My childhood movie theatre
It was our Cinema Paradiso, plain and unadorned as it was, about an eight-minute walk from my house. It was an era when almost every neighborhood in America had its movie theatre. There was no such thing as a multiplex. Whoever sold you a ticket or candy knew you personally. You met many of the same people each time you went. When I first started going with neighborhood friends, very few families, including ours, owned the new invention called the television set.
The Johnston Theatre was located at the corner of Atwood Avenue and Plainfield Street in the Thornton section of Johnston. It was on the second floor of the Ferri Block, a wooden structure that included a lunch-counter spa, a barber shop, a pool hall, a basement bowling alley. For a time at the end of its life, it became the Italy Cinema, showing Italian films, then a porno house, thereby arousing the ire of the priests of Saint Rocco's Church across the street. The block was torn down in the late 1970s to be replaced by a Mobil Mart station.
Nostalgic memories of the Johnston Theatre are many. As a child in the 1940s into the 1950s I remember regularly walking to the Sunday matinées at this theatre where the admission was 25 cents for kids. The evening admission for adults was 44 cents. We didn't call it "going to the movies." It was "going to the show." "Are you going to the show today?" "Pa, can I have a quarter to go to the show?" The two-bits got you two feature movies, previews, cartoons, and for a while, a Roy Rogers Club featurette. "Howdy, kids, welcome to the Roy Rogers Club!!!" 10 cents would get you a soda and a candy bar. A box of popcorn was no more than a dime.
That Sunday children's matinée at 2 P.M., filled with screaming, unruly kids constantly running back and forth to the toilet or the candy counter, particularly during quiet moments in any movie, made for an exceptionally raucous environment. All this was kept under semi-control by an elderly crone-matron who scurried menacingly from row to row. She had a pronounced limp, and, with flashlight a-waving, she snarled at rampaging kids like us in an attempt to keep us in line. Given a broom, she could have been the Wicked Witch of the West.
Later, in our teen years, we would forego the action westerns and adventures of the Sunday matinees in favor of the Friday night shows,which is what all the local kids over twelve went to. We related to James Dean in misunderstood-youth films like Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden and liked the academic free-for-all of The Blackboard Jungle. The original The War of the Worlds scared the crap out of me and I had trouble sleeping afterward. My favorite, though, was the boy-loves-pet-bull opus The Brave One with tearful Michel Ray begging the president of Mexico to save his bull Gitano from death in the ring. By common consent, the right rear of the theatre was reserved for smooching and furtive oral sex by amorous adolescents. The men's room was spectacularly gross, the quintessence of piss. The only urinal was a wide three-sided rusty common-trough where it was a cinch to examine several co-urinators at one time.
I miss the Johnston Theatre.
Here are some period photos:
Interior and Screen
Roy Rogers Club
Kiddie Matinee, 1950s
Exterior as Italy Cinema
The Johnston Theatre was located at the corner of Atwood Avenue and Plainfield Street in the Thornton section of Johnston. It was on the second floor of the Ferri Block, a wooden structure that included a lunch-counter spa, a barber shop, a pool hall, a basement bowling alley. For a time at the end of its life, it became the Italy Cinema, showing Italian films, then a porno house, thereby arousing the ire of the priests of Saint Rocco's Church across the street. The block was torn down in the late 1970s to be replaced by a Mobil Mart station.
Nostalgic memories of the Johnston Theatre are many. As a child in the 1940s into the 1950s I remember regularly walking to the Sunday matinées at this theatre where the admission was 25 cents for kids. The evening admission for adults was 44 cents. We didn't call it "going to the movies." It was "going to the show." "Are you going to the show today?" "Pa, can I have a quarter to go to the show?" The two-bits got you two feature movies, previews, cartoons, and for a while, a Roy Rogers Club featurette. "Howdy, kids, welcome to the Roy Rogers Club!!!" 10 cents would get you a soda and a candy bar. A box of popcorn was no more than a dime.
That Sunday children's matinée at 2 P.M., filled with screaming, unruly kids constantly running back and forth to the toilet or the candy counter, particularly during quiet moments in any movie, made for an exceptionally raucous environment. All this was kept under semi-control by an elderly crone-matron who scurried menacingly from row to row. She had a pronounced limp, and, with flashlight a-waving, she snarled at rampaging kids like us in an attempt to keep us in line. Given a broom, she could have been the Wicked Witch of the West.
Later, in our teen years, we would forego the action westerns and adventures of the Sunday matinees in favor of the Friday night shows,which is what all the local kids over twelve went to. We related to James Dean in misunderstood-youth films like Rebel Without a Cause and East of Eden and liked the academic free-for-all of The Blackboard Jungle. The original The War of the Worlds scared the crap out of me and I had trouble sleeping afterward. My favorite, though, was the boy-loves-pet-bull opus The Brave One with tearful Michel Ray begging the president of Mexico to save his bull Gitano from death in the ring. By common consent, the right rear of the theatre was reserved for smooching and furtive oral sex by amorous adolescents. The men's room was spectacularly gross, the quintessence of piss. The only urinal was a wide three-sided rusty common-trough where it was a cinch to examine several co-urinators at one time.
I miss the Johnston Theatre.
Here are some period photos:
Interior and Screen
Roy Rogers Club
Kiddie Matinee, 1950s
Exterior as Italy Cinema
