Continuing to celebrate National Classic Movie Day (May 16th) by answering more of this month’s questions/prompts. Join in the fun and share your love of classic movies. More from the HQ of National Classic Movie Day here.

• How did you become a classic film fan and/or Who introduced you to classic films?
• Is there a film that has been passed down through the generations in your family?

I’m going to combine these two since my answer covers a lot of the same ground regarding childhood and family memories. Both parents were always movie fans so there was no one event or movie that I can point to as getting me started; it was just a part of life, on TV, in the conversation all the time. There were always movie magazines and books around and a ritual was checking out the TV Guide and the cinema showtimes.

I was very young when I started looking at my mom’s books and clearly remember the ones about Alfred Hitchcock and Elizabeth Taylor, her favourite star. At the same time I would have seen Dial M for Murder and Rear Window on TV, and those made such a huge impact on me, to the point that I still have a strong sense memory whenever I rewatch or even just think about them. Never fails to take me right back to the little apartment where I grew up, the open balcony door, and the smell of the springtime air when I first saw those (It happened just now)!

Both parents were very into all kinds of movies, my mom especially loved any era of classics, but she also had to see the newest films and always went with her friend to catch the latest Nicole Kidman or Meryl Streep etc. Right up until mom’s memory started failing due to Alzheimer’s she had an encyclopedic knowledge of cast and director credits and biographies, production details, and plots of even the most obscure B movies and the most convoluted mysteries. Among her many favourite people were Gail Russell, Vivien Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Deanna Durbin, Joan Fontaine, Barbara Stanwyck, Ronald Colman, Anton Walbrook, Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Edward G. Robinson. She had a special love for opera and musicals so very early on I got to know Judy Garland, Alice Faye, Deanna, Kathryn Grayson, Irene Dunne, Mario Lanza, you name it.

My dad is more into cowboys, spies, war movies, and especially any Euro versions of those. In my area of Canada there are Italo-Canadian channels, and every weekend afternoon there would be some crime movie or spaghetti western on I remember him being glued to, that I found slow and boring as a kid but can’t get enough of now. I already wrote about video stores and rentals in this post if you want you read more about that part of the classic fan education. Before that though, for several of my birthdays my parents borrowed a projector from the local library along with reels of silent comedy and that’s how I first saw Laurel & Hardy, Chaplin, Disney cartoons and more. 

One area I was mostly on my own was horror, and I started early with those (although mom did love The Uninvited and snuck me into Fright Night because she wanted to see Roddy McDowall, so even there I had company sometimes). In Canada we had a beloved Saturday night classic movie TV host, Elwy Yost, and he introduced me to the Universal monsters, and sci fi essentials like The Thing from Another World, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, those were huge for me. So was Vincent Price’s House of Wax, and he remains in my top three fav stars. The very first movie I asked to stay up late to watch, I must have been about 8 or 9ish, was Night of the Living Dead! My parents had no problem with my love of scary movies and would just say to ask them if there was anything I didn’t understand.

As for a movie that’s been passed down to me? The closest I can think of, the first that comes to mind, is Giant. My mom had a job that involved a lot of travelling and no matter where she was in the world she’d try to catch a movie. Since she loved Elizabeth and Rock Hudson, Giant was the comfort movie she’d seen the most times in the most languages. So of course I love that one and think of her whenever I watch it. Mom also used to joke that she had been to a party like the one in Peter Sellers’s The Party, and that turned out to be the last movie my mom was able to pay attention to and enjoy all the way through before dementia took that ability away. 

It is so great to be a movie fan and have all these wonderful memories connected to family and happy childhood moments. I love that my parents gave me such a great start and awareness of classics, along with a curiosity about always trying new things and exploring the “many rooms of the movie mansion.”