In my eplay Milk and Water, about Montreal in 1927, I speculate about whether 'good' French Canadian girls went to the motion pictures. They certainly weren't supposed to.
1927 is the year of the Laurier Theatre fire that killed so many children, and which ultimately led the government to ban children from motion picture houses for 4 decades. I couldn't see a movie until I was 14 growing up. Well, I snuck in, as I was tall.
This all was really about protecting Quebeckers from American influence. Both the Protestant and Catholic churches supported this law, though. They were losing their customers to the motion pictures.
But if the Crepeau women, most in their early twenties, didn't go to the movies, they were certainly influenced by them.
You can see it in the poses they struck for the camera.
These pictures were taken in 1922 and 1923, when motion pictures were still young, but very popular in Quebec. Indeed, the Tachereau government was lamenting all the bad American influence, such as open mouth kisses (ironically enough).
There were scores of motion picture houses in Montreal in the early part of the 20th century, mostly at city center, St. Catherine and St. Laurent, but just a hop skip and a jump from 72 Sherbrooke West, where the Crepeaus lived!
Ernest Ouimet had the most famous cinema, the Ouimetoscope. On Ste. Catherine East. Mr. Ouimet was fighting the Sunday closing laws, as Sunday was his best day for business. He said movie houses were exempt from the 1908 Lord's Day Act as a precedent had been set since the early Nickelodeon Era.
At about this time they started building 'suburban' movie houses, often lavish movie palaces. In 1927 two giant motion picture palaces were being built around NDG, the Granada and (I believe) the Empress. These movie houses were where I saw movies when I finally could go legally. I always thought they were a tad over the top... I could never figure out why they had those 'balconies' with no seats... like at opera houses.
Over a barrel: considered sexy in 1927.
This looks like a scene from a D.W. Griffith movie! It's my Aunt Alice, my Mom (the little girl) and my aunt Flo, the woman adopted as a waif off the streets, a story straight from D.W. Griffith. She came to beg at the door so often, my grandmother just took her in.
