Souvenier Program Books for Roadshow Attractions: BEN-HUR, PORGY AND BESS, MARY POPPINS, FUNNY GIRL and more…

October 30th, 2007 by Scott Marks

All of these were purchased after the fact. Do you honestly think my parents were going to spring for something as worthless as a souvenir booklet? The high ticket price, popcorn and a Nedlog were bad enough!

While they may not have bought into the merchandising angle, to their credit, my parents did escort me to a lot of big ticket roadshow attractions. At least one Sunday a month they’d strap a suit and tie on me and steer our pink ‘54 Ford convertible to the Loop to catch a first-run feature.

Slacks and a shirt were okay for neighborhood theaters, but Sundays at the Roosevelt, McVickers, Chicago or State Lake were strictly dress up affairs. It was the closest I ever came to attending Church on Sunday. For this six-year-old kid, these picture palaces represented houses of worship with sermons delivered by John Wayne, Jerry Lewis and Hayley Mills.

The folks took me to Cinerama screenings of The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, How the West Was Won and Circus World. I remember hearing the legendary audio “police calls” played during the intermission of a SuperPanavision 70 screening of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Each time I combed the lobby in search of the bald, greasy-looking, cigar-chomping barker shouting “PUH-RO-GRAMS!” It was never meant to be. When it comes to program books, I exist solely on the throwaways of strangers.