When I was eight years old I saw an ad for a movie in the Lebanon Daily News.

A Face in the Crowd directed by Eli Kazan. Hmm, I thought to myself based on the title and the picture in the ad, it sounds like a horror movie. And I loved horror movies in those days, although some of them were a little bit too much for me to handle. 

Still, I guess I must have asked, or perhaps begged, my mother to take me to it.

Somehow she also got the notion that it was a horror film. I don’t know if she didn’t read up on it, or if she was just basing it on what I said. 

Anyway I only remember (and I’m basing this blog post on three vague memories: seeing the ad, the incident I’m about to relate in the Snack Bar, and the one scene from the movie that I remember) that before taking me to the movie she took me to the Snack Bar for lunch. Lynn Klopp, who was our landlord (we lived on the second floor of his house) worked behind the counter there, as the Snack Bar belonged to his father, Howard “Skippy” Klopp at the time.

Just before we left I recall my mother asking me if I was sure I wanted to go to the movie “because they were going to show a big, ugly face on the screen.” 

Lynn overheard her and asked what movie we were going to see, and when she told him, Lynn explained that it wasn’t a horror film but— I assume he explained what it was actually about, but I don’t think I paid any attention. In any case I don’t remember what he said.

So we went to the movie, and I don’t think I understood half of what it was about. It certainly wasn’t a horror film except in a very broad definition of that term. By the way, the ad I have above is not the ad that I remember seeing; I couldn’t find an example of the one in my memory.

In later years the only thing that I remembered about the movie was the following scene, which I did understand. I gathered that the character played by Andy Griffith, who the Patricia Neal character had discovered in obscurity and helped nurture to become a big media star, was presenting a false front to his millions of fans. He appeared to be this pleasant, folksy nice guy, but in reality he was a monstrous egomaniac who treated his staff badly and hated the fans who made him a star.

So in one act of desperation Patricia Neal— But watch the scene for yourself. As I said, it’s the only scene that I really understood and that I remembered years later.

I have one question.

Where is Patricia Neal when we really need her?