How many of you folks remember or even know that when I was growing up, there were five movie houses in Hamilton, each having only one screen. This was in the 1950s and ’60s.
You couldn’t waste time on a computer or texting or on an Xbox, but you could spend a lot of time in a theater. Each theater seemed to have its own personality.
To us kids from Lindenwald, a trip to the Rossville Theater was like a trip to another country. Some poor parent would have to motor-pool a bunch of scruffy preteens across an actual river and through unknown territory to reach this theater. It had to be a special movie for this to take place. SUVs and mini-vans and soccer moms hadn’t been invented yet.
The Rialto Theater was exotic in that it was next to the bus station, and the only time you went to the bus station was to visit your aunt in Dayton. Later, the Rialto became the Court Theater which, in our late teens, was the date capital of Hamilton. For some reason, I equate the Rialto with Annette and Frankie and very modest bikinis.
My most vivid memory of the Rialto was being deposited there, at about the age of 10 or 11, and given a dime to take the bus home after the movie.
After the movie, I walked down High Street to the bus stop. There were many shops along High Street then, across from the courthouse. One shop had a coin-operated scale out front which gave your weight and fortune for a penny.
Since I was feeling very grown up on my own in the big city, I decided to waste some of my money. I had a penny and a dime (my bus fare) in my pocket. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the coin, put in into the machine and got my fortune. It must have been a bad fortune because I then realized that I had put the dime into the machine, not the penny.
So here I was, 10 years old and with no bus fare to get to that far country of Lindenwald. I started walking what I knew to be the bus route and, an hour later, arrived home safe in Lindenwald. I never told my parents that I had walked all the way home. They just thought the movie was a long one.
The Palace Theatre on Third Street seemed a very sinister place to the impressionable youth of Lindenwald. My parents would never allow me to go there. I am sure they had a good reason; we just didn’t understand what it was. Fifty years later, I had occasion to go inside that building when Civic Theater bought the place for rehearsals and storage. I guess the bad ghosts had since departed. Nothing happened to me.
The Paramount Theater, which is now a quite lovely parking lot, was the upper crust of Hamilton movie-going pleasure. I believe it cost a whole quarter to get in. We only went there on special occasions. Such an occasion was the yearly Christmas show, where there might be an actual stage show before the movie and Santa arrived to a hail of popcorn. For sure, you would get a Christmas gift of a box shaped like a circus car, full of teeth-shattering hard candies.
I remember talking my dad into going with me to the Paramount to see the original version of “The War of the Worlds.” I don’t know who left the theater the most scared, me or my dad.
But the theater I remember the most and with the fondest memories was the Linden Theater. It was basically a dump. But we didn’t know that. The bill of fare changed between Saturday and Sunday. So you could see a twin bill on Saturday, plus several cartoons, and then go back Sunday and see two different shows. Abbott and Costello, the Bowery Boys and Francis the Talking Mule were there a lot.
For a new Roy Rogers’ flick, the line would stretch down the block to in front of the dime store. It cost 14 cents to get in and usually you went there with a quarter — so you had 11 cents for a box of popcorn and a penny candy. Many times I would come out of the Linden, after a scary “Mummy” movie, in the early evening with the sky getting dark, and have to run home, looking over my shoulder to be sure it wasn’t gaining on me.
There were also several drive-in movies right on the edge on town. The Ramona was actually in town, right where the Frisch’s on Ohio 4 is now. I don’t remember too many movies from the drive-ins. Maybe the action inside the car was more interesting.
In 2010, as you sit in your $12 theater seat, in front of the 75-foot screen with Dolby sound, munching your $6 heart-stopping buttered popcorn, and slurping your $4 watered-down Coke, paying good money to watch 27 commercials, at least you have the reasonable expectation that you will not get whacked in the back of the head by a half-chewed Jujube.
And you will probably not be having half the fun we had back then.
J
ames J. Mignerey i
s
a resident of Hamilton.