Big screen crush in Uniontown’s movie heyday
I am often reminded, as I shove acquired quarters into a paper coin wrapper, hoping to eventually accumulate a fortune, my mother used to press a 25-cent piece into the palm of my hand and send me off to the movies. That quarter meant a movie and also a bag of peanuts or popcorn from the little shop next to the State Theater on Uniontown’s Main Street.
I know the theater is still there, refurbished as a performing arts center, but sameness ends there. No more nut shop, and certainly no more movie and a treat with a single coin in your hand.
We all know a movie today takes several dollars, at least $6 and often more. A small popcorn is now $4.
This is a roundabout way of my nostalgia this month, not so much about the money as I realize everything is relative – and penny candy? What’s that?
No, much of my nostalgia is related to my hometown, as always, but more so because of all those happy memories with the movies way back when. It started with a dime, then it was 11 cents, then 22 cents … and on and on … the price of a movie.
What’s going on, we thought, as we needed more than a dime to escape to another world at the movies?
On any given Saturday, my friends and I could also see the same movie over and over (the length of a film was shorter in the 1940s) and on some occasions we would see two in a single afternoon, at a choice of theaters – at the State, the Penn, the newer Manos (all on Main Street) or the Capitol around the corner. Such bliss.
So while I begin this essay with money matters, it is not the reason for my reverie.
It’s August. Each August, each month becomes more precious at my age. I am reminded of that age not only by looking in the mirror or collecting Social Security or looking pathetic when I am running for the bus – but by the realization Van Johnson will be 92 on Aug. 25!
Yes, 92! That isn’t possible, is it?
And why do I think of Mr. Johnson? Because in recalling Uniontown, the theaters, carefree Saturday afternoons and time passing, he was the man – he was the young heartthrob on the screen, the only actor I ever wrote to and requested an autographed photograph. I was in love. I would marry him some day.
Such are the dreams of young girls.
To accept that he is to be 92 is to accept that I will be 79 very soon. And yet my memories growing up are so vivid, I would swear I was still in my early teens, swooning over this freckle-faced young actor with a swagger in his walk and a smile that wouldn’t quit. He wasn’t handsome by the leading man standards of Clark Gable or Tyrone Power, but he struck a boy-next-door emotion in me and to this day, some 60 years later, as I can see repeats of those old movies on TCM and other cable channels, I defend my adulation for this movie star.
Fortunately, in my career as a journalist for 55 years, I did finally have the privilege of interviewing the actor back in the 1970s, by phone. He was appearing in a stage play at the time in Detroit. He probably thought he was interviewing me because I spent the first several minutes of our conversation telling him just what I am telling you today: “I had a major crush on you, Mr. Johnson.”
I realize I wasn’t the first or the only woman to tell him such a thing. In fact, in his gentlemanly way he often refers to today’s “blue-haired ladies” as the women who made him a Hollywood star. For anyone reading this column under the age of 50, I know what you are thinking. Who is Van Johnson?
I guess you would say he is a living legend, but he appeared in over 100 films (I don’t think I saw them all) and he made his Broadway debut in “New Faces of 1936.” Yes, he was a chorus boy, who would be known most of life for the red socks he always wore. I’m not sure why.
MGM signed him and from his first star billing in “Two Girls and a Sailor” in 1944 and later in “A Guy Named Joe” and “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo” (I saw them all at the State), I was a goner. I was 15.
He was the first to steal my heart. I have mentioned it before and, in fact, was contacted a year ago by someone who read one of my columns mentioning Mr. Johnson. The writer told me he saw Mr. Johnson almost every day, and that he had just turned 90 in 2006. He lives in Nyack, N.Y.
He has had cancer and has lived with a metal plate in his head due to an auto accident in 1942. He married once, I believe, and broke my heart, but not my life-long role as his fan.
Of course I tried to contact him for this column but wasn’t successful. I hope he is well. I wanted to wish him happy birthday and to again thank him for his gift to me and so many others those many years ago, in a darkened movie theater, when 25 cents bought you romance, laughter, tears – oh, and a bag of peanuts.
Life was good, especially at the movies.
Barbara Cloud of Pittsburgh grew up in Uniontown and is a well-known newspaper columnist.