Parenting & Family Quote by Kitty Carlisle

"It was considered oh, not proper for children to go to the movies" is a small sentence that sneaks in a whole era of social policing. Kitty Carlisle tosses off "oh" like a shrug, but it functions as a tiny time machine: you can hear the old disapproval in it, the pearl-clutching tone of adults treating a new medium as a moral hazard. She doesn’t argue with the rule head-on. She mimics it, letting the phrase "not proper" indict itself with its vagueness. Proper according to whom? For what reason? The point is that the standard was never meant to be defended; it was meant to be enforced.

Coming from Carlisle, a performer who straddled Broadway glamour and mainstream TV respectability, the line lands as both memory and commentary. Early cinema was noisy, populist, immigrant-coded, and physically close: bodies packed into dark rooms watching images that felt too vivid, too democratic, too available. Calling it improper wasn’t only about protecting kids from racy content; it was about protecting class boundaries and parental authority from a medium that didn’t require permission, education, or pedigree.

The understated humor matters. Carlisle doesn’t sound traumatized; she sounds amused at the prudery. That’s the cultural punch: what was once treated as suspicious becomes, in hindsight, quaint. The quote captures how every new entertainment form arrives as a threat to "children", until it gets domesticated and sold back to the same adults who once banned it.