Slim Randles' Home Country

Back to the movies

[January 15, 2011]  Mickey Baker, down at The Strand, really knows how to start the new year off right. Mickey has owned our local movie house since Ike was playing golf, you see, and he has learned to adapt to the times by ignoring them.

When new movies went from women wearing skimpy clothes to no clothes at all, fewer of us went to the movies. Mickey wasn't happy with the newer films, either. He kept going to more family-oriented films, but he found that Hollywood decided that meant violent cartoons.

When the home video market exploded, there was very little reason for The Strand any more, except for teenage dating. The balcony cuddlers will always be in our lives, of course, and many of us made lifelong plans up there, too.

And there were a few years when The Strand closed its doors. Mickey occasionally rented it out to bands, but since there was no dance floor, the audience had to be contented with screaming and throbbing.

Then he started playing old movies. Good ones. Roy leaped off Trigger to quell the bad guys. Tyrone drew swords against the Saracens. Bomber Command destroyed dams on the Ruhr. Bogart twitched his lip against the mob. It was just great.

We paid too much for popcorn, but we didn't care. We cheered in the good parts and booed in the bad parts and, best of all, we went home happy, having relived something wonderful from our childhoods.

So how did Mickey start the year? By having a toofer-one sale on Jujubes at the snack bar and kicking off the year with "Captain Horatio Hornblower." Not that youngster on public television, mind, but the captain himself, Gregory Peck. When it came to buckling swash, ol' Greg knew how to do it. And instead of imaginationless nudity, we got Virginia Mayo for two hours! Swimsuits come and swimsuits go, but you get Virginia Mayo wearing what looks like Grandma's ruffly bathroom curtains ... that's a woman!

Now you take Jujubes, expensive popcorn, Gregory Peck, Virginia Mayo and a broadside of cannons against El Supremo? It doesn't get much better than this.

[Text from file received from Slim Randles]

Brought to you by Slim Randles' latest book, "Sweetgrass Mornings," now available at www.unmpress.com.