Can you remember the first few movies you saw as a child?

I must have been 5-6 years young when my late uncle had taken me to the nearby theatre [Ganesh Talkies] to watch "Absent Minded Professor". A few scenes from this are still fresh in my memory. That movie was about the forgetful professor who was a genuis and keeps inventing things. One of his inventions was [in that story] called "Flubber". He drops a piece of flubber and it keeps on bouncing higher and higher all over the place. That gives him many ideas and he tries it in various applications like shoe soles, car tires... he plays a game of basketball using those flubber shoes and none can catch him as he bounces higher than all players while bouncing the ball and 'slam dunks' all his shots from high above! That was very funny! Another scene is that his car is in flight like an aeroplane! I'd love to see this movie again, if at all it is available anywhere since this is my first memory of watching a movie in a theatre. I think some movies in our local language Kannada also were seen, but this seems to be my first - at least as far as I can remember.

It was a great hit in that era for its stunts and tricks and the impression it had created among the public. To any of those that forgot anything he was labeled or called as "Absent Minded Professor". Such was its popularity. Anybody remember this movie by any chance? It was also the time in the early sixties when English movies had become popular in our city.

Can you trace back your steps to those days?

Dinu

According to the Internet Movie Database http://imdb.com
the movie The Absent Minded Professor came out in 1961, starring Fred McMurray. I remember that one from my childhood, also.

I also remember seeing Yours, Mine, and Ours in the theater-one of my favorites.
Some others I remember seeing in my younger days, either in the theater or at a drive-in:

McClintock (one of the very earliest I can remember)

Planet of the Apes

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Alien

The Impossible Years

Where Angels go, Trouble Follows

The Incredible Voyage ( I think thats the name...about medical/scientist
people being shrunken down and injected into the blood stream of an
important person, so that they can repair damage, and save his life - what a story line, but I loved it!

I remember it was a french movie about a family..don't know what it really was about, but remember the mother putting the little girls hand on the stove for something she had done...hmmmm can't remember name or real storyline...but it made me ill and have nightmares...

The first movie I saw - when I was very little - was Disney's "Bambi". I was enthralled by the huge screen, and the sad parts of the movie moved me to tears.

I remember "going to the cinema" in England in the 1960's. Ushers with flashlights saw you to your seat, you watched an introductory feature (usually a news documentory or a cartoon, sometimes a longer "B" movie) before the main film, and smartly uniformed ladies carried trays of iced drinks and snacks on trays around the theatre at intermission and served you in your seat.

When I was 15 or 16, my school friend and I snuck in to a movie rated for age 18 and over. It was called "Around the Mulberry Bush", and I forget who starred in it, but when it showed the male lead taking a cold bath, my friend was so shocked by the nudity that she forced me to leave the theatre with her! I never did catch the end of that movie, and I had to wait until I was married to see a nude man in a bath tub...

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. I also remember seeing westerns with Black Bart, and others with Tom Mix. Guess this pretty well shows my age, huh? ☺

Sugarplum, thanks for the link. There were only two stills in that link. I'd love to see more if any from my memory exists anywhere. I don't mind watching that movie again. I was never aware of the artiste's names.

The darkness of theatres, the ushers coming in to show late-comers their seats [sometimes a nuisance when he came blocking the view of the big screen], the news part, the highlights of the upcoming movie, the advertisements [very few].... then when smoking inside the hall was not disallowed, it created such an awful smell. I remember when I was a bit grown up, may be I was about 10-12, I had got suffocated inside the theatre and had forced my aunt and mom to quit at intermission as my breathlessness was quite unbearable. It was a good movie and my mom even remembers my act which they thought was a drama. We could not go to watch that movie again. That sort of drama I used to make when I did not want to go to school, too. That was the reputation that made them not to get fully convinced. Not knowing how to express it, I complained of 'stomach ache'!

We did not have people serving inside during intermission, but people went out to the passages where snacks or coffee were sold.

Another movie I remember was "Sound of Music". Very vaguely. I remember it was full of songs. I think it came in the second half of the sixties.

We used to go to theatres when a good movie came. It was a great occasion to visit a theatre - usually many from the familly or friends went together. It was one of the very few sources of entertainment. Mysore can boast of theatres dating back to the 1940s. Kannada and Hindi movies too were shown in most theatres, but a few had 'specialized' in getting English films. There were four shows per day. Morning show, Matinee, Evening show and Night show. Our normal choices were morning or matinee.

The light rays from the projector to the screen was a pleasurable sight! We used to lift our heads up to see them change as the scenes changed and wondered how it came from and looked at the little window of the projector room behind us.

The first movie that I remember going to as a child was the "Shaggy Dog". My uncle took us there to the "Grand Theater" in Evansville, Indiana. I can remember gawking at the theater more than the movie. I can't remember what year that was but I was about 10 or 12 years old, so it was in the late 50's. The old theater has since been torn down, what a shame. Thanks for posting this thread, it brings back fond memories.

Thank you MsMaati. I love 'nostalgiating'. The theatre I saw Absent Minded Professor has also been torn down. I had later come to know that it belonged to a classmate's father. I was to meet that classmate 3 decades later just by chance when I visited another old friend opposite his house. He told me that the person that owned that theatre was there and I met him -luckily he was home. When I asked him about his plans he said he had an idea of building a shopping complex. That was the theatre where we had seen many English movies in later years. I have some of the tickets preserved from my older years just for memory's sake.

It wasn't the first movie I ever saw but it is the earliest one I actually remember.
BEN HUR 1959 starring Charlton Heston. We were visiting in San Francisco and saw it in a theater with a curved screen so the action seemed to surround you and the charriot races thundered with such intensity I was afraid they would run us all down.

Wow! just thinking about it all these years later I can feel the awe of that movie experience!

Thanks's for bringingit to mind.

i remember quite a few movies when i was very small, but the one that sticks in my mind is The Spider. my uncle roger took me to the lemay theatre for a matinee and it scared me to pieces. he got in hot water for taking me too! lol

Let's see...Sound of Music, Old Yeller (that really made me cry!), Bambi (now the deer get to eat our gardens!).

I saw Ben Hur in the early 80s along with a few friends and it was in another theatre [not the one I said was torn down] where sound system was good.

First movie? Wow. Maybe Disney's, Fantasia. Seem to remember Bambi and Sleeping Beauty. The Blob had quite an effect on me. I must've been around 7 or 8. I felt, for several days after seeing it, that I couldn't touch the floor because the blob might get me. I had to walk on the furniture indoors and outside I had to be on my bicycle. I'm sure my parents had second thoughts about any more scary movies for me!

Song of the South, saw it in Fulda Germany and I would have been 5 years old so it would have been 1973. After that I can remember seeing Soylent Green *LOL* Dad had to babysit and that's the movie he wanted to see, he caught heck for letting a 5 year old see it. Can also remember going to see The Sting. I've loved Paul Newman and Robert Redford ever since.

I saw The Absent Minded Professor too when I was quite young...The Shaggy Dog and The Love Bug, but I guess the first memory of actually going to the theater to see a movie was when we were visiting relatives in Memphis, TN and we went to see How The West Was Won...some of it was actually filmed about 40 miles away on the Ohio River. It's a 1962 movie, so I was about 5 years old.

oh, it was a huge deal to see How the West Was Won. we went to the Martin Cinerama and the screen wrapped around and you felt like you were right in the middle of it all. it was very exciting and our whole family went. i think that's the first and last time that ever happened! lol

big red - and lets not forget lash lerue, the guy with the whip. guess we are about the same age. i remember going to the ravoli theater to see 3 movies, 21 cartoons a news reel and a short (thats what we called these action adventure things that were in 15 minute segments and they would continue week buy week, somthing like the show "24" on t.v. now. we got to see all of that for 35 cents. we wold stand in line at 10 in the morning with our lunch bags in hand and wait for it to open about 11 a.m. then we wold rush to get the best seats. there were no advertisements and no previews of other movies. we would get out just in time for dinner at home. i remember the "thin man" mopvies with william powell and though i can't remember the name i remember wearing the 3d glasses. that didn't last to long though. i remember the first "thing" with james arness of gunsmoke fame. how about 'it came frm outer space', and the "day the earth stood still" and of course steve mcqueen started in the glob. i think that was the name and if must have been his first movie. he looked about 16 years old.

thanks for the nice thread dinu.

Oh my, I don't think I would have remembered if it weren't for araness, but I saw Song of the South too! I must have been in either the late 60's or early 70's. Zippidy-do-dah!

My other earliest memory was JAWS, and that stayed with me too long! (no wonder my mother fought me so long not to see it)

The theatre where I saw those movies was in Phoenix, Arizona; I think. It had "stars" on the ceiling that twinkled and moved around like a planetarium. Very ornate. Nothing like the new multiplex ones.

Godzilla 1955
scared the bejesus out of me.
don't know if it was the first but it sure made the biggest impression.
i was 4 y/o i think. I cried with my face buried in the seat LOL

Aside from reading all the above impressions of yore, I'd like to let you know a bit of the fanfare that goes on around here esp. with some heroes. Hero-worship goes to unimaginable extents. Huge cut-outs of the hero is put up [I'm speaking of the local language movies] at the theatre and the group that does this show gets a certain number of free tickets for the 'first show' there. They whistle when their hero arrives for the first time in the scenes. Some used to throw coins at the screens [which usually fell on front-row-people's heads!] when their hero did a class act! The benefeciaries were those that sat in the first few rows [they collected the coins!]. And the queues for the premier show was a sight! I never went like that -we preferred when the dust had settled, after people appreciating the movie - not the ads. I'll see if I can get a pic of the cut out and the mad rush of today in some theatre. There were many that saw movies of their heroes as many times as possible - I mean the same movie - and that was a great prestige they felt announcing that. One of my friends went to his hero's movies as many times as the name of the movie was pronounced in sound. For eg., "Computer".. com - pu - ter. That meant he visited thrice! There were others that boasted of seeing all 3 shows in the day in a row. Matinee, evening show and night show.

Dinu

Brother of the Wind, a Disney, but can't remember if I saw the LOVE Bug first or not.

My Son and his friends, when they were teenagers, use to drive me crazy by reciting a movie's lines from beginning to end while I was driving.

They would go into the theater which was managed by another friends father and see the show before it opened and recite the lines before anyone else in town had seen the movie. The theater manager thought it was funny.

This was especially annoying when they would recite entire movies but couldn't remember to do their homework or what they had studied in school that day. And they loved doing it with any movie I hadn't seen yet and ruin the plot for me.

lol I can do that with Monty Python movies, or Rocky Horror Picture Show lol and my parents wonder what I did my first two years in college....

Zany, that is interesting. It happens here too. There was a Hindi movie in the 70s called "Sholay". It was very popular. Running in the same theatre for 100 days was a 'success landmark'. It went on for more and more. It came again years later and did the same. Such was its popularity. People used to recite the dialogues by heart! My colleague was saying the other day during our coffee breaks that he had seen it a dozen times in hic college days. He was repeating a certain dialogue. Indeed, you are right, they remember these very well but forget their lessons. They remember the names and family histories of actors and actresses without a stutter. Such can be the craze of movies.

I remember a joke. A person goes to the theatre by taxi to watch a suspense thriller movie. Hands over the money to the driver on reaching. The driver says it costs more than the meter to which the person argues. Finally, the driver is left with collecting less fare. So he says "it was the villain's neighbour who murdered the lady" and leaves.

Dinu

Oh, that Taxi driver got his revenge allright!

The boys only saw a movie once and could recite the entire thing without missing a single word. But they were both failing in school! It was very frustrating to deal with. He is 30 now and still does this with movies! I told him that in addition to being annoying he must be an idiot savant!

We seem to remember well only what the mind likes and other things just cannot stick. It's a natural tendency of the mind - perhaps some psychologists can explain better.

Yes, the psychology of the mind is a fascinating subject.

i have seen the movie "magnificent seven" seven with yul brenner and steve mcquee so many time s that i can recite it from memory.

Thinking about the memorization of movie lines...I suppose it is not so surprising, as before modern times our entertainment came in the form of memorized epic poems, plays, songs, and stories. What is most surprisng is that so many of us have lost this ability to memorize!

Not the first movie I saw but I was very young and remember seeing "Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte" in the theatre. Betty Davis cuts off a man's hand and I freaked! They had to take me out of there! It cut everyones movie trip short and I had nightmares for days.

I have watched it as an adult and it isnt as bad now but still a good thriller.

My favorite movie as a kid was "The Thief of Bagdad". Just loved it, it had a genii in a bottle, an evil magician, a beautiful princess and flying carpets. I watched it so much I know it line for line and all the songs. Doesnt get any better!

Speaking of memorizing, June what you say is so true.

Ancient people memorized their family linage and recited it at gatherings ( it would take a long time) and even recently kids had to memorize poems and do recitals in school. I dont think they do this anymore.

Today we dont even have to remember phone numbers ( its in the cell phone) or remember to add and subtract ( calculators) and even people who work with money dont need to remember how because its done by the cash register. Its a shame cause if you dont use it...you lose it.

About memorizing, you will agree that as we age, this ability diminishes. I've never been good at that at any time, honestly.

In another movie of our local language Kannada, I remember a particular scene where a poor boy who is spiritually energetic bakes a pancake on his back for another poor boy. I must have been six or seven by then and this scene has just stuck.

Wow, Dinu! That sounds like a great movie. Zany, how funny about the kids. Jada, you made me think about the story telling traditions of many cultures in the past. Will we now get our cultural information ( or whatever you want to call it, indoctrination? ) from the film industry? Did we already? Hmmm.

RoyBird
Re your question, it would seem so. That is their job after all, a movie is just another form of storytelling I think. Idealistically, movies should relate something of the "heroes journey" or the" human condition" or some theme that is present in great literature. These themes are universal and the most successful movies contain them.

Does it make a difference if you read Huckleberry Finn to your kids or let them watch Nemo?

I'm not sure on that one. But we did "force" two of our foster kids to read " The Hobbit " with us one summer. We had reading and popsickles after dinner. Later, you know, the "Lord of the Rings" movies came out. Although those particular children had moved on ( to live with their grandmother ) by then, we like to think that they enjoyed the movie more having had the background story.

Oh my this is going to show how weird my mother was and still is. I remember the first movie i saw, it was in a drive in and was a triple feature night of classic horror with "The Fog" followed by "They Live" and we could hardly stay awake for the last one which was "The Thing" I still have never seen that movie from start to finish yet. Needless to say i still love good horror films to this day. Especially John Carpenter!
Also my mother loved the the "King Kong and Godzilla" shows on the television. She use to make me watch them with her every friday night and laughed at me everytime Godzilla fought and i cried about it! I know too cute, but i thought he was really getting hurt.

I have tried to watch them now, the godzilla ones and i find it hard cause they are so corny looking to me now, but i loved them as a young child of 5-9. Go figure!

hyer1972,

I'm with your mom! Love Godzilla and all the japanese monster flicks. Rodan, Mothra. Just picked up the collection on DVD!

Oh, my 8 yr old son would be SO jealous knowing someone got to see the original movie!! I turned an old movie on for him when he was about 2 and he's been a Godzilla nut ever since!! This morning he was going thru his dvd's (I think he has like 19, and several toys) and informed me that he really needed a few more Godzilla movies. btw, newer movies like "Final Wars" have great monsters in them!

pics like this mysteriously turn up in my camera (not my counter with food on it..lol)

LOL, if it is not your counter it is probably a not so subtle hint from your son that these are his friends and he wants you to get them for him