Chapter 17 - Old Movies (No Popcorn)

1950 - 1957

     I loved the old movies from the 1930’s and 1940’s. Two or three times a year all the students of Greenfield Village were trotted up to the theater at Henry Ford Museum to watch an old movie. I don’t know what the reasoning was – perhaps just treating everyone to a break in routine. I remember it was crowded in the seats, and we were restless until the movie started.

  Sometimes it was the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin or a few very, very old silent films; sometimes Westerns. I especially loved the Shirley Temple movies – my favorite was “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.” The words to the top song in that movie really spoke to me: “If I had one wish to make, this is the wish I would choose: I’d want an old straw hat, a suit of overalls and a worn out pair of shoes…”

  My other favorites were the old horse movies, “My Friend Flicka (1943)”, and “Thunderhead, Son of Flicka” (1945). I still remember the drama of a beautiful, wild, white horse rearing its hooves on top of a hill, “The Albino!” Reading the reviews today, it looks like “Thunderhead” was inappropriate for kids with unnecessary violence (one horse killed another horse), but I was totally into the drama at the time. We also saw “Black Beauty” (1946) and “White Mane,” (A 1953 French film about a white horse of the Camargue) which tragically ends with the little boy riding his horse out to sea where they will die together rather than allow the horse to live in cruel captivity. I loved them all.