I was lucky that my Grandfather Cy Gallen was in the film business, if you count making family home movies as a profession.  He started taking 16mm movies when my Grandmother Clara gave birth to my father Norman and Uncle Gilbert in 1928.

 

I first saw Charlie Chaplin onscreen when I was five or so, at a family gathering in the basement projecting our family films. My grandfather had edited into the ten-minute family reel the ice cream scene from The Adventurer (1917).