Watching Million Dollar Movie Was My Early Cinematic Education

Channel 9 again and again

If you grew up in the New York City metropolitan area in the 1960s, we’re contemporaries, and I can take you down memory lane (with or without Joe Franklin).

If you didn’t, then allow me to whip some boomer history upon you.

There were seven channels on New York television in the olden days, three of which were local: Channel 5, Channel 9, and Channel 11. I’m not counting the educational channel, which is now PBS, or the UHF stations (look it up, kids). Channel 5 had the best children’s programming (articles to come), with Channel 11 coming in second. Channel 9 only had one kids’ show that I can recall, Terrytoon Circus, hosted by Claude Kirchner and his hand puppet Clowny.

I’m sure that if my family had known that his full name was Klaus von Hindenburg Kirchner, I wouldn’t have been allowed to watch his show. The most memorable things about Terrytoon Circus (besides the weird puppet’s insults and cartoons featuring Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle) were the commercials. The show was sponsored by Cocoa Marsh and, if memory serves, something called Junket Rennet Custard. I loved Cocoa Marsh even more than Bosco. We didn’t eat rennet custard.

But I digress.

This may be difficult for some of you to imagine, but way back then, you had to watch whatever was on. There was no streaming. If you wanted to watch Claude, you had to be in front of the TV at 4:30 (I think).

However, Channel 9 had Million Dollar Movie. MDM was like having a movie theater in your living room. After the opening credits and “Tara’s Theme” from Gone With The Wind, they’d show one movie all week, twice daily, and several times over the weekend. MDM was on from 1955 until some time in the 1980s.

Despite the name Million Dollar Movie, they showed both top-notch films and — not top-notch films. In 1964 and 1968, when I was nine and thirteen, while the network stations were covering the Democratic and Republican conventions, I was watching movies over and over and over on MDM. The ones I remember best were:

The Brain From Planet Arous - low-budget sci-fi with John Agar, which I’d gladly watch again (I like cheesy 50s science fiction).

John Agar, The Brain, and an axe

The Jolson Story—I’ve seen this movie over twenty times. Larry Parks (who was later blacklisted by the HUAC) plays Al Jolson, with Evelyn Keyes, William Demarest, and Jolson’s voice on all the songs. I still love this movie, though I still have no idea why. It took some searching to find a still from this movie where Parks is not in blackface.

Larry Parks as Al Jolson

Loving You — Elvis Presley’s first starring role. A great fake fistfight, Elvis sings “Teddy Bear,” Wendell Corey and Lizabeth Scott provide acting.

Elvis in “Loving You”

And a fantastic movie that I could only begin to understand at the age of thirteen, David and Lisa, about a couple of seriously disturbed teenagers who actually help each other. David (Keir Dullea) thinks he will die if he is touched by another person, and Lisa (Janet Margolin) has a dual personality, one of whom only speaks in rhyme.

Just a couple of crazy kids

Keep in mind that I saw these movies sixty and fifty-six years ago. The principal lesson then was that it was okay to watch the same movie over and over again, that I would remember at least some of them, and that every time I watched them, I’d see something I’d missed before (and often, it was worth it).

Now that we can watch a movie as many times as we like, some of the charm has faded. Having all this convenience has a price: the weakening of innocent joy. As Spencer Tracy says in another of my favorite Million Dollar Movies, Inherit The Wind:

Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, "Alright, you can have a telephone, but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote, but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline."

Spencer Tracy and Frederic March

And so we can stream movies at will and learn all the dialogue, but sometimes I feel like there’s a little treat we just don’t have anymore, like Cocoa Marsh.