My Savoy ABC Minors Club 1947 Birthday Postcard
Cinemas were a very important part of life in the Railway Village and especially so to me. The cinemas I remember are The Regent, The Savoy, The Arcadia, The Rink in Old Town, The Palace and another one in the Rodbourne area. The Savoy ran a Saturday morning film show for kids, called the ABC Minors Club, of which I was a member. The picture at the head of this page shows a postcard which "Aunty Andy" sent to "Master J. Williams" at 6 Emlyn Square. This was for my tenth birthday and I was very pleased because, by showing it at the desk, I got in free!
Thanks to my encyclopedias, which showed how sound films were made in the studio and projected in the cinema, 35mm film as used in the cinemas was of great interest to me. Off-cuts from the cinemas were a real treasure as far as I was concerned. Sometimes such pieces were thrown out with the rubbish from the cinemas but most often I acquired them by swopping with a friend who knew someone who was a projectionist.
Most of the reels of 35mm film available were of the old silent-movie type which had no sound track. These were highly inflammable and therefore very dangerous, so we used to make smoke-bombs of any damaged pieces. The supply of these old reels of film appeared to be limitless but I have no idea why that should have been so.
No matter how interesting a film may have been, I was always alert for the projectionists' cue. This was a mark which flashed on to the top right corner of the screen and alerted the projectionist to start the second reel on the other projector so that there was no break in the continuity of the film. By turning my head to the rear when such marks appeared, I would see the projector beams switch over smoothly if all went well. If the projectionist had dropped off for any period of time, there was a lot of stamping and slow hand-clapping until he got on with the next reel. This rarely happened in the Regent or the Savoy but it was quite common in the other cinemas. It is interesting to note that these cue marks are still visible on some of the old films shown on the TV today. It is also interesting that some people are unable to see them.
Sometimes a small, plastic 35mm single frame viewer would appear in Woolworths for about a shilling. With it came several single frames of cinema film, often from Walt Disney colour cartoons. These were very good if you could afford one.
Some of my favourite films were anything by Walt Disney, or the gangster-type films with actors like Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Edward G Robinson. My top favourites were Doris Day films especially The Lullaby of Broadway which I saw three times in one week. I have a copy on video which is supposed to be complete but I am sure that half of it is missing. Possibly the attraction was, and still is, the script, the colours, the superb photography and the remarkable acting abilities of Doris Day. After a film like that, I felt more able to cope when I came out of the cinema onto the relatively dreary Swindon streets and then back to Emlyn Square. What a contrast! It made me more hopeful because of the realisation that there were other places, other lives and other more positive ways of dealing with life.
35mm projectors were not easy for us kids to come by so we had to make do with the home standard of 9.5mm. Films could be bought in the chemist shop in Faringdon Road but I could never afford them. I think the cost was about four shillings for a very small reel. My source for 9.5mm films was by swopping with other more affluent kids, usually from Old Town. Even then, the films were always damaged in some way. What I didn't like about 9.5mm was the large sprocket hole right in the middle of the film. This seemed a great waste of an already too small picture area.
To begin with I borrowed a 9.5mm projector and gave film shows in Emlyn Square to all and sundry. Later on I had a projector of my own but it was a rough, tinny old thing which damaged the film if I didn't take the utmost care. And then there were those heart-sinking moments when the film jammed in the gate. The picture on the screen would freeze and slowly distort and burn before it could be turned off in time.
The best 9.5mm film I had was about Popeye the Sailor. He was supposed to be child-minding but the baby kept yelling. The baby's mouth was so huge it filled the screen and Popeye was at his wits end. After all else had failed, Popeye fitted a zip to the baby's mouth so that the next time it cried, Popeye simply zipped its mouth up and that was the end of the film. Dad found the whole film hilarious and every time he saw it he always said that he wished he had thought of that for us kids!
I didn't really make an actual film but I did write a script, get other kids to be actors and directed and produced the film using an ex-WD bombsight as my pretend camera. With this I worked out the shots and the actors did their parts as I framed them to my satisfaction. One of my helpers was very good at imitating the background music as he acted. When we saw the film, "The Dream of Olwyn," that became the theme for our film. We also borrowed the scene from that film where the sleep-walking heroine tottered on the edge of a cliff before suddenly waking up as the music built up to a wonderful climax.
After rehearsing our film we decided that, as we knew of no cliffs around Swindon, we would film it at Blunsdon Abbey which was then derelict. So there we were with the sleep-walking actor, also supplying the background music as he acted, going slowly up the old staircase to the top floor of the abbey, where there was a gaping hole in the wooden floor. His part was to make his way slowly to the the hole and pause on the edge with arms outstretched, while bringing the music to a climax. At the same time, I moved in closer and closer with my bombsight camera, showing the hero's fraught face and then slowly moving down his body to show his feet on the very edge of the dreadful gulf below.
It was at this point that we both very nearly went over the edge together. After that, I went back to making newsreel type documentaries, using the coal-bunker in our back yard and providing the commentary at the same time.
The luminous paint was to be used in a ghost film I had in mind. Having obtained the paint from the joke shop in Commercial Road, the next thing was to test it. First of all we tried it on paper and it worked well. On the skin of our hands it was rather gritty and it was difficult to get a uniform layer to stick. But we wanted it for a whole face for the maximum effect.
My friend, who had played the part at Blunsdon Abbey, was also to act as the ghost in this production and he volunteered to have his face painted. As it was dark by now this seemed a good time to try it out. I can't remember where my parents were but we were alone in the front room at Emlyn Square as I applied the luminous paint to his face. When complete, he stood on the table and held his face up to the light bulb while I turned the light off every few minutes to see if his face was glowing yet. This took some time but eventually his faced glowed with an eerie green light which was very impressive.
My friend came down from the table and admired the effect in the mirror. While doing this, he suddenly started rubbing at his glowing face and saying that it was beginning to hurt. In a few minutes he had become quite frantic, so we went out to the kitchen where he washed his face over and over again in cold water. Eventually he said that the pain had gone but then, so had the luminous paint, leaving him with a brightly glowing red face.
He decided to call it a day and go home after this and I didn't see him again for some weeks.
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Page updated 25 July 2008