Movie memories of an octogenarian

By Ivan Anandappa

We came back to Kotahena a couple of months after the air raid in April 1942. I was relieved of the burden of my cast of Plaster of Paris and went back to my old school. My second brother joined the Army in 1943 and I was back with my old friends.

Now the going was good. The war ended in 1946 and life went on. I was now in my first teens when I met a guy and we had a friendship for about six or seven years. His name was Godfrey, he too was a Benedictine. He was just one year older than me. What I didn’t know was that he was an ardent, personified picture goer.

It got off the ground a few days after we met. It was a Saturday when Godfrey told me that he was going to the Capitol Cinema to see a cowboy film, he invited me. He used a phrase “Come, I’ll stand you.” At thirteen I was quite a handful. I was practically forced to be my own decision maker. I was given a free hand. I said okay. I had been to the Capitol, that was when we were in the 2nd or 3rd standard.

The College brothers look us to see a film. The story of the Vatican, all about Rome, a religious film. That was before it was commandeered, taken over by the War Dept., to make a barracks for Indian soldiers. Now it was resurrected and I made my debut as a movie buff. It was a cowboy film with lots of fisticuffs and pistol shots.

Nice

Godfrey and I got on well. He was a nice guy. His mother was loaded with the buck that reigns supreme. Her father had left her an enormous bank balance. She was well heeled but kind and generous. When I told her whose son I was, all she exclaimed was, Ah! Ah! She started to call me Putha. She let it slip.

She said, Cecil was....” And Cecil was my father. Godfrey and I, we were not a wet behind the ears, we smiled and let it ride. When I casually told my father that Aunty Flora calls me putha since the day I told her “I was and is, am your son”, something looked funny. No answer, but a cagey smile. My mother put the icing on the cake. Aunty Flora is a relation on your father’s side. They were friends maybe a little too, too friendly during the dying embers of their school days. Father let it ride, he had no options.

Change

Like Godfrey and I always decided when we had seen a lousy film. “Let’s forget it, no use in two of us remembering the same mistake.”

Going down memory movie highway, vivid in my memory are those great actors and actresses like James Loagney and Humphrey Bogart. The movie magazine said Humphrey was bald and wore a toupee.

The film we liked best of his was ‘Treasure of the Sierra Madre’. And a few more gangster films. Cogney acted in ‘The Dead Kids’ as a killer condemned to die. ‘Blood on the Sun’ was a war film like “Sands of Two Jina” with John Wayne.

I have seen almost all John Wayne’s films except ‘Tall in the Saddle’ from ‘Who killed Liberty Valance’, ‘Stage coach’ and almost all. Nearly all films of the days gone by that were classed as box office hits were screened at the Regal, Olympia, Empire, Majestic and the Savoy.

Then a mid week change of films between the Savoy and Regal, that made two films per week in both cinemas.

I still remember all the black and white films we saw at the Empire, National and Capital. To see a Tarzan film we had to wait practically a month of Sundays as it were. A film came rarely.

I have seen all Johnny Weissmuller’s films since 1948 at the Regal even after he dropped his loin cloth and Lex Barker dropped his pants and donned Johnny’s loin cloth. Johnny was a gentleman in jungle fatigues. Lex was an ape man killing crocodiles for his meal ticket. In the early 1950s they introduced Burt Lancaster in ‘Brute Force’. It was a jail break film. He was a trapeze artist in a circus before they found him. In ‘Vera Grusz’ a cowboy film has acted as an outlaw.

He had outdrawn the hero but the hero shot him. He smiled put the gun back in the holster and dropped dead.

Humour

Douglas Fairbanks was in ‘Corscean Brothers’ and ‘Sinbad the Sailor’ Cornel Wild-in ‘1001 Nights’ and ‘The Bandit of Sherwood Forest’.

Errol Flynn in ‘Captain Blood’, ‘Adventures of Don Juan’, ‘Desperate Journey’ objective ‘Burma’ Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour. In the road series they were really good. Bob wise cracking, Bing crooning and Dorothy adding glamour.

The pirates films, cowboy, gangster all films had decent dialogues and humour. I remember a seafaring film where the seaman played by Victor Maclaglan had to undergo a minor operation, they were on the high seas.

Doc had no anaesthetic at hand so he anaesthetised Victor with an upper cut.

A week or two later Victor visited the doctor, gave him a bottle of whiskey and said, “Doctor this is for the operation and this, Doc, is for the anaesthetic”. He let off a hefty uppercut and anaesthetised the doctor.

Films of yore was a load of fun.