How can we beat the heat? Home air conditioners came on the market in 1928, but only the wealthy can afford them. We could call the iceman and have him drop a block of ice in the bathtub. No, too cold, and boring. A much better idea is to spend an entertaining evening at various "Cooled by Refrigeration" movie theatres around the country -- Sunday evening at the movies.
On this Sunday evening in the Bronx, New York, we can beat the heat by paying 35 cents a ticket to the woman sitting in the free-standing ticket kiosk in front of the Loews Paradise theatre. They're featuring Warren William in Dr. Monica, with Kay Francis in the title role. As we stroll into the sumptuous lobby, the smell of freshly popped corn attracts another two bits or so into the theatre manager's coffers. As a theatre usher guides us to our seats with his flashlight, the first thing we notice is not on the screen but on the ceiling. Displayed above our heads is a clear night sky. The ceiling, masterfully painted with twinkling stars on a background of dark blue, looks so realistic that when your attention wanders during a bad movie and you look up, a sudden shock hits you because your eyes tell you that you're outside, while your brain knows that you're inside.
Suddenly the lights dim as the stage curtain parts and the news of the day flashes on the screen. In this pre-TV era we get our first news reports from the radio and newspapers: only at the movies can we see the news. The main newsreel companies Pathe, Hearst Metrotone, Paramount News, Universal Newsreel, and Fox-Movietone, send their cameramen around the world to film famous and infamous people and events. This week we see President Roosevelt traveling to Hawaii on the cruiser USS Houston. We watch the reactions of Californians to San Francisco's general labor strike called by the striking longshoremen's union. And in sports we marvel as New York Giants ace pitcher and National League starter Carl Hubbell performs the impossible at baseball's second annual All-Star Game; Hubbell strikes out in succession the American League's top sluggers: Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx, Simmons, and Cronin.
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