Come On, Vogue!

I love movies. It's an element of my identity that people learn very soon after meeting me. One of my earliest memories is of going with my mother to the Vogue Theatre in Louisville. The single screen theatre opened in 1939, one of the greatest years in the "Golden Age" of Hollywood. It was the year of "Gone With the Wind", "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", "Stagecoach", "The Women", "The Wizard of Oz", and "Ninotchka", just to name a few. Opening amid this glut of soon-to-be-classic films was something of a harbinger for the theatre. When it's life as a first-run theatre came to an end, it became a revival house, and many of those same films found their way back onto its screen, where they would enthrall new generations. I was happily among one of those generations. On that first visit to the Vogue, I saw Franco Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet". It was one of my mother's favourite films. The experience stands out in my mind for a number of reasons. Aside from being my introduction to cinema, it laid the groundwork for my love of live theatre as well. It was Shakespeare, after all. It is also one of the few memories I have of my short-lived tenure as an only child. I was four. Despite my tender age, I was rapt. I even cried at the end when *SPOILER ALERT* the young lovers perished. Did I mention that I was four? I think my mother knew at that point that spelling "grown-up words" in front of me was an exercise in futility.

At that point, movies became a passion of mine. They provided a much needed respite from a difficult childhood. I visited the Vogue many times in my early life. I remember vividly the excitement of getting the Scene section of the Courier Journal on that one magical Saturday every month when they would publish the calendar of movies and show times for the theatre. I would examine the listings, running my fingers over them until the tips were stained with whatever colour ink they had chosen for that month. Finding a particularly good entry was better than Christmas to me. I can't tell you how many times I saw "Gone With the Wind" there. I saw "My Fair Lady" and "Singin' in the Rain" on that screen. Later in my life, after I left Louisville, I would visit the cousins of that beautiful old theater - the County Theatre, in Doylestown, PA, the Ritz Theatres in Philadelphia, the old Silent Movie Theater in L.A., the Film Forum in New York. There is something so thrilling to me about sitting in a theatre as the lights dim, knowing I'm about to watch a piece of cinematic and cultural history unfold before me. Some of the glittering gems I've seen include Chaplin's "City Lights", Harold Lloyd's "Speedy" (his last, and some say greatest silent film), Greta Garbo in "The Kiss", ALL of the Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers collaborations, "Casablanca", John Frankenheimer's "The Manchurian Candidate", "The Philadelphia Story", "It Happened One Night". I could go on. Revival houses are harder to come by in this day and age. Thankfully, Turner Classic Movies fills the void, but I'm always on the lookout for the real (or "reel") thing.

Sadly, the Vogue closed in 1998. It's a strip mall now. Ah, progress. Not unlike many things that pass from this world, it lives on in fond memories. I can close my eyes and see its marquee, tall and bright against the night sky. I can hear the hum of it's neon still. I see the smudged, flyer-filled glass of the little freestanding ticket booth, tucked just under that marquee. I can even see the piece of toilet paper that hung for years like a lone stalactite from the high ceiling of the auditorium - a remnant of one of the more exuberant midnight screenings of "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" hosted by the theatre for a quarter of a century. These are memories swathed in the aroma of stale popcorn, with a soundtrack of tennis shoes trapsing through the tacky remnants of spilled sodas. It makes me smile just thinking of it.

My time in those dim theatres contributed so much to who and how I am as a person. My aesthetic sensibilities were born out of the great imagery of those classic films. My ideals of both male and female beauty, my sense of humour and history, they can all be traced back to those flickering images. I've often been told that I seem to come from another era. I credit that to the lessons I absorbed from the great ladies of the Silver Screen: Garbo, Dietrich, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, Vivien Leigh, Ingred Bergman, Katherine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Crawford, Gloria Swanson, and my cherished Rosalind Russell and Audrey Hepburn. My taste in men hearkens to the great leading men of a bygone era - Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart, Errol Flynn, William Holden, and my absolute favourite, Gregory Peck. I can also say that the smoky, smouldering image of Gary Cooper laying eyes on Marlene Dietrich for the first time in "Morocco" (NOTE: it happens at 1:42) still makes me tingly and breathless.

I am the proud and willing reservoir to a sense of humour that can trace its roots back to Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, W.C. Fields, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, the Marx Brothers, Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Fanny Brice, Sophie Tucker, and the incomparable Mae West. Good stuff. I'm sure if I sat here for a bit longer, I could double the length of each of those rosters. Easily. The only element of this pastime that gives me pause is that each and every person I just mentioned is gone from this world. All the friends and heroes of my childhood have left me. It's not so bad. I do have some pretty amazing home movies. They revisit me, in the wee small hours of the morning from the glow of my television, to comfort me in my haze of insomnia. They remind me about beauty, and honour, and history, and love. They remind me that I'm not alone in the world. When Norma Desmond speaks to those wonderful people out there in the dark, I know that she's talking to me. And I'm as ready for her close-up as she is, Mr. DeMille.