Walter Matthau: But listen, you can always get Jack Klugman, he’s around sometimes.
Michael Kantor: But he wasn’t on Broadway. True, he won. Well, I was thinking of Odd Couple, but…
Walter Matthau: Didn’t he understudy me?
Michael Kantor: Yeah, you did, actually. Tell me, when you were growing up, where did, there were movies, there was Broadway, there were shows, where did Broadway fall in terms of, it was more expensive, it was what everyone went to see. Who went to Broadway when you were growing in New York?
Walter Matthau: I suppose people had made more than $30 a week. The first play I ever went to was in 1935. I had won a lot of money in a card game. I won about two or three dollars. And I went to see Winterset. 1935, 1938, I went to see Macbeth with Morris Evans. That’s about it. Then I didn’t go again until after World War II.
Michael Kantor: Tell me about the plays that happened after World War II. They seem to be much more punchy and important than plays that are done now. Did it feel that way then?
Walter Matthau: Yeah, because in the 30s, the group theater got started. You know about the group theater, Harold Clomann and Lee Strasberg. And they presented plays of social significance. Clifford or Dats, Arthur Miller. And they were plays that you could relate to, could sink your teeth into. Plays before then were of silly people speaking silly lines. Today, I don’t know what Broadway is like. I understand it’s just musicals. And once in a while you’ll get a good play off Broadway. But I don’t go to the theater anymore. You do makeup, too.
Michael Kantor: Tell me about the first time you appeared on a Broadway stage, what did that feel like?
Walter Matthau: Well, the first job I got on Broadway… Was a play called Anne of a Thousand Days. I was sent over to the theater by a lady named Miss Apple, Gertrude Apple. She worked for one of the big producers on Broadway. And I was a friend of her brother’s. We were in the CCC camps together. And she said to me, how tall are you? And I said, 6’3″. She said, because there’s a man who’s older than you are. You’re, what, 27? Well, he’s 85. Can you play an old English bishop? I said, oh yeah, sure. An old English bishop, yeah. I played a few in school, making it up, you know. So she sent me over to see Leland Heywood and Bertane Windus was the director. And, uh… I guess it was Rex Harrison starred in it, and I read The Old English Bishop. And they said, no, that’s very good. And he gave me the job. And I know the unit production manager, or whatever he’s called in the theater, Victor Samrock, he said, well, he said, look, you’re understudying Bishop Fisher, Cardinal Wolsey, Sir Thomas Moore, Thomas Cromwell, and the Duke of Northumberland. And you’re getting $100 a week, so what are you worried about. So I was absolutely delirious with joy, and I left the theater, and I told everybody on the street what happened to me. And most people were very nice about it. They said, oh, that’s nice, that was good. Keeping their distance, you know.
Michael Kantor: Great. Great. Terrific. What about George Abbott? What was George Abbot like to work with?
Walter Matthau: Well, Abbott didn’t say much. He’d say, all right, sit on the couch now. Kiss the girl and grab a piece of cake. Let’s see, where you tumble over and the couch falls on top of you, that’s not funny. Why don’t you try it without the couch falling on top you? He was laconic, terse. When we went to Boston and Philadelphia, it was always around the time. When the World Series was on. I know that George Abbott was a very thrifty man. He wouldn’t rent a room in a hotel with a television set. That was extra. And he wanted to watch the World Series. So he’d walk from one appliance store to another where they had the World series on and people were standing outside on the street watching through the window. He did a lot of walking that way, I guess that’s why he lasted until 107. I know I was at his hundredth birthday party and someone said, don’t you want to say hello to Mr. Abbott? And I said, well I don’t think he’ll remember me, it’s been 38 years. And just then Abbott walked over and he said, Walter, the reason why our play wasn’t a hit was because Uta Hagen wasn’t glamorous enough. He knew my name, he knew the play, he knew what he was talking about.
Michael Kantor: Tell me about, you’re an understudy for Broadway, and you get the chance to go on.
Walter Matthau: Well, I’m 27, and I’m from the Lower East Side of New York. I have a very obvious New York accent. And here I am going on for Harry Irvine, who’s an Englishman, who was 86. And he’s playing Bishop Fisher. Rex Harrison’s playing Henry VIII, and he finds out that I’m the understudy. And he can’t believe it. And he’s very nervous when Russell Gage, who played Sir Thomas More, he was about seventy and his line was, but Bishop Fisher is the eldest and wisest amongst us and he will speak first. So I walked center stage. It must have taken me three hours to get to this. I took my time. And I said, I’ve known you from a child, King Henry. I was present when you took your first three steps. At which point, Harrison turned his back to the audience, and in a very loud voice, he said, oh, shit. For the next 10 minutes, all I could hear was the audience saying, did he say shit? Between shit and shush, it sounded like it was raining on the roof. And I played it for six weeks. But I didn’t get the same reaction every night. He calmed down a little when I wasn’t making a fool of myself, or at least I didn’t think I was.
Michael Kantor: Late 40s, Arthur Miller play, Death of a Salesman.
Walter Matthau: Death of a salesman. I went to a matinee because I think that I was busy with the end of a thousand days. So I took my brother to a Matinee. And after the performance, my brother just sat there. And then I looked at him and he said, boy, I wouldn’t want to see that again. Meaning that was too emotionally draining. And I know what he meant. He saw it about 15 times. He couldn’t believe the actors would keep doing what they were doing. They were really beautiful. Lee J. Cobb was giant. Great stage actor. He washed out a bit in the movies because the movies, you know, is amplification and the camera and looks and so forth. But on the stage, there was nobody better.
Michael Kantor: Tell me your, sorry, your impressions of Marlon Brando who went to a training school as you did.
Walter Matthau: Marlon Brando was at the dramatic workshop. And as far as I know, this is secondhand, he was kicked out of school because he had too many orgies, sex orgies. And they were out someplace out in the country. I didn’t get, that was summer of 45. I got there in February of 46. And I saw Brando in quite a few plays. Well, not quite a view, three or four plays. And he was an electrifying actor. You couldn’t take your eyes off him. He was just stupefying. It was a play called Maxwell Anderson’s Truck Line Cafe. Then there was Tennessee Williams. Streetcon named Desire. He was just unbelievable. I mean, every time he stepped on stage, he was the only one you saw. He opened his mouth, he was the only one you heard. If other people were talking, all he had to do was open his mouth. He didn’t have to say anything. Now he was quite something.
Michael Kantor: Were there ever ladies of the stage who gave you the same feeling, or no? Katherine Corneau or Helen Hayes, someone who…
Walter Matthau: I never liked Helen Hayes. Catherine Cornell I never saw. I thought Helen Hayes played the audience too much. She wanted to be loved by the audience. And she was constantly turning one eye to the audience and winking at them. Uhhh… I was in a play in 53, I think it was, yeah, with some pretty good actresses, Edna Best. Played my sweetheart. She was supposed to be 25 years older, and she was. Betty Field was in The Ladies of the Corridor. George Gene Nathan said it was the best play of the century so far. It was written by Dorothy Parker and Arno Dusso. And I remember in the rehearsal, Harold Clawman was the director. And Edna Best said, would you ask Mr. Mathau not to open his mouth as much when he kisses me because he’s smearing my makeup. So I said, well, look, Miss Best and Mr. Clorman, I’m a method actor. And whenever I see Miss Best, and I know there’s a possibility of kissing her, I’m like a man who hasn’t had a drop of water for three days. And suddenly, I see this juicy watermelon. And Harold said, well, why don’t you pretend you go for the pits? So I closed my mouth there after, after I kissed her. I mean, while I was kissing her, and after I kiss her.
Michael Kantor: Uta Hagen was one of the great stage actresses of that time. Tell me about…
Walter Matthau: Very beautiful, very intelligent, brilliant actress. I did a play with her called In Any Language, and that was George Abbott. And three weeks into the play, I got an offer to do something out in Hollywood. Oh, I got an offer to do a screen test. And I knew the play was on his last legs anyway. So it was my last night, and someone knocked on my door, and it was one of the people that worked backstage. And they said, Uta Hagen wants to see you in her dressing room. I walked into her dressing room and when she saw me, she opened her robe and she was wearing some kind of newfangled brassiere. The nipples were hanging out, and she said, this is my goodbye present. That’s it.
Speaker 3 Okay, great. Let’s say we are
Walter Matthau: Are we going to get arrested for this?
Speaker 3 I probably won’t make it, but I had to hear the story.
Walter Matthau: She’ll probably say, Oh, he’s full of baloney.
Michael Kantor: How
Walter Matthau: Never happened.
Michael Kantor: Let’s talk about Gray-Eyed People. Arthur Miller wrote a play, The Crucible, in response to the McCarthy hearings. Was that the only play that was responding to that terrible time?
Walter Matthau: You mean the crucible?
Michael Kantor: No, I’m thinking about the Bray.
Walter Matthau: Of the gray-eyed people.
Michael Kantor: Put that in context to, you know, at that time…
Walter Matthau: I don’t know, I don’t remember much about it except that I know that the gray-eyed people were the people who were different, who didn’t go along with the political tenets of the day. I don’t remember much about it.
Michael Kantor: But just set it up that, you know, there were plays in response to this, McCarthy, you’re serious.
Walter Matthau: Well, the play I was in, The Gray Eyed People, yes, I don’t know of any other plays, I’m sure there were.
Michael Kantor: What was your reaction to reading The Odd Couple for the first time?
Walter Matthau: Well, I asked Neil Simon. I met him at Hal March’s house in Westchester. And he came over to me and he said, I’m writing a play for you. And I said, good, good. What’s your name? He said, Neil Simon I said. Have you ever written a play before? He said yes. I wrote two of them, which were hits on Broadway, Barefoot in the park and What was the other one?
Speaker 4 Come below.
Walter Matthau: Come blow your horn. So I said, oh, they were hits. Yeah, well, send me the play when you think of it. He said, well it will be about six months, because I’m just starting to write it. I said oh, what made you think me for this role? He said well, I saw you at the city center in Guys and that gave me the clue that you were the right man to play Oscar Madison in this play. I said, well, listen, what is it, a three act play? He said, yeah. I said can you send me two acts as soon as you get them? He said, sure. I said, I’ll keep in touch. I’ll let you know where I am. Well, I was out in Hollywood making a picture called Goodbye Charlie, George Axelrod’s picture. And I had done George Axlerod’s Will Success Boy a Rock Hunter on Broadway. Neil Simon sent me the play, the two acts. I read them. And I turned to my wife and I said This play will run 10 years. I don’t care what the third act is like. It just so happens he never really did get a decent third act, but it didn’t make any difference. First two acts were so powerful that they overrode the shortcomings and the weaknesses of the third ag. And that’s how I got into the odd couple and that’s I lost my anonymity. Because I think that was the big one. That was the turning point. You suddenly, because I had done. 13, 14 plays before then, and I had done 24 pictures, movies, but nothing had the impact that the odd couple had. I did it on Broadway with Art Carney, and the movie was Jack Lemmon.
Michael Kantor: What first appealed to you about the play?
Walter Matthau: What appealed to me about Odd Couple. It was very funny. Without making you suspend your disbelief, you believed the characters. And they were hyper, and they were believable, and they very funny.”
Michael Kantor: I read Neil Simon’s book that you called the producer and said you’d do the play on two conditions, do you remember that?
Walter Matthau: Yeah, well, it’s slightly exaggerated. I said I wanted to do the play and they decided to meet at some Italian restaurant on 46th Street. I’m in a restaurant with Mike Nichols, St. Subur, and Neil Simon. We’re talking about the odd couple. Who should we get for Felix? And I said, you know, Felix is the tough part. Why don’t you let me play it? Oscar is a cinch, and I can telephone it in. So Neil Simon says, do me a favor, Walter, act in somebody else’s play. This play, you play Oscar. So I said, fine. I wasn’t too serious about it. I knew that I had the pawn and I had laughs. And I knew then Felix was the tough pawn. So I thought I would volunteer, you know. It’s like the guy who volunteers to go out and do some reconnaissance, a very dangerous mission, except he’s hoping desperately nobody takes him up on it.
Michael Kantor: What was the first reading like? You remember? I think the fact that the third act didn’t fly was pretty clear.
Walter Matthau: Yeah, the first reading of The Odd Couple was hilarious. It was just like the play was six weeks later. After Mike Nichols got through. Trying to make it less funny. No, I’m only kidding, Mike. Just kidding.
Michael Kantor: There you are in Wilmington, Delaware as part of the Out of Town Tryout, and two days before you open, there’s a new third act. What happens?
Walter Matthau: Well, it wasn’t exactly a whole new third act. It was four or five or maybe eight pages. And it’s Wilmington, Delaware. It’s Washington, DC. And it is sheer murder. I can’t learn lines that fast, or if I can, it’s just not worth it because the strain and the stress involved is just too hard on the organs. So I used to get these lines, and I know they didn’t want to bother Aunt Connie with learning new lines, so they gave them to me. I didn’t know what to do. I would stand up, try to walk around, try to learn the lines. Then I’d get very exhausted, so I’d lay down. As soon as I lay down, instead of taking a nap or relaxing, I’d more hyper about the fact that I’m laying down and I’m not working. And I should be working on these lines. So between… Both laying down and walking around learning the lines, I was thinking seriously of jumping out of the window, getting rid of all my problems. But I didn’t do that. I figured there was no percentage in that.
Michael Kantor: Neil Simon wrote that at one point, you threaten to at the end of the play turn to the audience and say, ladies and gentlemen, I did my best, but blame the rest of this on, tell me that story if you would.
Walter Matthau: That sounds like a story that’s made up by, who’d you get it from? Neil Simon?
Michael Kantor: Said, ladies and gentlemen, I did my best. Blame this shit on Nichols and Simon.
Walter Matthau: No, I was just telling him a story about this actor who’s doing Hamlet, and while he’s doing the main soliloquy, people are booing him. Finally, in the middle of the soliloque, he turns to the audience and he says, what do you want from me? I didn’t write this crap. That was a joke. But what he says about me telling that to the audience? Well, it’s possible that I said it, not meaning it, of course. Most of the things I say I don’t mean. I’m just looking for a reaction or trying out words and see how people react to it. Like a kid, you want to see how far I can go.
Michael Kantor: What happened in Boston to make the show work?
Walter Matthau: What happened in Boston, Willie, death of a salesman.
Michael Kantor: But in terms of Odd Couple, what happened in Boston that made the show work? Do you remember? No. It was moving the Pigeon Sisters into the third- Oh, sh-
Walter Matthau: Oh, they did something. That really had no effect on it. But Neo was very clever about it. And he said, I’ve got it. I’ve figured it out. I’ve worked it out! We get the Pigeon Sisters from the third act. We put them in the second act. Nobody sees it. It’s set in the corner. And it disappears. I didn’t buy it for a second, but I did it. He was so enthusiastic about it.”
Michael Kantor: And what about the line, you wrote about, what’s wrong Oscar, don’t you like double headers, you hated this line.
Walter Matthau: It was so wrong for Felix, the way Felix was being played by Art Carney anyway, it was wrong for the Felix to say, what’s the matter, Oscar afraid of double headers. That sounded like an Oscar Madison line. So I mentioned it to Neil and he wouldn’t do anything about it. One day I wrote him a letter, bringing this up, posing as a Viennese psychiatrist. And… The next day, the line was out. And it took me two years to tell him that I wrote that letter. And you know what he says? Of course you wrote it. I knew you wrote. I thought the guy is going so far as to write as becoming an imposter, to write a letter, a fictitious letter, and say that he’s some kind of ficticious. Professor of psychology and that this man would never say, he said, I knew it was you.
Michael Kantor: Okay, the odd couple opened on March 10th, 1965. What do you think it says about the 60s?
Walter Matthau: They were very good for me. The 60s were very good for me. There were a lot of good plays, if I remember, in the 60s. I almost missed The Odd Couple, because I liked a play that Murray Shiskow wrote called Love, L-U-V. But we couldn’t negotiate a contract on it, so that fell through the cracks. There were a lot of good plays.
Michael Kantor: Do you think the divorce issue and the odd couple has anything to do with the 60s or no? In terms of the theme of that play being
Walter Matthau: I wouldn’t doubt it, but I never saw it that way. That never occurred to me.
Michael Kantor: What happens when you open a hit play? Give us a sense of opening night and what happens right after.
Walter Matthau: Well, if it’s a hit play, and if you got a good notice, you can’t wait to get to the theater. You’re just so pleased with yourself. And you’re so happy that you’re going to be working for a few months anyway and getting a check, a salary check, every week. It’s very unusual for an actor. It’s just a wonderful feeling to know you’re in a hit play.
Michael Kantor: When Odd Couple opened, what did you feel?
Walter Matthau: Before the notices or after.
Michael Kantor: Tell me the whole.
Walter Matthau: From the reaction of the audience, I thought it was a big smash comedy hit. And when the reviews came out, I knew I was right. It was just… The biggest comedy hit in maybe five, ten years, maybe more than that.
Michael Kantor: What do you think is Neil Simon’s special gift as a playwright?
Walter Matthau: He’s got his ear, Neil Simon’s got his ear to the sound of the public, especially the New York public. And he’s able to recreate the authentic sound of the so-called ordinary person. He’s extremely talented in taking ordinary language and making every word sound funny, delicious.
Michael Kantor: What’s the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you on stage? Has anything ever gone wrong in a-
Walter Matthau: Yeah, a lot of things have gone wrong on stage, especially in summer stock, when you do 10 plays in eight weeks. How can you do ten plays in 8 weeks? Eight plays in a week. Like the phone will ring and nobody’s gonna pick it up. And finally somebody picks it up, says hello. Then she looks at me and says, it’s for you. Uhhh… The lights will go out. We had an outage, summer stock up in Copake. And we had a brief hiatus while the stage manager rounded up about 12 candles, stuck them at the foot, the apron of the stage, and we continued, finished the play with the candles. Um…
Michael Kantor: How about on Broadway? Ever have a costume get caught or a door fall off?
Walter Matthau: Well, the funniest thing on Broadway was in The Odd Couple, where two of the poker players are discussing a pickle. Do you want your pickle? No, I don’t care. You want to have my pickle? And I come over and I smack the bottom of the plate and the pickle flies up in the air. Well, that was some… Pretty good laugh, but this one night, the pickle flew up and out into the audience. And it got even a bigger laugh. And then about three minutes later, got an enormous laugh when somebody in the audience threw the pickle back on stage. That stopped me for a while. I was trying to get a hold of myself for a
Michael Kantor: Okay, great. Brando, Newman, Streisand. Why do so many actors leave Broadway and never come back?
Walter Matthau: Some of them should leave Broadway because they’re no good on the stage. Uh, why did I leave Broadway and haven’t been back? I’ve fallen into the trap of living well. You make a lot more money doing movies. Conditions are a lot easier and more interesting. You don’t have to pretend on a stage that you’re in Alaska with polar bears. You go to Alaska, and they get real polar bears, so it becomes an adventure. So you have a much higher standard of living as an actor in the movies. That’s if you’re getting work. And the theaters in New York, as far as I remember, they were old, decrepit, decaying. Your dressing rooms had cockroaches in them, mice. I didn’t need that. If I could have been a mechanical engineer or a chemical engineer and had good standard of living, I would have taken that.
Michael Kantor: How is doing a play different from making a movie in terms of preparing a role?
Walter Matthau: You prepare a movie role and a stage role in a totally different manner. On the stage, what you do is you read the play before you go to rehearsal. You read it half-dozen times. You read out loud, you read it quietly, see what you can get out of it. Then you go in and you have your first reading with the other people. Then you discuss pieces of the play and you learn pieces of the play for the next five, six weeks, rehearsal time. Then you go out on stage and you do the piece. By this time, you should have some idea of who you are, what you’re doing, and how it should be. In the movies. You get a script, you read it, you maybe read it again, and then you don’t worry about it. Until you say you want a schedule, and then you look at the schedule, and then three days or two days before you’re gonna work on a specific part of the movie, you learn the line. Sometimes I find it better if I don’t learn the lines. If I know what the lines are and I make up my own words. Sometimes. Except to play a movie, it generally is because I’m not going to fool around with the words. But sometimes you just can’t help it because things change. You get Richard Benjamin instead of Harvey Keitel. You have to adapt to the immediacy, the moment that the thing is happening.
Michael Kantor: What made you want to be an actor?
Walter Matthau: I never really wanted to be an actor. It’s just that I couldn’t do anything else. So it’s like Lejos Egri’s book on playwriting. You don’t make the girl a whore. You show why she couldn’t be anything else but a whor. I didn’t want to be an actor, I didn’t know that I could be an actor and actually get paid for it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do as a job, maybe become a salesman in the garments. Or I was thinking it would be nice to have a drug store, be a pharmacist, but I didn’t have any money. I couldn’t go to school. So everything just fell into place through being an actor. I had a good voice. It was a clear voice. I was able to imitate people and get some response, usually laughs. I worked selling ice cream and cherry drinks in the Yiddish-speaking theater on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan. And I was entranced by the actors on stage and how they moved around. Then they gave me a couple of roles with one or two words, gave me $0.50 a night or $0,50 a performance to do it. And I felt very relaxed on the stage. I knew Out in Norwich during World War II, I was at a heavy bomber outfit nearby called Old Buckingham. It was between the town of Wyndham and Attleboro. And I went to Norwich to see a I think it was… Well, it was a play. I’ll get it in a minute. And at the end, Arsenic and Ole Lace. And at end of the first act, a magician came out on stage and he called for somebody to help him from the audience. And nobody seemed willing to help and so I got up and I said, here I am. And I walked across the stage, I got a big laugh. So I said to my friend later, I said, why did they laugh when I walked on stage? I thought my fly was open. And he said, no, well, you walk just like a GI, like a soldier. I said how is that? He said natural. That must have hit some kind of note. Maybe I thought, oh, well, that’s good. That’s good. And then, after I was discharged from the Army, I met a Red Cross nurse. And she said I should go back to New York and go to dramatic school.
Michael Kantor: There are a lot of superstitions in the theater. Tell me about one of them and whether you heed it or not.
Walter Matthau: I don’t believe in superstitions. There may be one superstition that… That gets to me every now and then. That’s putting your hat on the bed. Don’t put your hat in the bed! In the theater I know there’s a taboo against saying Macbeth or reciting any lines from Macbath. Just supposed to refer to it as the Scottish play. But when people say to me, the Scottish player, I say, you mean Macbeth? Because I go against it, you know. I’m like the guy that’s got a double zero on his jersey or a 13. Thirteen. Most buildings in New York don’t have floor 13, do they? Or any place else. Who would want to be on the thirteenth floor? Me!
Michael Kantor: Tell me about Arthur Miller. What was it about his work that affected you so strongly?
Walter Matthau: Arthur Miller. As I said about Neil Simon, he has the rhythm of speech. He’s got his finger on the pulse of the speech patterns of New Yorkers, and especially New Yorker. And then, of course, he can take it from there. But his his way of writing words down made it easy for the actor to say. He didn’t have to change any of Arthur Miller’s words. He didn’t have to any of Neil Simon’s words for different reasons. But they both had terrific ears. How would the line go? How would it sound? Would it be better as a question? It was actually down there on paper. And so when you read it, it flowed.
Michael Kantor: Coming back to Odd Couple for just a second, was there a particular line that was your favorite line in the show, a punch line or something? The sandwiches is pretty great, the green and…
Walter Matthau: Yeah, I never really liked that. Oh, the best part of it for me was when Felix is going to tell me off, and we both lean on a table. Face to face, eye to eye. And he says, Oscar, you’re a wonderful person. I don’t know what I would have done without you. You took me in here, you gave me food, you gave a reason to live. You made life pleasant for me. And I’m waiting. Nothing is happening. So I say, if I’ve just been told off, I think I may have missed it. That was my favorite.
Michael Kantor: So I asked you about other people like Kormann or other…
Walter Matthau: Harold Clouman, I got into a play. There was a fellow dropped dead in New Haven named Donald Cook. And the play was called Shot in the Dark. And they wanted me to take over. Harry Kernitz was the writer, Leland Hayward again, the producer, and Harold Clomann, the director. So I said, okay, and I had two days to learn the pot. And I said to Harold, how do I do this part, Harold? You haven’t said a word to me. He says, well, there’s no time to talk. I said, well how should I do the part? He said, talk English and walk fancy. So I got a very heavy English accent. It was so English, it was a translation from the French. And I walked fancy. I imitated my mother having desperately to go to the bathroom. Combined with Charles de Gaulle. So it was my mother’s shuffling to the bathroom, having a full bladder, and Charles de Gaulle sticking his nose way up in the air. And I won the Tony Award for that. Uh, you were asking about, uh, Vaudeville. You know, it cost 50 cents, and if you wanted a good seat, it was 75 cents.
Michael Kantor: What time period are we talking about? 30S. In the 30s…
Walter Matthau: 30S, 40s I was mostly engaged with World War II.
Michael Kantor: Just place us in the 30s. We’re in the thirties.
Walter Matthau: In the 30s, I was born in 1920, so starting with 1930, I’m 10, going all the way up to 19. And 50 cents, to pay 50 cents to see a show, you know you have to take the subway, it’s another dime, nickel each way. You know you’re going to stop at Nedix for a My dog. And an orange drink, that’s another 15, 20 cents. So you’re talking about close to a dollar. I could live a whole week on a dollar, I mean a can of salmon was 16 cents. So that’s why I never went to vaudeville shows or burlesque shows, or, well, I went to the movies on the weekends. My brother and I could get in for seven cents, two for seven, and we took a bag of sandwiches with there all day. They showed eight or nine pictures anyway, two large double features, and the rest short
