Bodda Getta Box Office: “Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number?”

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I go through The Plainsman. That’s what I do. Get to know it. Process it. Find its freckles. Inhale the old way and hold my breath for as long as I can. (It’s a disease.) But sometimes, I don’t find much. No new Shug secrets. No new almost-had-a-mascots. Sometimes I walk out of the library with only an empty Diet Coke and a bunch of movie ads. But sometimes that’s enough. ‘Cause, man, the movie ads… it’s enough to make you want to start a Tumblr or something, stay up all night Diet Coke long uploading huge files of Brigitte Bardot and John Wayne and Fred MacMurray and Alfred Hitchcock with hardly any commentary—just those awesome old ads do the talking. But why start a Tumblr when you’ve got TWER? (Wait a minute—I’VE GOT A TIME MACHINE!)

But I know what you’re thinking—you’re thinking that newspaper movie ads have nothing to do with Auburn, that I could technically have found them in any newspaper. But sure they do—your parents and your grandparents and maybe even you, your Baby Boomin’ self saw these ads for these movies when they were in Auburn. They saw these movies when they were in Auburn, at movie theaters in Auburn, theaters with Auburn names: The War Eagle Theatre. The Tiger Theatre. The Auburn–Opelika Drive Inn. The Village Theater. Like, they all had Auburn names. And obviously I’m not going to crop out those Auburn names, and those Auburn logos. I mean, that’s the whole idea. I mean, if they weren’t showing at theaters with Auburn names, they really wouldn’t do it for me, not as much at least. Kinda weird, I know, but it’s the truth.

Let’s go to the movies.

Now showing: Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number?

Obviously, I don’t want to make a habit of timing the launch of TWER archive series with celebrity deaths—see Phil Neel, Carl Stephens.. and Andy Griffith’s death really threw me for a loop— but I really have been getting close starting this thing, and I really just had looked at this ad for Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number?, and really had been thinking about leading off with it, primarily because of out-of-the-ordinary (you’ll see) War Eagle Theatre logo, but now primarily, yes, because of Phyllis Diller. Ms. Diller died today. She was 95. She was a legend. This screwball tag team with Bob Hope was her in her prime (I’d like to report a man in my room. Can you send on over?) It was playing at the ol’ War Eagle for five great days in early July, 1966.