarter. Twenty cents for admission and a nickel to purchase a snack. I ALWAYS bought Good & Plentys. I loved them. On rare occasions I would purchase a bag of popcorn. That may have been a dime.
With treat in hand, you walked into the theater to find your seat of choice. There was an incline you walked up and then a long downward sloping runway that ended at a stage and at the back of the stage was the screen. The restrooms were on each side of the stage.
At one time or another we’d probably watched a movie from most of the seats in the theater. It was there I learned it was no fun to sit in the very first row. But you had to sit there once just for the experience.
On most evenings the theater would go dark and we couldn’t wait to see what would appear first on the screen. Often times it would be a cartoon: Bugs Bunny, Heckle and Jeckle, Tom and Jerry or maybe Woody Woodpecker. Of course, we all imitated that Woody Woodpecker laugh whenever it happened on the screen. And if we were really luck there were sometimes shorter films shown before the feature presentation. Among those “shorts” were The Three Stooges, Commando Cody and The Little Rascals.
And then we got into the real reason we had come to the theater, the main attraction. Every once in a while, if a movie was so good you tried to figure out a way you could go to see it a second time. That didn’t happen very often. Hey, twenty cents is twenty cents.
And now direct from my memory a listing of a few of my favorite movies.
Some of the cowboy films or westerns were Shane, High Noon and Rio Bravo. I guess in our youth at one time or another we wondered what it would be like to be a cowboy, have our own horse and not many rules to live by.
For some reason I really enjoyed The Incredible Shrinking Man. That fell into the science fiction realm and it was quite a story. I’ve since watched that maybe on Netflix.
But my favorites were those films that would put a scare into you. Among those features was The Blob, which had a short appearance by a young Steve McQueen and what I thought was the scariest movie of all times, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. A bit of research on this film reveals the “creature” was on the screen less than a total of two minutes. The film however had us on the edge of our seats in anticipation of the creature suddenly making an appearance.
If I recall this correctly, the Darnells and their two boys moved to Ionia. One of the boys was in my class, Wayne Darnell and I do recall his older brother Larry. I often wonder whatever happened to them. They were all a good part of the community. When they moved, I believe the theater closed.
Wouldn’t we love to have the Darnells and the theater back. Or as I now call it, THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.
Have a great week, Marcellus.
You’re the best.
With cameo appearances by
All of you.
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