Memory Monday #32

My daughter who also has a blog wrote about sculptors yesterday...one which she mentioned was Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum...which jogged another memory of my grandmother!

     The summer after her second husband, J. Guy, passed away, my sister and I went to spend a few days with her.  She was still living at that time in the house he had built for them in Missouri.  Wanting to show us a good time, (remember...no television yet!)  Grandma took us to  a couple of movies....an entertainment she herself really never divulged in so she didn't really know too much about what was going on.  And the ratings and reviews of today didn't exist!

     The first one she took us to see was "A Place in the Sun" with Montgomery Cliff, Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelley Winters....all big names, a very popular movie!! Premarital sex!  Murder! Wow!

"A Place in the Sun is a 1951 American drama film based on the 1925 novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser and the play, also titled An American Tragedy."

     

     Although we were quite taken with it, it was probably not a movie our mom would have approved of!!!!  I really can't remember how Grandma explained  it..we probably just didn't talk abut it!

     Then the other movie we went to see was "The House of Wax"...the original one with Vincent Price!!  It was one of the first 3-D movies and again, great cast, very popular!  And again...probably not a movie our mom would have approved of for us!!

A very scary Movie!!!

     When we got back to Grandma's after the movie, it was bedtime.  Back then no one had central air conditioning...some people had window units...but not Grandma..she just had fans and we slept with the windows open, hoping for a bit of a breeze!!! Judy and I were pretty scared by the movie, but we couldn't tell Grandma ... We didn't want her to think we weren't having a good time so off to bed we went.
     So there we were, lying in bed together; Grandma down the hall in her bed..and oh, the night sounds!  The crickets, the dogs barking, the cats meowing...but none sounded identifiable as such. Then down the hall, Grandma begins to moan, to talk in her sleep, to even shriek out!  You see, in the movie, the villain (Vincent Price) swings through open windows in the middle of the night, snatches up his victims, hauls them back to his wax museum, and uses them to make his really life-like wax statues!!!!  We just KNEW Grandma was a goner!!!  I don't think we slept much that night!  I just remember lying there hugging each other tight...sweating like crazy (it was hot!)...hoping for daylight to come!
     And it did!  And Grandma survived...no Vincent Price in her bedroom!!!  And, again, we didn't say a word to her!!!