RIVER CITY JOURNAL: MATINEES AT THE MELINDA WERE A TIME WARP

It is a long way, and a long time, from this week's Oscars to yesteryear's Saturday matinees in your favorite hometown.

Remember what you could do with a quarter?

For one thing, you could go to the Saturday matinee at the Melinda Theatre just off Main Street (ticket price: 10 cents) and get refreshments (Coke was 5 cents; popcorn was 5 cents). This meant you had a big decision to make about that leftover nickel. Would you get the Hershey bar, or would you save the nickel for the dime store? It never really occurred to a youngster to save the nickel. Period. A quarter and a Saturday were meant for each other. Who were you to stand in the way?

At the Melinda in the 1950s you got your money's worth. For the dime admission you got previews of coming attractions, a cartoon, a serial and the main feature.

Previews of coming attractions, called trailers in show-biz talk, are still the best value-per-minute at a motion-picture theater. Where else can you get the gist of a two-hour movie in a couple of minutes, including all the best punch lines?

And whatever happened to movie cartoons? Television took most of them and made them the viewing of choice for a couple of generations of children. Imagine this: There are grown-ups today who have never seen a cartoon at the beginning of a movie. Some sociologist ought to check this out. This may explain teen pregnancy and a lot of other stuff.

Then came the serial, which often was as good or better than the movie. Serials were teasers. The continuing story, which lasted over several weeks, kept you coming back for more. Another dime, another episode. Every episode ended with the hero in a life-threatening situation from which there couldn't possibly be any rescue. Yet, when you came back next Saturday, fate had somehow intervened, and the hero lasted about 10 minutes before getting into another serious pickle. In the end, of course, all the good guys won, and all the bad guys were sent to prison for the rest of their lives or were dead -- off-screen, of course, because dead bodies weren't acceptable viewing for impressionable young audiences in those days.

After 40 years, you can't recall one hero of the serials by name. However, you remember they always fell into one of three general categories: Western, gangster or jungle. The story lines rarely changed, but the bad guy might be a renegade outlaw in one serial, a bank-robbing desperado in another or a crazed, man-eating lion in another. You remember you wondered all week how the hero could possibly get out of the predicament he was in. This was serious business.

Nearly every movie at the Melinda was suitable for family viewing, even though this was before ratings. One time the theater owners brought "Elmer Gantry" to town, which created quite a buzz in a town with more evangelists per-capita than probably any place on Earth other than Nashville during a Southern Baptist convention. The theater owner imposed an age limit for this movie. You had to be 16 years old to get in, and the price went up too. You and your friend Bill decided to go anyway, at night. You trembled at the notion that you would be found out. You tried to act as 16 as any 13-year-old possibly could. You wondered if you were caught if they would take you straight to jail or -- worse -- just tell your parents.

"Elmer Gantry" was memorable, mostly as one of those coming-of-age events in every young boy's life. The movie was OK. Getting in and out undetected was the main thing.

Saturday afternoons were an escape from the real world. The dark theater was another dimension in a world of Korean War, nuclear bombs, Sputnik and eighth grade. When the matinee was over, you stepped out into the blinding, bright sunlight and headed across Main Street to Toney's Rexall Drug Store for a chocolate malt, which came with a cookie on the side.

Now that was the real world.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.