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2024-05-21 | WebClipping | 2024-05-21 | https://sf.gazetteer.co/the-true-story-behind-the-kid-who-went-1940s-viral-for-his-week-at-the-cinemas-in-san-francisco | true |
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The true story behind the kid who went 1940s viral for his week at the cinemas in San Francisco - Gazetteer SF
Richard Allen was an intensely private man.
He was an upstanding citizen, the sort of guy who was well-known and well-regarded in his community. He loved working in the metals industry, where he was known as a “go-to person” among his peers. He loved visiting Disneyland almost as much as he loved visiting Hawaii. He loved his wife and four children. He was once a local radio DJ. He helped spur a movement of Bay Area wrestling in the ’80s. He was given a Citizen of the Year award by the Union City Chamber of Commerce. By all accounts, especially that of his daughter Denise, he lived a long, rich life.
But Denise had no idea that her father made national headlines in 1947 for watching a week’s worth of movies in one sitting. She also didn’t expect that this story, more than seven decades later, would become a beloved internet meme that has likely been seen by thousands — if not millions — of people online.
Richard Allen’s wild week started on February 2, 1947.
“Richard had set out last Sunday, intending merely to spend a day at the movies,” read an article published in the San Francisco Examiner on February 8, 1947. “But when he suddenly found it was 1:30 a.m. he was ‘scared to go home.’”
So with a whopping $20 in his pocket, and one unidentified theater with a lax policy on kids watching flicks unsupervised, the possibilities were limitless. The fifth-grader’s wild week was filled with candy bars (150), comic books (15), hot dogs (“a large number”), and movies (16), punctuated by naps at a tree-covered lot.
It didn’t last. He probably had enough money to keep him afloat for a few more weeks, but by the following Friday, Richard’s father Marvin, a San Leandro restaurateur, had retrieved his son. He sternly told the Examiner that his boy gets “adventurous ideas” from listening to the radio.
Richard Allen’s story was eventually picked up by national news media. One of these outlets, United Press, also interviewed the Allens, and got a shrug of a quote from Richard that would stand the test of time: “I guess I just like movies.”
In 2021, a year after Richard died, a Tumblr account specializing in mid-century geekery circulated the United Press story, headlined “Love For Movies Causes Boy, 10, To Lose A Week.” Cinephiles and meme accounts on social media shared the story the world over. It caught traction on iFunny, the meme recirculator website. Actors, film distributors, and movie theaters shared his story, often with a pithy line expressing admiration for the boy.
But there was so much more to the story than the headlines.
United Press International / Archival
I caught Denise on the phone, nursing her second glass of wine at her home in the Central Valley suburb of Tracy. What unfolded was a freewheeling, candid exercise in excavating her father’s life together.
Toward the end of his life, Richard moved in with his daughter. He had reluctantly retired from his decades-long career in the metals biz. Then, in a stroke of terrible luck, he sustained a debilitating hip injury.
“It was May 31, 2019, and my dad was dead a year later,” she said. “He didn’t know what to do without working.”
In the year or so that they cohabitated, she started to piece together a fuller picture of her father’s life. But it’s clear that Denise didn’t get to hear every story that she could about her father.
Here’s what she knew: Dick, as his friends and family knew him, really did like movies. She rattled off the actors her dad adored. He loved the comedy stylings of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. He loved OG Mickey Mouse Clubhouse star Annette Funicello, who, as she recalled, was his ultimate crush. His favorite actor, however, was probably Bela Lugosi. (And as luck would have it, Lugosi had a film that was released to theaters on February 1, 1947: a critically panned thriller titled Scared to Death. He probably saw that during his week out, Denise said. Chances are good that he probably also saw the Western Last Frontier Uprising; Dick loved Westerns*.*)
There were other things that she didn’t know firsthand, but ultimately made sense. Like, for example, how a 10-year-old could have earned $20 — again, worth a couple hundred bucks in 1947 — on his own.
Denise figured that one out pretty quickly.
“When I’m reading this story, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I have flashbacks of him telling me he used to panhandle in San Francisco when he was young.’”
A young Richard Allen, dressed up in pigtails and a dress. Courtesy of Denise Allen
Dick probably was good at it, too. He had a boyish charm: A cherubic face, a sweet smile, and a demeanor that could convince anyone to spare him a nickel, his daughter recalled. “My grandmother did put him in a dress on purpose because the curls in his hair were long,” she said. “It looked exactly like Shirley Temple's hair. He just was a cute, cute kid and he knew he could use his charm. And he probably learned it from the movies.”
The kid with $20 in his pockets would grow up to be an adult with a cool grand in cash at hand at all times, she said. And, that, too, was explained by the article. “He said, ‘I promised myself when I was a little boy that I would always have cash on me.’ And he did ’til the day he died.”
Even little things, like his taste in food, lined up with what he liked as a boy. He didn’t eat much candy, but he continued to have a fondness for hot dogs — and always kept them around the house.
But there was one thing in the story that didn't quite add up for Denise. Neither the Examiner or United Press really examined how long it took Richard’s dad to find his wayward son, or if he’d run away before, or if the “adventurous ideas” Richard’s dad said he heard on the radio concealed something else. Why would he be so scared of going home that he preferred to be out alone in San Francisco? How can a kid go to the movies by himself? How often did he go to the movies alone?
“I'm reading this thinking to myself, ‘What were my grandparents doing? What the hell were my grandparents doing?’” she recalled.
Denise didn’t miss a beat. “Oh my God, no wonder my father was in foster care,” she said, matter-of-factly.
Her father didn’t talk much about his childhood, perhaps for this reason. Denise didn’t really know her grandfather, Marvin Allen, Sr., who died before she was born. His wife was a devout Mormon. They later split, and she remarried to another man — a grandfather that Denise knew.
All she remembered about Marvin was that he owned a restaurant in San Leandro, and later moved down to Los Angeles to open up a shop there. It was successful enough that the actress Connie Stevens (another one of Dick’s favorites) came down for a visit.
She confessed that her dad “never really had a father figure.” “That's probably why he ended up in foster care, because I know that my dad said that they couldn't control him,” she said.
Midway through our conversation, I bring up the overwhelmingly positive reception that Richard Allen’s story has received by strangers on the internet. I asked her how he’d respond if he were alive.
Courtesy of Denise Allen
“He would sit there, he'd put his head down,” Denise said. “He would probably shake it back and forth and just laugh.”
But Richard’s penchant for modesty, even in people’s post-mortem recollections of him, belied just how much the story resonated with people. This silly story keeps being shared for a reason.
“People really loved the idea that your dad loved movies so much that he ran away from home and escaped to go to the theater,” I told her.
“That’s what it was,” she said, with a catch in her throat. “You just used the word escape. I’m getting emotional right now. And I think that's what he was doing, escaping from the home life.”
Richard Allen’s sense of adventure and spontaneity, a quality that persisted for as long as he lived, continues to live on after his death. The idea that someone could escape their life — even if just for a few days — to camp out in a movie theater and luxuriate in another world feels like a pipe dream. It’s why the story continues to resonate, why people are still in awe of this 10-year-old. For a week, Richard Allen was free.
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