“Mom, can I go to the movies with my friends today?”
“Yes, if you take Ranell with you.”
My mother was a practical woman, and so it was as simple as that. It wasn’t necessary for her to ask my sister pertinent questions such as, “Which friends?” or “What movie?” She trusted that if I went along, there would be no shenanigans and, courtesy of me, Mom would get a fairly accurate accounting of the event and participants.
With only the slightest hesitation, my sister replied, “Sure, Mom. I’ll take her with me.”
It was the summer of 1962. I was ten years old, my sister was thirteen. In the neighborhood near the Catholic grammar school we attended was a small, balcony-less, movie theater, named for the street on which it was located. The Bryn Mawr had seating for just over 750 people. Nearer to our home was the magnificent Uptown Theater, which boasted 4,381 seats, a huge lobby featuring a pond stocked with giant goldfish and a ceiling that soared 140 feet high. Back then the Uptown ran “first-run,” double-feature films, while the Bryn Mawr featured single, second-run movies. The Uptown charged 50 cents and the Bryn Mawr only 25 cents, so for the bargain price of one dollar, my mother could rid herself of the two of us for the afternoon as 50 cents would buy each of us admission to the cinema, a 15 cent box of too-salty popcorn and and a ten cent waxed paper cup of soda pop with which to wash it down.
It was a sunny day as my sister and I headed up Broadway on a one-mile walk that would take us from the worn and faded former grandeur of the Uptown neighborhood to the less grand, but newer, cleaner and safer neighborhood of Edgewater. As we neared Balmoral Avenue the instructions were laid out for me: “When I meet my girlfriends, you are on your own. You are to sit by yourself on the opposite side of the theater and not within five rows of my friends and me. I will meet you in front of Stoyas Pharmacy fifteen minutes after the show.”
I found a seat inside the dark, uncrowded theater. I sat on the right side, as you faced the screen, in row two or three. Just before I nestled down in my chair, I peeked around to see my sister and two other, soon to be high school freshmen, girls giggling together on the left side, about five rows back.
The theater darkened even more. I was reaching down for some popcorn, when I heard that whistle, that three-toned whistle that I remember to this day. It was a short tone, followed by a sustained tone, followed by another short tone. It was a call of some sort. It repeated twice more. The screen was still black. It got my attention and for the next 153 minutes I didn’t give a hoot that I’d a sister who’d just abandoned me in a movie theater.
***
Until that day I never cared for musicals. They were something my mother liked, not me. I found it absurdly unrealistic that people in a film would burst forth in song and dance. But, this was different. I found myself willingly suspending my disbelief and embracing the fantasy. Perhaps it was the realism of the theme.
After the attention-garnering whistle, there appears on the screen an abstract scribbling of sorts. It has a yellow background with a series of various small vertical black markings. The black abstract remains unchanged, but the background color gradually changes to orange. All the while, this hauntingly cool jazzy instrumental medley of music plays alongside. The background color goes from orange to red, to blood-red, to purple, to blue, to red again, to green, to orange, to green, to blue; and all the while the compilation of songs play, in tandem to the color sequences. These are songs I’ll, later in life, come to love. I hear bits of the tunes I'll soon know as “Tonight,” “Maria,” and some of faster paced Latino music. This prologue, I later discover, lasts 4.49 minutes, and even though the screen showed only subtle changes, I was rapt.
The music softens and the background returns to blue, the title of the movie slowly rises on the screen and the abstract lines evolve to become a city skyline.
The music softens and gives way to the sound of rhythmic snapping fingers. A directly overhead aerial view of towering urban buildings come into focus. The drifting overhead shot changes, from views of harbors, roadways, and tall buildings. There are background city sounds. When the shot comes to the Empire State Building even I, as a 10-year-old, can recognize this landmark.
The shots zeroes in a bit and I see neighborhoods, some with stately homes, one with a beautiful domed building, then parking lots filled with automobiles. The camera focus is closer still as I see an overhead shot of a divided playground area, with one area showing young men playing handball. Then the shot is closer still as you see a group of tough-looking young men idling, their backs up against the chain link fence of the very playground we’d seen overhead. The group, snapping their fingers in unison, looks out on the playground, as an errant handball bounces their way. A guy in the back, near the fence, grabs the ball on it’s bounce. A young man their age cautiously walks toward them, as if afraid to extend his hand to request the return of his ball. They stare the lad down before the group leader gestures to the tough guy to relinquish the ball. The young man takes the ball and quickly runs away.
The gang resumes snapping in unison and, with a sideway nod of his head, the leader beckons the group to follow him. They continue snapping fingers as they stride across the playground. A 7 or 8 year old girl sits in the center of their path, busily scrawling on her elaborate blacktop chalk drawing. The group walks around the perimeter of the girl’s art, respecting her space. She is clearly not an enemy.
The toughs walk directly toward some male kids playing basketball. In a midair pass, the toughs intercept the ball and spend a quick few seconds of shooting around. It’s apparent that, like the handball youth, these kids are in fear of the gang, and they do not protest. The gang returns the basketball, snickering in their domination and they continue out onto the street. Here they dance freely as it becomes apparent from the reactions of passersby that the gang owns the street.
At least until they run into a young, tough Puerto Rican man...
Whoa. I was captivated. This wasn’t my mother’s Meet Me in St. Louis musical...
I’m pretty sure I shed a tear at some point in this movie that was nominated for 11 Oscars, 10 of which it won, including Best Picture. And the epilogue was as cool as the prologue. It listed the credits as if they were graffiti written on the very walls, fences, doorways and signs, I'd just seen in the movie. The filmmakers thought of everything that could captivate and win over a 10-year-old kid, who'd previously eschewed musicals.
***
I met my sister as scheduled at Stoyas. We walked home in near silence, as I was deep in thought about the film. I’d already figured out that it was actually the retelling of Romeo and Juliet that Sr. Michaela had told us about. Finally, my sister broke the ice, “How’d you like the movie? It was good don’t you think?”
“Yes.” I smiled, looking her directly in the eye. “I liked it a lot.”
“You’re not going to tell Mom, are you?” she gulped with trepidation.
I was impervious. I’d sat through an adult movie in a theater all by myself. She couldn’t manipulate me anymore. I looked up at her again and smiled, “Of course not. After all, Sis, ‘womb to tomb,’ ‘birth to earth.’ ”
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