Saturday Matinee at the Movies, Part 2

Generally the good guys wore white hats while the bad one donned black. Lash LaRue was an exception. A bit of an anti-hero, he dressed entirely in black, talked out of the side of his mouth, and carried a long bullwhip. He was so adept in using it that he could rip a revolver out of a bad guy’s hand at a distance beyond the reach of the whip.

Hopalong also dressed in black, and like the other heroes, traveled with a sidekick. Hopalong’s was called Lucky, Lash LaRue partnered with Fuzzy, Frog traveled with Gene Autry, Gabby Hayes sided with Roy Rogers. Two Indians were sidekicks. Tonto assisted the Lone Ranger, and Little Beaver sided with Red Ryder. Some of the sidekicks were serious, most were comical relief.

On the whole our heroes never killed any bad guys, at least not up close. They shot guns out of their hands, beat them up, and sometimes wounded one (most likely in the arm), but a lot of the villains did bite the dust. Usually they were shot off their horse during a running gun battle where hundreds of rounds were fired back and forth. The “dead” never suffered or bled. Sometimes the hastily edited movies would show the dead guy breathing, or a bus driving by in the distant background, or power lines, or some other anomaly that wasn’t supposed to be there. It was all great fun.

The monster movies were the ones I loved to fear. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Werewolf, and the Mummy were the chief staples, and starred Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Lon Chaney. I was the youngest of our gang and found the movies terrifying, and swore at the end of each film that it was going to be my last. I’d have nightmares right afterward, but would find myself sitting with the gang when the next one came in town. I spent most of a movie with my eyes closed during the scariest parts. Either that or I would look through my slightly spayed fingers as I held my hands over my eyes.

The popular comedy movie stars in those days were Laurel & Hardy, The Three Stooges, Abbott & Costello, Our Gang, The Bowery Boys, The Marx Brothers, and Martin and Lewis.

The war movies were mainly propaganda films made during WWII, most starring John Wayne. They were heroic productions dealing with bravery, honor, and duty, but had little else to do with the reality of war. Dad use to say he wouldn’t walk across the street to see one. I now understand his point, but it seems every generation has to grow up and learn the brutishness of war for itself. People might find war to be the vulgar, and repugnant thing it is if movies depicted its costs in more truthful ways, - then maybe it might go out of fashion.