Excerpted from Tom McClellands memoir

In 1939 and 1940 Norma and I went to the Saturday double features weekly at Washington Theater in Pasadena. Admission was 12 cents. Candy bars were a nickel, The theater was just three blocks from our duplex .

The 900-seat movie house was loaded with kids, an admission line forming clear around the block up North Lake Avenue. We would sit through two films, a cartoon, newsreel and an episode of the current adventure serial. That was the big attraction. Although many serials were the less expensive westerns, they could cover the gamut of genres including crime fiction, spy stories, adventures in outer space, jungle adventures, and often popular comic book characters.

Filled with action and adventure, the serial film usually featured a hero encountering an evil villain, fighting the bad guy to save the world or a beautiful damsel in distress.  The hero and heroine faced such dangers as being trapped in a burning building, hanging by their fingernails from the edge of a cliff, or being tied up, helplessly watching the fuse on a bundle of dynamite burn while the villain watched smugly a safe distance away.  Each week’s serial would end with the hero in dire straits, facing certain death. Of course the adventure would be continued the next week—and the hero would make a harrowing escape. We couldn’t wait to return the next Saturday.

Individual episodes or chapters of serials ran a dozen or so minutes. Our favorites were Dick Tracy, The Green Hornet, Don Winslow of the Navy, Red Ryder, Zorro and the one I admired most, Captain Marvel.

Adventures of Captain Marvel is a 1941 twelve-chapter film. The power of the Golden Scorpion allows Billy Batson to meet the ancient wizard Shazam, who grants him the power to become Captain Marvel and protect those who may be in danger from the Scorpion’s curse. Captain Marvel could fly and was seemingly indestructible. The caped marauder dazzled us youngsters one exciting week after another.

Each Saturday during intermission the manager, dressed in tuxedo, went on stage. He would name a particular candy bar and the child to get on stage first with that candy bar in hand would win five candy bars of his or her choice. One Saturday I was standing at the head of the aisle, near the concessions, when the manager named Necco Wafers as that day’s winner. When I saw no one was running to the stage, I plucked a nickel on the counter, bought a five-cents package of the multi-flavored wafers and ran like crazy down the aisle. I claimed that day’s prize. It was a great sugar fix.

Our movie house had opened in 1925 after Washington Boulevard was paved. Their show time had silent films at first, then vaudeville performances. They advertised that they had “something on the stage every night.” We stuck to the cheap Saturday offerings, early talkies in black and white.

In addition to my adoration of Captain Marvel in the filmed serial, I was a collector of Captain Marvel comic books. I had most of them from the opening issue in 1940, kept them in neat stacks in a box. I read and reread the 10-cents comics, increasing my reading skills in the process. I should have saved them. A good condition copy of Whiz Comics #2 sold for $281,001 in 2011. I probably had that issue.