NEWTON'S LAW: NOSTALGIA AND THE MOVIES: BIGGER WAS BETTER BACK THEN

The fact is I am quite happy in a movie, even a bad movie. Other people, so I have read, treasure memorable moments in their lives. ... What I remember is the time John Wayne killed three men with a carbine as he was falling to the dusty street in "Stagecoach," and the time the kitten found Orson Welles in the doorway in "The Third Man."

From "The Moviegoer"

by Walker Percy

There is a comedian who claims he spent so much time in dark movie theaters when he was a child that his mother feared he would grow into a mushroom.

It's a funny bit of exaggeration. On the other hand, there is probably some fungus on all of us.

The moldy garden for my young imagination was a place called the Dixie Theater, an unkempt barn of a building with a sticky floor beneath the battered seats and restrooms hygienic as a landfill. Had I known the word condemnation before my age reached double digits, I might have thought it applicable to this structure.

Still, its art deco facade, neon enclosed marquee and colorful posters provided life to the dismal sameness of a small-town Main Street. And your parents could give a quarter for a Coke and popcorn at the concession stand and later demand change.

The Dixie's rightful redemption, however, is claimed by what went on there. Within this cavern were images of light and sound that took you beyond the city limits sign and your own tender years. The times might have been innocent, but you still treasured the escape.

On the screen of the Dixie I watched the Three Stooges encounter aliens, giant spiders attack cities and John Wayne lay claim to the West. There were double features in those days, so often John Wayne did this twice in one night.

One time, I asked, as was allowed, to see the same movie two days in a row: "Jason and the Argonauts." I was stunned by the title character's invention; were I battling a mythological giant, I would never think to pull a plug from his heel and drain the blood from his body.

No hype lured us to the theater; we went anyway. There was no rating system to keep kids away. There were no movie critics to be found in the town's weekly newspaper.

Youthful tastes lack subtlety, I admit. My sister and I came home from a matinee one Saturday disappointed by the feature. It was a movie of painful length where men did little but talk and ride camels across the desert. There was one interesting part where a man was sliced apart by a sword. "Lawrence of Arabia" was not intended for a crowd accustomed to cowboy stars who let fists do their talking.

There were plenty of these huge theaters sprinkled around the country in those days, though they eventually lost pace with the economy. Heating and cooling these structures became prohibitive, and movies became more events than merely an evening's entertainment. Ultimately they gave way to various shopping center multi-plexes, which are nice in their own way, clean and convenient, but not necessarily memorable.

In the fading glory of these large auditoriums, I have a fond memory. It was in the early 1980s and "E.T." was showing locally at the now bygone Rialto. In this vast hall on that one night, the air-conditioning bill got paid; there were few empty seats.

The building was crowded and old, but it was great to sit among several hundred people and share the wonder of a particularly inspired movie. When Steven Spielberg made the film, he could probably envisioned its presentation this way: a big screen, a large crowd ... and magic.

I note with some satisfaction that one of the grand movies houses of Cape Girardeau is again open. It was on this same screen that I watched Robert DeNiro try to talk Jodie Foster out of a life of prostitution in "Taxi Driver," Kathleen Turner deceive William Hurt in "Body Heat" and Christopher Walken play Russian roulette in "The Deer Hunter."

I remember a lot of movies I've seen. It's been years since I've remembered the theaters I've seen them in.

A couple of weeks ago, I took my children to the reopened Broadway. It was Spielberg again and most of the seats were filled. I wanted them to see how movies were once shown. The building was crowded and old, but the kids ~enjoyed themselves.

And, for some reason, I couldn't stop smiling.