Those words were not so much spoken as burped into a crude microphone at the most inopportune moment during a snarled line by John Wayne or a critical piece of dialog by Paul Newman affecting an accent that we all knew wasn’t really Southern, especially juxtaposed right up next to the real Southern accent of the voice telling us about those concessions.
There were also threats uttered by that same, disembodied voice from the projection booth. “If you don’t sit down and shut up, we will be forced to escort you out and call your parents to come get you.”
As serious as it sounded, that announcement never had its intended effect on the unruly perps in the back.
The Martin Theater was the only thing alive at night in Andalusia, Alabama, back then. The dank, curtained cave, fronted by fractured, angry neon and a lobby the size of an interstate rest stop gas station, but not as clean or aromatic, sat on the opposite side of the courthouse from the jail. I don’t believe this was a coincidence.
The theater hit you in the nose long before the movie reached your eyes. It smelled like Andrew Jackson’s men had urinated on the carpet in the early 1800s when they marched through Andalusia (giving the town its name) on their way to Pensacola. There was another odor, too. A pungent, Frito-feet funk emanated from the air ducts like a thousand little kids had stored their old shoes and socks up there.
The aroma of mildew was less rank than the week-old popcorn from last week and the unmistakable hint of deep-fried cockroach from nine minutes ago.
“It’s all protein,” said Mrs. Stroud, my biology teacher.
The slanted floor wasn’t just sticky from years of dropped gummy animals and soda spills, it was a biohazard of adhesive gunk that could suction off your Chuck Taylors no matter how tight you tied them. Every patron who entered knew better than to leave his or her feet still in one place unless they wanted to leave barefooted. A woman’s shoe was permanently attached to the floor in row 8, under seat 5. It probably belonged to a Civil War widow. It was filled to the brim with discarded wads of gum like a bowl of fondled mints at the checkout of a Chinese restaurant.
Hank Williams Sr. and Audrey probably saw movies there in the 1940s when they got married and lived in Andalusia. The red seats were the start of many a relationship that ended in marriage, divorce or death – and sometimes all three. My wife and I saw “Young Frankenstein” there on our first date.
It was rumored that a cat lived inside the darkness where the only light came bouncing from the screen from the old projector. Others swore it was a wharf rat with a hankering for sticky treats. My friend, Lewis, said it was a runt dog with a taste for stuck Chucks.
I saw something in the dark one night over in the right rear corner during “Paint Your Wagon.” It was either a squirrel or a woman’s coat collar, or a squirrel on a woman’s coat. It had a tail, I know that much. Only Eastwood’s tuneless rasp could wrench my attention away from a feral animal munching around loose in a theater.
Even with a taped-up rip in the screen and the rancid stank oozing from every row and the nightly hole that was burned in the film like the credits to Bonanza – I loved the place. It was my portal to the world of movies and people with heads the size of Ford Pintos, and I saw every single movie that rolled off its warped platters. Rachel Welch at 14 feet tall was a thing to behold to a 13-year-old boy in a textile-abandoned town.
No amount of determent could keep me out of that old theater. I even walked to it alone on a Tuesday night to see “Love Story.” Pathetically, I was the only person in the theater. The movie wasn’t very good but Ali McGraw’s eyes – as big as hubcaps – made the smells of the place seem to dissipate for a while.
When “Gator” and “White Lightning” were playing in the 1970s, the square was filled with Detroit steel and every seat was jammed with folks who would soon make Sam Walton rich. Andalusia loved Burt Reynolds. I loved the idea that somewhere, far away from the $1.90-an-hour world, a story could be filmed and end up inside my head in this funky place.
The images on that screen, though scratched and flecked with wiggling hairs the size of extension cords, were in Panavison color, and put our old black and white RCA portable to shame.
Girls might give you a kiss in a place like this if you took them to see “Romeo and Juliet.” They might hold your hand during “Dirty Mary Crazy Larry.” They might cry during “Sounder” and need a hug when Dustin Hoffman came of age in “The Graduate.” But when Bonnie and Clyde swallowed a car-full of bullets or Butch and Sundance stepped into the metal in Bolivia, I was the one with tears in my eyes. The Martin Theater wasn’t just entertainment; it was an education. In a 49th-ranked state where the motto was always “thank God for Mississippi,” we needed all the education we could get.