Bev Amazeen at graduation

Picture a bustling city street lined with thriving food markets, clothing and gift boutiques, and soda shops. A sidewalk teeming with shoppers, while kids line up to see the latest movie musical.

Sounds like a Frank Capra movie, doesn't it? It's actually the downtown Marlborough that Bev (Heeley) Amazeen fondly remembers.

"Marlborough had a terrific Main Street," she said.

Bev lived in Southborough with her parents and brother and sister, but their lives revolved around Marlborough because she and her siblings attended the Immaculate Conception School, and their father managed the Marlboro Theater on Main Street. (The theater is gone, but stood near Monument Square.)

"We sort of grew up at the movies," Bev said.

Musicals were her favorites, in particular, "Look for the Silver Lining," starring June Haver, Gordon MacRae and Ray Bolger.

Every day after school, she and her siblings walked to the theater. Occasionally, Bev and her sister sat in the theater and sketched the dresses the stars wore onscreen. Then they reproduced those dresses for their paper dolls.

Other times, if the theater was empty, her father would let them play hide-and-seek. With a balcony, opera boxes and an orchestra pit, the building offered wonderful hiding places.

There were, however, frightening times, too.

Bev's father was 35, married, and the father of three when he was drafted into the navy in the spring of 1945. Later that summer, it appeared their worst fears had materialized.

"Someone told my mother, that someone told them, they saw my father actually getting on the Indianapolis."

The USS Indianapolis had sunk in the Pacific. Bev said her mother was beside herself. Later, they learned he hadn't been on that ship.

"We got a letter [from him], and it was written after the Indianapolis had been sunk."

Bev's family traveled to Brighton, MA for her father's homecoming. He arrived from Boston by streetcar.

"I have a total, clear recollection of the four of us standing there waiting for him to get off the street car. It was great."

Bev Amazeen today

Back home, Bev's father resumed managing the theater, with the children visiting daily. But two summers of their childhood were not spent at the theater because of a polio scare, Bev said. Her parents were afraid, and for good reason.

"There were kids we went to school with at the Immaculate Conception that had polio."

Bev recalled her favorite job as a teen was at Carroll Cut-rate on Main Street (near site of Marlborough Co-Operative Bank). The store carried cosmetics, perfumes, and giftware. Bev remembered when someone spilled a whole bottle of Evening in Paris perfume, and the doors were opened to air out the store. She worked there part-time for five years, and the owner made the job a lot of fun, she said.

After college, Bev married George Amazeen and together raised three children. She became a counselor, which she still does part-time at Wayside Academy.

Bev wishes the old theater was still standing, especially with the recent restoration of similar buildings. Still, the theater will be remembered by every moviegoer that walked through its doors.

"I think that we were lucky," Bev said of her childhood spent at the old Marlboro Theater.

Frank Capra would have agreed.