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

I'll be 68 in June, and grew up watching movies and going to movies. My mother loved the movies. There were morning movie shows, and afternoon movie shows, and night of the week movie shows that showed classic movies. Some were relatively "new" on major networks. But I loved the old black and whites and the old golden Hollywood age of film.

My older siblings used to watch movies all the time on (pre-cable)TV, and I used to watch along with them. I remember watching Hitchcock's The Birds for the first time when I was about five, when it premiered on NBC's Night at the Movies, and being enthralled by it. Yeah, they showed that scene with the guy with his eyes pecked out--was I traumatized by that? No, because I was used to seeing footage of the Vietnam War on the nightly news every night.

The stations back then used to "present" movies as part of a program, so it seemed like a special event to watch a movie on TV. One local station aired "The Million Dollar Movie," a daily movie slot which showed the same movie every day for an entire week; you could watch the same movie over and over and pick up on its nuances, so it was kind of like a do-it-yourself film study course. Another station had a "Foreign Film Festival" on weekends; another had "The 4:30 Movie," which featured theme weeks (beach movies, Biblical movies, Martin and Lewis movies, Middle-aged actress horror movies, etc.). The PBS station had a program hosted by Lillian Gish which featured silent classics; a UHF station had a Charlie Chaplin film festival every Friday night. Other local stations had "Creature Features," "Chiller Theater," and a "Dr. Shock" show, all featuring horror and monster movies; the last had a vampirish host presenting the movies, like today's "Svengoolie" character on MeTV. Daytime TV included a guy named Joe Franklin, a  hardcore nostalgia fan with a local TV show who often showed old comedy shorts such as Ben Turpin silents, Laurel and Hardy shorts, and some even more obscure comedy team shorts (Clark and McCullough, anyone?).  Another daytime kiddie show presented Our Gang shorts from the 1930s.  Then there were the "Late Show" programs on local stations. Often they had theme weeks, too, such as Marx Brothers week, and James Cagney week, which resulted in my lifelong crush on Mr. Cagney.  I think there was a greater variety of movies back then, with only twelve channels, than there are today in the cable era.  For a kid who didn't get to go to the movies very often, this was a lot of fun (if not more). As a latchkey kid with both parents working, I learned to love watching these movies when I was alone in the house; they were more enjoyable than most of the TV shows of the time. That's still true today; I rarely watch TV shows and prefer classic movies instead.

Watching the older live action Disney films from way back and Universal monster movies from the 1930s and '40s on VHS tapes probably helped me get used to films from that era.

My mom loved to take part in competitive sports. As a kid, I remember her loving to golf, bowl, play bridge, and watch baseball games. She was also a fan of those Spenser Tracy / Katherine Hepburn movies from the late 40s and early 50s: Adam's Rib (1949) and Pat and Mike (1952). Then, there was that baseball movie, The Pride of St. Louis (1952) with Dan Dailey. My dad took my mom to a movie on one of their first dates in 1934. I don't know what that movie was but my dad liked Wallace Beery. My mom didn't like Beery but my dad did, so........it had to be a Wallace Beery movie from 1934.

There were always movies in my life, but one of the first movies I remember being advertised on TV was The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), and we kids HAD to go see that one!! Ah, advertising and kids....

The first movie I saw over and over (in a theater) was Days of Wine and Roses (1962). This movie is important to my movie watching since, from it, I learned the value of seeing a movie more than one time.

In the 50s 60s, and 70s, movies only played on TV late at night and on Saturday afternoons. Since there was no way to record movies in those days, I learned to use the TV Guide to  mark the movies. I then planned to see a movie that was programed. (You had to be there to see it because there was no other way, then).

When I was about 16 (1959), I started to use the World Almanac to find which Movies, Actors and Actresses HAD won Oscars (in the past). Oscar winners were listed there, and I started to "collect" the viewing of as many as I could find and check them off in the Almanac as I saw them. Some movies played several times and were easy to "collect." Others were not so easy to find. I really valued those that were "hard to find." This is how I first became interested in classic movies from the past.

I'm from the leading edge of the Baby Boom. I, too, was influenced by the combination of early television stations having large libraries of "old" films, and parents who enjoyed seeing some of their favorite films in the comfort of home.

Friday and Saturday nights, when we had a little leniency about bedtime, were the nights that local stations ... which used to sign-off overnight ... stayed on a little later, and those movies were a convenient and cost-saving programming selection.

My family also used to watch The Million Dollar Movie. We only had one tv and my father usually decided what we were going to see .He always named the stars so even while young I began to recognize the big names. Later I watched these movies simply because they were entertaining
and it became one of the few things my father and I had in common. For his birthday and Christmas, I always bought him books on classic films
and he treasured them to the point that he wore them out and had to be replaced. I still have a few.

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.

My mother introduced me to it most probably--because she bought me books on monster movies at a young age and encouraged reading and curiosity.
I think Humphrey Bogart came on my radar because he was mentioned as doing a horror movie (Return of Dr. X) which I did not see until 10 years ago. Also cartoons of course. Warner Bros. since they had all the movie references. "Pardon me, can you help out a fellow American who is down on his luck?"


They had various movie programs showing older stuff--in the 70s and 80s you could still see lots of much older movies shown when there were fewer channels. Little Rascals and other things...

And there were more programs that talked about old movies--anniversaries etc..
And the Oscars.
Many of the people were still around.