In addition to reading comic books, I spent many hours at the Vogue Theater on weekends, just a few short blocks from home. Obviously, it's been renamed quite some time ago. But back in the early to mid-60's, for seventy-five cents, I could watch a double bill, even stay for another showing of each movie that same day if I wanted to. The Pumpkin Eater or In the French Style were probably a bit too mature for my age, but I saw them there nonetheless. I much preferred comedies such as the double bill of What A Way to Go and Honeymoon Hotel, or historical dramas such as The Long Ships.
We also went to either of the two movie theaters in Huntington Park, as well. Mom and I saw a curious double bill: The Ugly American and Flower Drum Song, paired perhaps because each starred Asian or Asian-American actors, about the only thing those two movies had in common. On my own I saw two controversial films with gay content: The Fox and The Sergeant.
It was at one of the Huntington Park theaters that I had the oddest experience I have ever had in a movie theater. Dad was taking Ann and me out for the day, and I wanted to see Muscle Beach Party, which was showing in HP. We were a bit late but got there well before the picture began. However, when we entered the theater to find three empty seats, there were none on the first floor, we were told, so we hiked up to the balcony. When we got there, we were only able to find three seats together on the very back row of the balcony. It's not that the second Beach Party installment ought to have been that popular. But what was strangely curious was that everyone in the theater but the three of us was Black. Every seat but our three was occupied by a young black man or woman or boy or girl--not another empty seat to be found. I was really perplexed. Why would any African American young person in the mid-60's want to see Muscle Beach Party with Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello?
There might have been a few chuckles here and there during the presentation, but everyone was generally subdued throughout the film. But, finally, I realized why they had come this far to watch this movie. In the music club in the film, one of the guest artists who came out on stage to perform was Stevie Wonder. The moment he appeared on the screen, the audience erupted, with many of the patrons even dancing in the aisles when the music began. I instantly realized that few of them would likely ever get to see Stevie on television or on stage--even network television was still mostly segregated then--you would be hard pressed to find an African American character (and certainly no gay character). This was one of the few opportunities many of them probably had to actually see Stevie in any medium. They were willing to sit through a lousy teen flick, a very white teen flick at that, to see Stevie Wonder perform for a very few minutes on the screen.
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