The Avalon

I bought a box set of Hitchcock movies a while ago and we’ve been making our way through them. We watched The 39 Steps recently and it reminded me that the first time I saw this movie was with my grandmother, who I called Mammy, that having been the way I pronounced grandma as a 2 year old. I was the oldest grandchild and as such I got grandparent-naming privilege that is often bestowed on the first grandchild. I’ve known quite a few people whose grandparents nick names are the result of the same poor pronunciation process. Anyway, she was a real character. Born around 1919 in a tiny town called Grantsville, about 60 miles west of Salt Lake City on the edge of the desert that stretches between Salt Lake and Reno. At that time Grantsville couldn’t have had many more than 1000 people and she said that growing up she knew everyone and their dog.

She was enamored with Hollywood and movie stars, going once or twice a week to Grantsville’s little movie theater as a girl. It was an incredible escape for a poor girl in a Depression-era hardscrabble little town whose economy was at that time largely based on the Western Pacific railroad, salt extraction from the lake, and cattle and sheep ranching on land perhaps best left to sagebrush. She was a fantastic and very funny person who loved to laugh and was as positive and supportive as anyone I’ve known. Her mother probably spoke more Swedish than English though Mammy claimed she only knew “tack sa mikket” (phonetic), which was all I ever learned and apparently means thank you. Anyway, once I was a little older, maybe 8 or so, my sister and I would go and spend 3 weeks or so with them each summer. It was fantastic and we always looked forward to it.

One of the great memories I have was going with Mammy and grandpa to the Avalon Theater on State Street in Salt Lake City. The theater wasn’t anything particularly special, but it was an old style theater with one big screen. It showed only old movies, most often in double features and it cost 25 cents. We, not having lots of money, would buy snacks and drinks at a normal grocery store and sneak them in Mammy’s purse. It was Mammy that taught me that a woman’s purse was a sort of sanctum sanctorum, never to be violated with out specific permission and even then very cautiously. This rule and the attitude that lay beneath it served us well in our snack smuggling trade. The drinks we took in were usually in glass bottles, which were pretty common back then.

One night during a movie, Mammy finished her bottle of Pepsi (Pepsi and absolutely not Coke was the undisputed drink of choice for Mammy) and set it on the ground under her seat. A few minutes later, perhaps in a swoon at the entrance of Clark Gable, Gene Kelly or Errol Flynn, she accidentally kicked the bottle over and it proceeded to noisily bump and roll its way all the way down the floor of the theater. We all played dumb as people huffed at the racket. We still laugh about this, years after her death.

Anyway, I remember seeing The 39 Steps with her as a kid at The Avalon, being totally spooked and loving Hitchcock movies ever since.