Movie Night !

In 1968-69 I made extra money  in the Air Force, showing movies.  I was stationed at a little Radar Squadron called Point Arena.  It was situated about 135 miles north of San Francisco. The 776 radar Squadron was on top of a mountain.  Like most service men I usually needed extra money. I took over operation of the base movie theatre that was held in our giant break room next to the BX.  I was trained by a Sgt. Dewey Welch. I received movies once a week and had two showings. One was during the week and the other was on the weekend. The movies were shipped to me and there were usually three to four reels. My projection booth was like a birds nest. I climbed a ladder to get to it and it held two projectors and had a metal railing around it.

I would usually use a phone and have the base operator hook me up to the base speaker system and I would broadcast the name of the movie and the start time.  I had to charge $, 25 to $.50 per ticket. I got to keep anything over $7.00. The movies were all new releases and were very popular. We only had around 250 to 300 people on the base but the turn outs were good.

I remember showing the movie “Grand Prix”. It was very exciting watching all the great races and tracks around the world. Many of us owned a sports car because we were living on a mountain top and they were very practical navigating all the turns and switchbacks.  After the movie I was so geared up that I could hardly wait to get into my Austin Healy to take a high speed drive down the hill. As I turned on my car I started to head off the base when I noticed about ten other guys with the same Idea. It was kind of our own race down the hill.  I often wondered how no one ever got killed.

Another movie I got to show was” Wait Until Dark “, I think. I had to lean forward to switch from one projector to another. I had them set up for a seven sec delay. I would prepare myself near the end of a reel and look for the first white dot on a frame that clued me to start the second projector. When the second white dot showed up I would shut the light off from the first projector and turn the second one on. Hopefully no one would notice the change if I did my job right. During this movie Audrey Hepburn was blind and had just killed an intruder who wanted to kill her. Everything seemed to be safe as she walked away the supposedly dead intruder came flying into the scene to grab her leg. The sound track and unexpected movement made many in the audience scream and yell in surprise. It was very dramatic. Since my attention was on the projector switches I caught the action out of the corner of my eye and almost fell out of

the booth. It scared the crap out of me but I did recover in time to make a flawless projector change!