 OCTOBER 8 • 2020 | 35

ever,
” he said. “I can still talk 
about them, and I still know 
exactly who was in them. Now 
today, you see some movies 
— yeah, they entertain you. 
But afterwards? It doesn’
t leave 
much behind.
”
Zydower suggests some of 
this may be due to the loss of 
stars and the relationship that 
viewers could form with them 
across their many frequent 
works.
“Most movies they are mak-
ing today, it’
s very seldom they 
have top stars like they used to 
have before,
” he muses. “Even 
though you never met some of 
them in real life, you felt like 
they belonged to you.
”

LIFE IN AMERICA
But Zydower remains sensi-
tive to painful recollections. 
Movies that address the 
Holocaust can stir memories 
of both the hate he experi-
enced and the violence he 
observed and heard about 
against those around him.
“It upsets me terribly,
” he 
says of watching Holocaust-
themed films. “I start crying.
” 
Even now, he describes a sense 
of disbelief at the horrors he’
s 
heard of and seen.
Fortunately for Zydower, 
his time since his arrival in 
America has been almost 
exclusively free of antisemi-
tism and hate.
“I tell you, the minute I got 
off the boat I felt I was in par-
adise. When I arrived in San 
Francisco, the driver — who 
had to be Jewish — he told us 
that Israel had been created 
that day.
”
Immediately upon arrival, 
he made the most of the coun-
try’
s then-penchant for show-
ing double features.
“By the time I came to 
America, I only had seen 174 
movies. And I was 18 years 
old. In San Francisco, I went 
almost every other day — the 

theaters were open night and 
day. There was this one on 
Market Street, I’
d go and watch 
two movies. And then, the next 
day I would again watch two.
”
The habit continued when 
his family migrated to Detroit, 
and he began working in 
industry. Zydower still vividly 
remembers a range of neigh-
borhood theaters in Detroit 
that have gone over the years; 
the Linwood and the Jersey 
were frequent fixtures in his 
life, and he still remembers 
when each would rotate its 
weekly programming.
Today, Zydower’
s vision has 
declined enough that he can no 
longer drive, and theaters have 
been closed amid the pandem-
ic. But he still watches a lot at 
home on Amazon (he praised 
Once Upon a Time in Odessa, a 
recent series about a Jewish 
gangster) and appears lively 
and undaunted even amid a 
historically difficult time. 
When asked if movies pro-
vide an escapist function, he 
agreed they often can, espe-
cially in “the bad times.
” As an 
example, he recalled a conver-
sation overheard in Shanghai 
between a couple, a pair of 
foreign refugees contemplating 
the price of a Strauss operetta; 
they were weighing, as he 
and his family often did, the 
value of an artistic experience 
against what they needed to 
survive.
Whether escapist or not, 
Zydower’
s story suggests the 
experience of watching movies 
has largely been worthwhile. 
Though not every film’
s a win-
ner, impressions of the finest 
viewings, stars and theaters 
seem to live on for him as viv-
idly ever.
“I tell you what,
” he says 
of Here Come the Waves, a 
long-ago viewing experience 
among an incredible many: “I 
remember every bit no matter 
what.
” 

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