Volume 6 , Issue 23

Ritz Theater, The Thing (1951) & Flood of Memories...

"I thoroughly enjoyed Vol. 6, Is. 22 (as I do all others). As Judy wrote, it brought back a flood of memories -- Monfort Drug Store fire; Doc Southern and Jimmy Holder and sodas and friends; the Washington School fifth grade class (I was at least a grade younger and went to Longfellow, but sisters and brothers of some of those pictured were classmates of mine); and summer jobs cutting wheat for Sheldon Sherman. But the story of the fire last weekend that destroyed the building that once was the Ritz theater brought back a vivid one.

In 1951 the movie The Thing was released. I was 8 or 9 years old. One of my best friends at the time was Johnny Brand, the grandson of Bill Brand who owned Brand's Pool Hall (that's a whole 'nother story), who was a bit older, more experienced, bigger and stronger than me. When he found out that The Thing was playing at the Ritz and that it was supposed to be a really scary movie, Johnny wanted to go see it and was able to convince my grandmother, Naomi Fash, that it would be just fine for me to go see that movie with him that night. I really didn't want to see it because everyone who had seen it said it was really scary. But I would be with Johnny Brand and he wasn't afraid of anything.

So that evening we walked downtown from my house on Fourth Street (and I'm sure stopped next door at the drug store to see who was there and brag that we were going to see The Thing ), paid our dime at the Ritz ticket counter and, because we were kids, went right down to the front and sat on the second row, right side. We would never sit in the balcony of the Ritz because that's where all of the high school kids sat and smooched and harassed and made fun of little kids who thought it would be all right to sit up there with them.

Movies were bigger than life those days (we had no TV), and particularly bigger when watching from the second row, neck bent, looking up at those huge figures on the screen. From time to time during the first part of the movie, I remember Johnny punching me or saying 'boo' or something like that when something suspenseful would happen and then laughing when I jumped. But I wasn't really, really scared. Until the time when the guy watching the ice block that held a huge alien that crashed near the North Pole didn't notice that the ice melted and the alien was missing. From that time on I was terrified; the dog was killed and stuffed in a bin; someone else was found dead; and the good guys discovered that the really mean plant creature, who couldn't be killed with anything, was breeding more really mean plant creatures so that they all could kill the whole world. Even though I was petrified with fear, I knew in my heart that nothing could really hurt me because I was sitting with Johnny Brand and after all, as he told me only that afternoon it was only a movie.

Then when the really mean plant creature burst out of a door, screaming with arms raised intending to kill everything... everyone in the Ritz screamed and jumped out of their seats. Including Johnny Brand, who not only jumped out of his seat but was running up the aisle toward the exit. I thought: if Johnny Brand was scared and was running away, I sure as hell wasn't going to sit there on the second row of the Ritz all alone with no one to protect me from that evil thing, so I jumped up and ran after him as fast as I could and we both burst out of the doors of the Ritz screaming and scared to death.

It was pitch black dark outside. We told my grandmother that after the movie we would walk back to my house together. We couldn't call her to come get us, so we took off running toward my house as fast as we could. Johnny was a much faster runner than I was so for the last two blocks I was running alone, knowing that at any minute I would be killed by a really mean plant creature whom I knew was lurking in the stairwell of the First Methodist Church's basement. I'm happy to report that I survived. But from that time on, both the Ritz theater and Johnny Brand always looked a bit different to me. Keep up the good work." -- Bob   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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