The Whitman Movie Theater & The Yellow Canary

So one night we travel to Whitman as we often do to visit with the Tobin’s. Nenna and Aunt Edie drink tea and chat and Wes, Laurie and I – along with Skip, Bill and Tom – Invent some game to play or some investigation to conduct around the Roberts St neighborhood or through the graveyard behind their house. But one night while Nenna and Edie visited, we were given money and allowed to walk the few blocks to downtown to catch a movie at the Whitman Movie Theater. Now we had been there before to see Disney Movies like Sleeping Beauty and such, always preceded by cartoons – Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, Tom & Jerry, Mickey & Goofy. But now we were big kids (I was 8 and the youngest, so Wes and Skip were 12 or 13) and we got to go without parental supervision. The movie being shown was called “The Yellow Canary” – and it was scary!!!

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The Yellow Canary
Genre: Crime
Director: Buzz Kulik
Main Cast: Pat Boone, Barbara Eden, Steve Forrest, Jack Klugman, Jesse White
Release Year: 1963
Run Time: 93 minutes
Plot
Written by mystery master Rod Serling, The Yellow Canary stars Pat Boone as insufferable singing idol Andy Paxton. Barbara Eden plays his wife Lissa, who is fed up with her husband's egotistical attitude and is ready to leave him. When their baby son is kidnapped, Andy Paxton refuses to enlist the help of the police. He still does not cooperate even after three people are murdered in crimes apparently related to the kidnapping. Finally, acting on his own, he agrees to pay $200,000 in ransom, but the kidnapper never shows up at an arranged meeting. In desperation, the singer finally gets more involved in tracking down the kidnapper. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
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Now Laurie always loved to be scared by TV shows or movies, but this was tense and suspenseful with kidnapping and murder and we were all hiding our eyes. Unfortunately, our eyes were open and we were unsuspecting when at a critical moment Pat Boone enters a darkened room and shuts the door behind him – and although HE doesn’t at first see it, we DO – the dead body of a man hung by a noose behind the door.
I don’t actually recall too much detail about the movie, other than the key clue is that the killer had beech sand in his shoes (I’m guessing that I not spoiling the plot for you as you are likely not running out to rent it!). Walking back through Whitman Center to Roberts Street in the dark was nerve-racking tho’, and Wes was particularly traumatized by the whole ordeal. For days and weeks (and months) afterwards all I had to do was to say out loud “THE YELLOW CANARY” and he would cower in fear. Even years later I could get a rise out of him by uttering that movie title to him, and now – if you were to walk up to Uncle Wes and say “look out for the Yellow Canary” he will either fake-scream in fear or grab you and fake-beat-you-up. Try it. It’s fun.