Going to movies at the Lyric

Oct. 13, 1999

By Paulette Tobin

This week our hometown newspaper The Northwest Blade reported in its "Looking Back" column that it had been 50 years since the opening of the Lyric Theatre in Eureka, an event that drew capacity crowds to the new movie house.

Today it's probably been a while since there's been a movie at the Lyric, but I'm old enough to remember when the theater was one of the most popular places in town. Those were the days when there were two new movies every weekend and the Lyric put out a special calender each month that at our house was always posted on the refrigerator. As kids we considered "going to the show" the highlight of our summer Saturday nights. Tickets were 25 to 75 cents depending on your age and you could get a bag of popcorn for a dime. Every movie was preceded by several reels of cartoons -- Bugs Bunny, Top Cat and the Road Runner were some of my favorites.

I remember going to the Lyric to see the Three Stooges, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, and Rock Hudson and Doris Day, not to mention countless Westerns and Elvis pictures and the "Beach Blanket Bingo" movies of the '60s with Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon. Remember Gidget movies? I always liked her - she was so kooky, cute and spirited. Those were the days when there was an early show and a late show, and when you came out of the early show you had to push your way through the crowd waiting to see the second show.

I remember my parents taking us to see "Ma and Pa Kettle" movies. Those were always packed but I never found them funny, just stupid. Nor did I care for horror or suspense movies. They were too scary. Walt Disney was more my style. I believe I saw about every movie the Disney studios produced between 1964 and 1969. Special favorites were anything with Hayley Mills, including "The Parent Trap," "That Darn Cat" and "The Moonspinners." ("The Fighting Prince of Donegal" is also stuck in my subconscious and may have been the beginning of my current obsession with movies made or set in the British Isles.) I had a huge crush on Kurt Russell, who began his film career as a child actor for Disney.

By the time I was in high school movies had become more violent and sexually explicit. I remember going to see "Bonnie and Clyde" at the Lyric (it was so crowded we ended up in the front row) and for it's time it was very bloody and sexually daring. I also remember that my parents took us along when they went to see "Doctor Zhivago" and my younger brother, David, who was maybe 7 or 8 years old at the time, asked Mom on the way home why Dr. Zhivago had two wives. My mother remembers being embarrassed by this question. Times were different then.

This summer was so incredibly busy that the only movie I saw in the theater was the animated "Tarzan" - guess you could say I'm still a big fan of Disney. I think a lot of movies today are too violent and raunchy, but I'm not a prude. I loved "Chasing Amy," about a 20-something guy (Ben Affleck) who falls in love with a lesbian (Joey Lauren Adams), which had some very graphic discussions about sex and sexual experimentation in general. I enjoyed the Terminator and Die Hard movies and "Ace Ventura, Pet Detective," but I never really got some of the so-called modern classics like Clint Eastwood's "Unforgiven" or Mel Gibson's "Braveheart." The only women in "Unforgiven" were either dead or whores; in fact, Eastwood had cast his then off-screen lover Frances Farmer as the head whore. Shortly thereafter he broke up with her and married someone much younger. Did anyone not see this coming? "Braveheart" seemed like another opportunity for Mel Gibson to depict himself being tortured. Has anyone else noticed how often Mel is tortured in the movies? (See "Lethal Weapon" and "Conspiracy Theory.") But maybe I'm reading too much into this.

"Braveheart" aside, I have a major thing for movies about Ireland, Scotland and England and I'm a huge fan of Masterpiece Theater and BBC and Arts & Entertainment channel productions. Some of the biggest British movies in recent years have been based on the works of Jane Austen. "Sense and Sensibility" with Kate Winslet and Emma Thompson was perhaps the most popular, but I prefer "Persuasion" starring Ciarnan Hinds and Amanda Root. "Pride and Prejudice" with Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy was shown on TV, but was wonderful nonetheless. What a pleasure to watch a love story in which passion is expressed in intimate longing looks, a woman's knowing smile, the momentary quiver of a man who knows the woman he has wanted will soon be his at last. Now that's sexy. I also loved Alicia Silverstone in "Clueless," a take-off on Austen's "Emma" in with Silverstone played the spoiled rich girl who was sure she knew exactly how everything in the universe should be ordered. I loved her reaction when she realized her own cluelessness: "I felt an overwhelming sense of ickiness."

One of my absolute favorite movies is "Cold Comfort Farm," the story of a young Englishwoman, surely one of the smartest, most self-assured women ever in film, who goes to live with a bunch of loony relatives. The Starkadders of Cold Comfort Farm are led by an old lady whose oft-repeated story of some half-remembered childhood trauma -- "I saw something nasty in the woodshed!" - invokes enough guilt to keep them all in line. Our heroine, naturally, cannot be subdued by guilt, dirt, oversexed male cousins, a religious fanatic uncle, or any of the other foibles of country life. The first time I watched this movie I kept waiting for something horrible to happen to the young heroine. It's just so rare to see a woman who doesn't need rescuing or who isn't killed or tortured somewhere along the way in movies today.

"The Boxer" with Daniel Day Lewis and Emily Watson is another wonder. Watch it for two of the best performances by two of the best actors working today. Daniel Day Lewis won an Oscar for "My Left Foot," but he's probably best known in America for "The Last of the Mohicans." This movie was way too violent for me but he and co-star Madeline Stowe had enough sexual chemistry to set off the whole frontier. (For other good date movies, rent "The Big Easy" with Dennis Quaid at his most irresistible, or "Before Sunrise" with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as young lovers who meet and have one day together in Vienna.) "Secrets and Lies" starring Brenda Blethyn, who played the mother in "My Left Foot," is another wonderful English movie. For classic adventure you can't beat "The Scarlet Pimpernel" (which also aired on TV's A&E) starring Richard E. Grant and Elizabeth McGovern.

If you like old movies in black and white check out "The Farmer's Daughter" with Loretta Young and Ethel Barrymore for a story about a smart and determined girl who's working as a maid in the big city and ends up running for Congress. "Notorious" is smart and sexy and stars the incredibly-beautiful-but-tortured-by-love-and-duty couple of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman. "Laura" with Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb and a marvelously shallow and oily Vincent Price is another favorite of mine. Director Otto Preminger does stretch credulity by expecting us to believe that Clifton Webb could be in love with a woman, but it's still a great film.

I'm not a fan of Nicholas Cage or Cher but I do love "Moonstruck." It is so funny and real. Even the supporting characters and story lines are perfect. Check out Olympia Dukakis who, when wakened in her bed at night immediately asks, "Who died?" But best of all is the scene in which Nicholas Cage is trying to seduce Cher with the, "We're not perfect ... the stars are perfect ... we have been put on this world to love the wrong people and to ruin ourselves and die" speech. It's a three-hanky movie moment for me every time.

That's the power of the movies. We watch them sitting in the dark, often with our closest friends and lovers nearby. When they're good, they can make us laugh or cry and take us out of our humdrum lives. Sure, a lot of the movies today are mindless crap, just as they were at the Lyric theater in 1968. Still more often than not going to the theater was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday night.

(Paulette Tobin grew up on a farm near Eureka and graduated from EHS in 1973. She lives in Grand Forks, N.D., where she is a reporter for the Grand Forks Herald.)