Looking Our Best
September 13, 2018
Powell Symphony Hall, formerly St. Louis Theater
JAMES H. writes:
In response to “Nihilist America:” When we attended St. Louis Cardinal baseball games – we dressed up. When we attended the St. Louis Muni Opera – we dressed up. When we travelled – we dressed up. When we attended the movies, we dressed up!
On May 31st, 1965, Mom and Dad assembled the “troops” and took us to the St. Louis premier of The Sound of Music at the St. Louis Theater. The St. Louis Theater was one of the grandest theaters in the world opening on November 25, 1925 – four years after Dad’s birth. The theater was enormous, seating 4,100 patrons. The Sound of Music ran 86 weeks, from 1965 to 1966 and closed immediately afterwards when the restoration for the St. Louis Symphony began. You can still visit the St. Louis Theater today which is now known as Powell Symphony Hall – its grandeur evocative of an earlier better age.
We sat near the front of the balcony on the right as you face the screen and I will never ever forget the opening scenes from the Sound of Music on that enormous screen. The theater was equipped with a 70-millimeter projector and with stereophonic sound to showcase the movie’s beautiful Todd-AO large-format cinematography. Seeing that magnificent movie in that spectacular theater was one of my fondest memories as a child. And you can bet, we (all seven children with 2 yet to come) dressed up!
When I grew up America had a bright future – and we looked our best for it. Today, not so much.
— Comments —
Alan writes:
My compliments to James H. for recalling the premier showing of The Sound of Music at the St. Louis Theater in 1965. We went there on a Sunday afternoon that spring. Everything he writes about the grandeur of that theater and the ritual of dressing up is dead on target. We walked up a grand, carpeted staircase and found our seats in the balcony on the left. The opening scenes were magnificent. We enjoyed the movie so much that we went back to see it again and again on several more Sundays that spring. I purchased the RCA soundtrack album and relived moments in the movie while playing the record in our living room. The sense of life projected in that movie is a remnant from a better age by far than anything marketed today in the name of entertainment. It is still enormously enjoyable when viewed at home on a small screen. But nothing can match the feeling of uplift that its opening scenes imparted on the big screen in a huge theater with hundreds of other well-dressed, well-mannered people sharing that feeling.
As I wrote three years ago:
“The Sound of Music is an artifact from a civilization that is now gone…” [The Thinking Housewife, March 8, 2015]
Laura writes:
There is no comparison between that movie and what children can see in theaters today.
I was enchanted too. I saw it when I was seven in Germantown, Philadelphia and I believe it was my first movie theater experience. I will never forget it. It was a movie about parents, really (Maria was a mother to the children even before she married the Captain) — about parents who loved their children and wanted to do the best for them. The Von Trappe family disliked the movie, but we can forgive its fictional details.
