How did you get into classic films? (and my story)

I've been interested in classic film for a long time. My Dad would regularly watch WW2 films in particular when they'd come on (his Dad was a Marine during the war) and I'd watch them too. So most of my early exposure to classic film were films like Destination Tokyo, Sands of Iwo Jima, Gung Ho, Flying Leathernecks, etc. I think for awhile the only reason we had cable was back when AMC actually showed classic films without commercials and later on TCM. I'd also catch the movies on regular TV as well in the early '80s although many of the films that I would see on there weren't really that old (hard to believe but Omega Man, one of my favorite Heston films, was probably only about 9 or 10 years old when I saw it on TV). Before we had cable in the early 1980s we had about 3 network stations and 2 or 3 UHF stations that we could pick up. The UHF stations in particular would show old Westerns or detective films (what I called Film Noir since i had no idea of that term back when i was a kid). I caught a lot of the great ones and also a bunch that even my Dad didn't remember so it was fun watching them together.

My grandparents had a book that had all of the silent screen stars and films that I would always look at when I visited their home. Those would rarely be shown on TV so it offered me a glimpse of what those films were about and who the actors were. It wasn't until much later that I was able to see some of these films (outside of Chaplin and Keaton films).

The one aspect of classic film that I really only recently started viewing (recent being a comparative term, probably the past 10 years) is foreign language films from the 1930's to 1970's, mostly French and Italian. It really is like visiting another place and time and it allows me to time travel as well as visit places I've never been to and never will, for example, 1950's Rome or 1960's Paris.