The Kiddie Matinee, Or: My Summer with Hot Tamales in My Hair

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. Looking back, it's one of those ideas that was probably a lot better on the drawing board than in execution.

The LaMar Theater was a real, old-school, small-town movie palace. Just a block from the ocean in Manhattan Beach, California -- hence the compounded Spanish for "the sea" -- with thick, red velvet curtains and a big screen above a raised stage. There was a ceiling mural that featured dolphins arcing above curling waves, and big plaster sea shells served as covers for the sconces that lit the walls.

In the 1940's my grandmother was manager of the LaMar for a time, and I have photos of her posing with movie stars and USO workers, doing publicity when the theater hosted special shows to benefit the war effort. My mother worked at the theater as a barely legal usher, and told me that during one of these drives she shot craps backstage with Donald O'Connor and some of the musicians. Sadly, the theater is now gone, torn down in the 1980s to make room for a McDonalds and a multiplex.

The summer of the children's matinee fiasco, I was maybe ten or eleven years old. I loved movies -- Mom, the former movie usher, reared me with daily viewings of Ben Hunter's Movie Matinee on KTTV, watching old black-and-white films from the 40's and 50's while she did laundry. Every day he'd run a contest called "Hunter's College of Obscure Knowledge," showing a photo or clip and asking a trivia question, and awarding a prize to the first caller with the correct answer. My mother never called the show, but she got every question right.

Years of ushering and fandom had given her an encyclopedic memory for everything she'd ever seen on film, and she schooled me on directors and character actors. One day I told her that I found the Joker on TV's "Batman" very, very scary, and she said, "That's how you can tell someone's really a good actor, when they can play an excellent villain. That's Cesar Romero -- he was also in Weekend in Havana with Carmen Miranda, remember?" I was awestruck that it was the same man. This Romero, I knew, must be a very good actor, indeed.

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. My dad wasn't thrilled about paying for a pass for me to see movies for an entire month (which probably cost less than two tickets to a full-price multiplex show today), but Mom prevailed. 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!

See, this is where the kiddy matinee idea was ill-conceived by theater management. Individual tickets were cheap -- like, 50 cents or so -- but a full-run pass offered a better bargain. And the LaMar advertised it as special matinees just for kids. 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 mad house, with kids grilling the frazzled employees as to how they could best maximize the pocket change they'd been given for concessions (my preference was Ghiradhelli Flicks, as the long foil-covered cardboard tube seemed to yield the most for my tiny candy allowance).

As for the programming ... well, it didn't seem to be a program so much as it was an odd bunch of movies that were a) available on the cheap, and b) ostensibly G-rated. I remember seeing Errol Flynn swashbuckler movies one day, and Doris Day in Calamity Jane the next. One afternoon it was Paper Lion, starring Alan Alda as George Plimpton. I was excited to see Creature from the Black Lagoon on the big screen, since I'd already seen it on TV on the Sunday afternoon "Thriller" horror show, but complaints by parents after the fact caused management to replace the other, relatively tame horror films in the schedule with less controversial fare. The Shakiest Gun in the West, for example.

There were cartoons before every show, usually the crappier Tom & Jerry cartoons of the pre-Chuck Jones variety, although the occasional Droopy Dawg 'toon would elicit cheers. There was a contest of some sort during the intermission, hula-hoops or musical chairs, but I usually missed it since that was when I did my ritual Flicks buying.

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. Small children were hauled up and down the aisles by their older, ticked-off siblings, and when Doris kissed her beau at the end of the film, the entire audience joined together to "eeeewwww" in disgust while some of the more clever wags made loud smooching noises into their hands.

Even then, I was shocked at the ill behavior. I was an only child, and my mother was insistent that I know how to behave properly in public. And this -- this cacophony and hysteria, this screeching and shouting and seat-kicking -- this was definitely not proper public behavior. But even so, I was at the movies. All by myself. And after she picked me up at the appointed time, at the exact same spot where she dropped me off (or else), Mom would ask me what I'd seen, and we'd talk about it.

"The Sea Hawk -- that was directed by the same man who directed Casablanca," she'd say. When I told her I'd actually preferred it over the other picture, The Adventures of Robin Hood, she nodded. "You're right, it's a better movie. The sword fights were better, and those tights were ridiculous. You know, Olivia de Havilland, who played Maid Marian, she's Joan Fontaine's sister. That was the actress in Rebecca ..."

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.

Disappointing as it was for me, I certainly understand why the LaMar Theater didn't run another summer kiddy matinee program ever again. It probably took them the rest of the year to get over the trauma. But they sure sold a lot of Flicks.