by Robert Amedee L’Ecuyer

Movie Magic and Other Marvels 

In my lifetime, the information systems have totally changed at least twice. We went from radio networks to television stations to computers and the internet. Movies were big when I was growing up. If you wanted to see a story, you went to the movies. Kids went to Saturday matinees, which included double features with cartoons and newsreels. That meant parents had Saturday afternoons to themselves.  

I started going to the Saturday matinee movies at age six, and I liked cowboy movies at that time. That was the heroic figure of the day. I remember Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, but there were other cowboys too. Maybe a half dozen that came up in the Saturday afternoon movies. And Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon, characters that operated in space even before there were actual space craft. These were imagined worlds ahead of their time, and of course later, they ended up being real. I also watched Wonder Woman because that was of interest to Sally. I didn’t make a distinction between male and female heroes. There weren’t as many female figures, but I followed them too.  

We’d also get a newsreel, cartoons like Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, and Porky Pig, and previews of coming attractions. Those were in between the two features. There were several theaters and you could choose what you wanted to watch. Some were for younger or older kids. Some of the first run movies at the downtown theaters made their way to the suburban ones. We had maybe half a dozen choices and the whole experience ran from 1pm to about 5pm.   

Later on, the movies that interested me were the dramas with Bette Davis and Joan Fontaine. There were a number of actors too, like Humphrey Bogart. You started following them and got to see several of their movies. I got more exposure because my Mom read movie magazines. Two or three each week! I could choose movies ahead of time by following the movie magazines. The daily newspaper had stories about movies too. There was a period of time, maybe up until the end of high school, in which I saw a different movie every night. I could eat dinner and then slip out and go to a movie. They changed usually once a week at least. I probably had twelve choices of movies to watch during the week.  

My Dad listened to the radio and built his first radio set when he was about 7 or 8 years old. At that time, there weren’t many stations. By the time I was born, there were four radio networks: NBC, ABC, CBS, and Mutual. 

NBC originally was the red and blue networks that were later split up by antitrust law. Red became NBC, blue became ABC. They had different directions as networks. It wasn’t political. 

NBC and CBS were dominated by their company presidents. This was in the third Roosevelt term, so things were as they were and the radio was always on.  Anyway, Dad would listen to the radio when he was free. 

Those are some of my first memories. The Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoons. Then on Sunday the New York Philharmonic was on NBC after church. Both took breaks during the summer; 9-10 months per year then off for two or three months.  

Television was developed just prior to WWII but there weren’t networks and regular broadcasts. At the end of WWII, the radio networks started experimenting with TV. So NBC, CBS, and ABC all tried television. Mutual decided to stay on radio and it phased out as a result. The TV networks became dominant and radio began to lose its influence. Radio turned into news and music. By the mid 1950s TV was replacing radio as the principal way to get information.  

In my living room nothing changed because my dad wouldn’t buy a TV set. He was dedicated to radio. I bought the first TV set when I was working at BF Goodrich in Lawrence. It was a used 9-inch table top model that sat on top of a bookcase in the living room. We sold TVs and took trade-ins. This one was a trade-in on a bigger screen, which was probably 18-inch at the time. Now they have TVs the size of walls. 

My Dad started watching dramatic programs. At that time, the networks were putting on complete plays. So he could get involved in a dramatic program in the evening when he was home, PlayHouse 90 and others on various networks. He would also watch the concerts that had been on radio. TV wasn’t all that different. He usually chose the program, and it would be my dad and me and Sally and Mary sitting in the living room after dinner. 

Dad wouldn’t have made the shift from radio except for me. He would not have bought a TV himself. Eventually he did, when Sally started college life and he knew I wouldn’t be coming back home. 

TV programs changed from stage dramas to soap operas in the day and less serious programs in the evening, which wouldn’t have been my dad’s first choice. He would pick the more serious programs but as time went on, sit-coms became the staple.  

When he and Micky married, they didn’t have time for TV. They had a very complex social life. Micky organized it and Dad went along, his faculty groups and Micky’s women’s groups. He enjoyed it and that environment ultimately led to him being appointed Associate Dean of the College of Business. Micky was also involved in the Lawrence community beyond KU. They attended the United Church of Christ with a couple thousand members. Four services on Sunday morning, one on the hour. 

At Goodrich, I was selling appliances as well as tires. Refrigerators, dishwashers, stoves, small appliances, and hardware. TVs, radios, records players, and stereos became big. I was selling them so my experience was different than most people. Old records were 78rpm, then 45, and 33.3. You could buy a song on a 45 record for less than a dollar. An album on 33.3rpm was $5-10. Most people chose only the entertainment they wanted. The teenagers liked 45s. Adults bought 33.3rpm albums. Those of us who were tied to the past, we kept buying the 78s.  

I was married by then and I listened to whatever Barbara wanted to watch. She liked dramas, so we would watch those few dramatic programs on TV. Radio went from having dramatic stories to music and became the place to hear popular songs. TV took over the storytelling for movies too. 

Movies changed from an immense variety to just a few each year. They were expensive to make and didn’t earn as much at the box office anymore. There was some variety but movies were not the same as when the studio produces hundreds per year. Far less as the 1960s came along. 

Later on when the kids could go to movies, we would try to fit one in, but it wasn’t the same. Television came along and that changed it. You didn’t have to go out to see movies because they were on TV virtually every night.

 I remember many nights with the three kids on the floor in the living room watching a nine-inch screen. Jeanine and Larry always fell asleep but Paul never did. He could quote the plots and dialogue from movies he had seen when he was little. He didn’t talk until he was two and then we couldn’t stop him. 

The last time I was in a movie theater? It would have been when Claudelle was alive. We only did that once in a while. Other things, like friends and work, became more important. 

I liked it when Johnny Carson was on TV every night. We would switch during commercials to the other programs, but Johnny Carson dominated beyond anything you could imagine today. His successors didn’t have the following he did. He said that the key was to make each person who came on his program feel like they were the most important person in the world. He was trying to make them big while they were on his show. That made him someone who wasn’t competing with those who were trying to be stars. Other people tried to be like him but he had a style that was just Johnny Carson. Midwestern, grew up in Nebraska. So he sounded like middle Americans.  

I noticed being involved in politics, the only constant was change. Everything was always changing. It never stayed the same. So what we did was adjust to change. We could make it faster or slower, that was our influence to change more or less rapidly. The most was in the late 50s and 60s, and the time when we changed the least was WWII. The war was big enough itself. We didn’t want our social life to change as fast. TV came after WWII because we were ready for it.

It’s been interesting to see change, to accept it, and learn to thrive on it. From TV to the internet, I wasn’t as sophisticated as my kids and grandkids. I didn’t get involved with the computer right away, so I still mostly watch TV.