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By Root 466 0

consisted entirely of kids. At least during the daylight hours. The carved Moorish doors of the Orpheum were flung wide from 10 A.M. on to the moiling rabble who came to spend the entire day, and weekend if possible. Three cowboy pictures, featuring such luminaries as Roy Rogers, Bob Steele, and Ken Maynard galloping endlessly over the back lots of dusty Los Angeles real estate, firing countless rounds of black-smoke blank cartridges, the sound track turned up to deafening volume, the thunder of movie horses, the screams and grunts of the wounded and dying mingled with the steady uproar of the popcorn machine and the occasional outbreak of a fistfight in the balcony and an incessant two-way traffic up and down the aisles to the plumbing facilities. The muffled curses of the ushers clubbing the more violent into submission provided those of us who were there with a great and accurate foretaste of life to come. More than one kid, caught up in the inchoate intricacies of a Republic picture Cowboy plot, found himself torn between answering an urgent call of Nature or missing the final defeat of the treacherous sheep ranchers, and had to make a bitter and crucial decision. It almost invariably went one way. Many a kid had to skulk damply down back alleys on the way home in total darkness to avoid public humiliation, his corduroy knickers squishing limply as he crept from garage to garage, from chicken house to chicken house, hoping against hope that the spanking breeze from the lake would dehydrate him in time.

Clamped in his seat from 10 A.M. to well past 7 P.M., or just before the Greasy Love Stuff came on, a kid swirled in a maelstrom of excitement and convulsive passion that has left a lasting mark on all who sat in attendance. There are countless men today, and not a few women, who have what they euphemistically call “bad knees,” resulting from a malady just recently diagnosed as Triple Feature Paralysis, a knee permanently assuming a lambent L shape with concomitant bruises and contusions resulting from action in the seat ahead, accompanied by a quick, snapping cramp of the upper buttocks. Its symptoms are unmistakable.

Strategically spaced between the Cowboy epics were episodes of Flash Gordon and Superman serials to quell the troops between rounds of gunfire and volleys of guitar-playing. Outright anger rolled in waves from the audience invariably the instant Gene Autry took up his Sears Roebuck melody box to sing “Red River Valley” through his noble Roman nose. It was a distinctly Anti-Sentimental crowd. Luckily Autry worked in the pre-Switchblade era, but there were other means to vent aggression on a beaded screen. As the first notes of the steel guitar rolled out over the throng, a shower of bottle caps and chocolate-covered raisins arched through the hazy, flickering beam of light that cut the darkness above our heads. The ushers leaped forward at the ready, but by then the gunfire had reasserted itself and blessed Violence stilled the mob. It was early TV, but with far more audience participation.

A colossal high point came along about the third running of Thunder on the Prairie starring Johnny Mack Brown. The lights would go up in the house illuminating a scene of carnage and juvenile debauchery unrivaled in the most decadent day of the Roman downfall. Knee-deep in Baby Ruth wrappers, sated with popcorn, jaws aching from a six-hour session of bubble-gum chewing, we sat holding our Ticket Stub, waiting for the fateful drawing. On stage was wheeled a chicken-wire drum, filled with torn tickets, and behind a silver, bullet-shaped microphone appeared the slight but commanding black-clad, balding figure of the great, legendary Mr. Doppler himself. In person. Behind him was piled the Loot for that day: Chicago roller bearing roller skates, Hack Wilson model fielders’ mitts, Benjamin air rifles, and, of course, the Grand Prize—a Columbia bicycle with balloon tires and two-tone iridescent paint job.

Mr. Doppler grabbed his audience hard and fast with his opening line, the instinct of a sure-born Showman blazing through: