THE CENTER THEATER

My childhood and teen years (the 50s and 60s) were spent growing in a small North Carolina town. While it was typically attractive southern community, life as a teenager was in a word…boring. There were no after school activities that I was aware of, no parks, nothing really of interest to a teenager. While the state’s largest city, Charlotte, was about 25 miles away, without a car it might as well have been 200 miles.

And contrary to what one hears about the “golden age of television”, seldom was there much to choose from or much of any interest to a teen. And at that time, there were only two local stations which carried CBS and NBC programming, and even that was pretty limited.

The bright spot in my life as a youngster was the one movie theater in town, the Center Theater. Without a doubt, that theater provided my primary means of escape.

My first really exposure to movies came as a result of my mother taking me with her to see some of the big blockbusters, or schlocky but fun black and white horror or science fiction movies. ( My father was simply too busy with work or too uninterested in going). While there was an occasional visit to the town’s drive-in; most of the trips involved going to the Center Theater. Even though I was only around 5 years old, the experience had a lasting impact on me.

When I reached the age of 10 or so,  the Center Theater began running triple features on Saturdays. They tended to consist of either 3 horror pictures or 3 science fiction movies. Three movies in a row! Almost 6 hours of fantasy or safe fear to escape into.  Most of these were from the 50s and early 60s and were repeated quite often. While some of those were occasionally shown on TV, there was nothing quite like seeing them on the large screen, in color, with an audience and without commercials. American science fiction and and British horror movies seemed to be the primary menu items.

To add to that experience, we were able to fill up on far too many boxes of Atomic Fire Balls, Red Hots, or Milk Duds.

As I became a little older, I was fortunate to have a mother who trusted my judgement in attending the theater on my own. There were no ratings at that time… As a result, I was pretty much able to see any movie I found of interest. Since at that time more movies were filmed and released for adult audiences, most all my exposure was to movies geared to adults. And oddly enough, I found that I was becoming increasingly impatient and bored by those few movies geared specifically to my age group, the teen market. Thank goodness the Center Theater management kept those to a minimum or limited the times those shown to a weekend afternoon.

It wasn’t until many years later that I realized how much that little theater had been an integral part of my childhood and teen years.