Lafayette Street I

Mostly I remember the two theaters we visited on a regular basis, the Olympic and the Avon.

 Above, a little before my time.  Below, the Avon interior, a sight we seldom saw, since we usually arrived in the dark and left in the dark.  I do remember my father taking me to a wrestling match with Gorgeous George appearing for a round or two. I was probably nine or ten years old.  The wrestling ring was set up on the stage, or maybe the orchestra pit.  I don't remember the evening all that well, but I'm sure George won his match.  I wouldn't expect his contract to bring him all the way to Utica in the dead of winter to lose.

Below, another back drop scene at the avon.  Note the name of the theater manager.  

The movies brought sex to all of us teenage boys and girls who lived in Irish (in my case) families where  sex was mentioned only when filling out an application for life insurance or a driver’s license.  I remember the male and female lions at the Utica zoo. On warm summer evenings they  could easily be heard as we sat on our front porch just down from the Parkway on Cornhill.  When Leo began to feel his oats, my father got unusually quiet.  My mother would stand up and go in the house.  I would pick up a magazine and begin to read.  In the dark.  

 

    I don't know why show tickets at the Olympic cost ten to fifteen cents more, but the theater smelled better and had roomier seats.  It also had more first run movies.  Probably the Stanley theater had more first run than any of them.  

   The only indoor theaters I remember going to as a teenager were the Avon, Olympic, Stanley and the Uptown.  Closed by then were the Orpheum on south street, the Highland, the Rialto, the Lincoln, the James, the Utica and of course the Hippodrome and the Colonial.

 

This is a very old photo of the Hippodrome, an early theater in Utica.

 Another view of the Hippodrome, way before our time.  I don't know where it was located.

Nor do I know where the old Orpheum was located.  The later Orpheum I remember was on South Street.

.The first time I tried to kiss a girl, I had only the movies for a model.  I didn’t know how Mom and Dad kissed, because I ran out of the room when they hugged each other.  But I carefully studied the Hollywood lovers up on the silver screen.  When I bent a young lady way over backwards on her front porch one night, she toppled backward into the front door, startling her parents in the living room as they watched The Jackie Gleason Show.  I had not known how excitable an Italian father could  be.

 Gregory Peck was a cinematic male mentor.  The first time I shaved, I used a half can of shaving cream.  The lather needed to be an inch thick, just like Peck’s in that scene from “The Big Country.”   When I finished cutting up my face with the razor,  I wiped the remaining soap off with a towel, just like in the movies.  Any sensible guy would have washed it off with water.  When my face began to harden in ten minutes,  I finally  rinsed the soap scum away.

I’d seen Cary Grant artfully stuff his shirt into his pants without unzipping them or  opening the top of his trousers.  I’m sure he wanted to be modest while getting dressed in front of a million movie viewers, but I can’t say why I was motivated to try it at home.  I guess I wanted to appear classy, even in private.  It just looked like a cool way to get dressed.  Most of us guys open the fly, spread the knees a little so the pants don’t drop to our ankles, and then sort of  hold this and pull that and ….zip! … it’s done.  If you can visualize that procedure, you can guess why it isn’t recommended for a male romantic lead. 

What Grant accomplished so well was a film  device that looked natural on the screen, but was silly in real life.   He must have practiced it for hours to get it right and not look like he was playing with himself.  The trousers had to have extra room in the waist and the shirt would be more fitted and shorter than usual.  His hands needed to move blindly with just the right motions while he spoke to his movie sidekick and the plot moved along.. 

I remember being at the Chocolate Shop quite often, both after school and on a Friday or Saturday evening after a movie.  It was on the corner of Lafaytte and Washington, just past the Hotel Utica, in the same block and on the same side of the street.  I believe this is a photo of the restaurant, but in its younger days when it was a liquor store.  It could have been Bremmer's Liquor Store, now in New Hartford, according to a quick bit of research, but another map I've seen locates Bremmer's across the street on another corner and closer to Genesee Street.  So I'm not sure who owned this particular liquor store, but it certainly does look somewhat like The Chocolate Shop.

 Movies and television provided lessons large and small, and all about  a slice of American culture my parents neither cared for nor cared about.   It was not surprising for  a fifteen year old boy from a family of limited means to see in Hollywood a thrilling lifestyle, compared to my meager existence in upstate New York. To me,  what I saw on film WAS life, or at least the life I wanted to have, with a Corvette convertible, pretty girls and plenty of money.  And I knew  I’d never get what I wanted without having the personal attributes the next generation after me would come to call “Cool.”  That I had learned everything really important in life at home by age 10 didn’t occur to me.  I just wanted to get to that point where I would be seen as Cool.  It has been a very long trip and so far there’s not even a  light at the end of the tunnel.

Next we'll take a brief look at the Hotel Utica in "Lafayette Street II."