Cowboy “babysitters” at the cineplex.

by Jimmie Meese Moomaw I have absolutely no recollection of the first movie I ever saw. To my knowledge, Mama and Daddy never went to the movies–never, not once. All the movie memories I have are of me going alone or with or to meet friends at the theater. The very earliest memories are of the double-feature cowboy movies…

Mother-daughter animated movie memories.

by Heather Dunn Schmitt My earliest memory of going to the movies is a foggy one, but it’s there. I was five years old, I think, and my dad piled all of us–my older sister, my younger brother, and me–into his 1966 Ford Mustang. We drove for what seemed to my young mind to be…

Movies with my grandmother.

by Lara Fowler I can trace my love for classic film back to one person. Inhabiting a small house in a quiet neighborhood just north of the Santa Clara Valley, my grandparents, Julian and Frances Polon, were both Los Angeles transplants. My grandmother, born Canadian, had moved to Los Angeles for nursing school and stayed…

Movie memories: A new arrival.

by Terry Coffey One film that really stands out in my memory is Darby O’Gill and the Little People, a 1959 Disney movie. I was seven years old and did not go to the movies much–I lived in Olive Branch, Mississippi, and you had to go all the way to Memphis to the movies, and we just…

Memories of going to the “show.”

by Donette Lee While I cannot describe my first trip to the movies, I do remember that, when I was in preschool, Mother or Daddy would ask the other: “Do you want to go to the S-H-O-W?” But soon I began to answer, “I want to go, too!” and they had to quit spelling the…

Memories of a big-screen family connection.

by Carolyn Camper Mann I can’t remember the first movie I went to in the small town where I grew up. However, I do remember a movie that was very special. We lived in Omaha, Nebraska in the early 1960s. My husband, Harry, was on an Air Force “Bootstrap” assignment to complete a Bachelor’s degree in…

The ballad of Cat Ballou.

“I think half of this belongs to a horse somewhere out in the valley.” –Lee Marvin, upon accepting the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1965 Cat Ballou (Jane Fonda), a naive schoolteacher turned vigilante, sits in jail awaiting her execution by hanging. As a duo of singing cowboy minstrels (Nat King Cole and Stubby…

A “horsey” movie memory.

As a “bonus” entry for the Horseathon, hosted this weekend by Page of My Love of Old Hollywood, we present a movie memory revolving around one of the most famous “horse pictures” of all, written by our friend Del Oehms Hamilton. When I was growing up, we NEVER called it “going to the movies.” My…