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The Way it Was: Remembering 'picture shows'

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by John Straka

Before television, there were motion picture theaters, also known as the movies, the cinema and the picture show. Early picture shows featured cowboys and Indians, detectives, love stories, comedies and adventures in exotic places with the French Foreign Legion and expeditions into deep, dark Africa, along with other themes.

Certain scenes from those old movies are still in my memory after all those years. One such scene is from a movie in which a fort is surrounded by an enemy army intent on forcing the military to surrender due to a lack of water. Every day, the enemy dumps water into the sand in full view of the thirsty troops in an effort to add to their misery.

On being surrounded and denied access to a source of water outside the walls of the fort, the officer in charge orders water to be severely rationed. The enemy leader wonders how the soldiers can last so long without water and begins to consider that maybe the men in the fort have dug a well. As a last resort, the fort commander orders all remaining water put into a barrel and the next day, at high noon, when the enemy makes their daily display 0f spilling water, the men in the fort reply by pouring the last of their water over the wall -- thus convincing the enemy that a source of water within the walls of the fort had been found. The enemy gave up and retreated.

An old Fred Thompson cowboy movie included one scene that is still in my memory. Fred rode a big, white horse and in this scene, one of the "bad guys" opens a barn door just enough to get his hand out, intent on shooting the "good guy" with his six shooter. The horse, standing nearby, just leans his huge rump against the door, crushing the bandit's hand.

I also remember some Laurel and Hardy scenes. In one of them, a police officer is questioning the two comedians and asks Stanely, "Where do you live?" With a shrug of his shoulders, Stan points to Ollie and says, "I live with him."

This irritates the officer, who then asks Ollie, "Where do you live?" Ollie gives a look as though the answer is obvious and wonders why the officer doesn't get it. He points to Stanley and says, "I live with him."

The officer does a slow burn and asks the two, "Where do the both of you live?"

Stan and Ollie look at each other in a way that says "This cop is really dumb," and in sing-song unison, say, "We live together!"

In another Laurel and Hardy scene, the pair try to escape from a building by sliding down a drain pipe. Ollie makes Stan go first and as Ollie nears the ground, Stan tells him to spread his legs.

Ollie ends up sitting on a rain barrel. With his trademark look of exasperation, Olle asks Stan "Why did you tell me to spread my legs."

"So you wouldn't get your feet wet!" Stan replies.

The Little Rascals, in the "Our Gang" comedy series also left me with memories. In one episode, one of the little rascals finds some money and is persuaded to return it. When the little guy doesn't get an expected reward, he is told he will get his reward from heaven. So he goes outside and sits with his back to the wall of a shed to think about what it means to get a reward from heaven. A hen on the shed's roof lays an egg that rolls down and lands on the little rascal's head. He feels the gooey mess, then looks up to heaven and says, "Some reward!"

The little rascals were riding around in a home-made go-cart in another episode. Every time the driver moved a lever, the art would go and when the lever was released, the car would stop. At the end of the movie, the hood of the go-cart is opened to reveal a goat prodded by a fork attached to the lever.

I always liked Gary Cooper. In a long-ago movie, Cooper was a small-town lawman in our wild west. He chased a fugitive into Canada and stopped at an outpost of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to stay overnight. He was welcomed as a fellow officer of the law, but it was evident that Cooper was the exact opposite of the Mounties. They wore fancy uniforms, shiny boots and did a lot of saluting.

They were full of pomp and ceremony, while Cooper was not.

Cooper was assigned a room, shown where the facilities were and told that reville would be at 6 a.m. He said, "Thank you, but don't bother to wake me, because I don't like Italian food."

Those old picture shows may be corny by today's standards, but they were a source of good, clean fun.