“Tuppenny Rushes”
Saturday morning picture shows are looked back on with affection by many people over fifty in Britain. For a few pennies, children had the chance to spend an hour or two watching Westerns, cartoons and Serials with the cliffhanger endings that the hero always managed to resolve really easily in the thirty seconds of the following week, only to get himself into another spot of bother by the end of the short.
Growing up in the west end of Newcastle, our local cinema was an early casualty to bingo so the kid’s clubs pretty much passed me by, although I did go once with my cousins who lived in Byker. This was an interesting morning as the place was packed and there was a Compere, an Uncle Ernie who looked like the sort of creepy relative that your parents warned you not to be alone with. (The “Uncles” were generally on the management team or occasionally one of the projectionists). Uncle Ernie cajoled us into singing the ABC Minors song (Which the kids did very boisterously, apart from myself who didn’t really know the now familiar “Blaze away” tune even if I could follow the bouncing ball). He called out the birthday boys and girls to get goodie bags, threw out lollies into the audience (causing mayhem as kids scrambled and scrabbled to get them) and a good time was had by all.
Now Byker is a little on the rough side but it all felt very good natured and not anything approaching out of control. Contrast this with my Dad telling me he got thrown out (literally on his ear) of his local fleapit for getting caught shooting the indians with his slug gun…
Now I can remember two Saturday morning shows held in Newcastle that both sprung up about the same time. The first was at the Odeon and was quite good, if a little low key (although my friends from the band Applecore with Stu and Toota managed to blag a Saturday morning appearance for which which I ended up as lighting designer, naturally enough. (We weren’t paid but we were given some Comps for Dionne Warwicke instead)).
The other show was at the Tatler Cinema (possibly renamed the Classic by then) and was advertised as being (a remarkable) four hours in length, 10am to 2pm. The Tatler was a Dirty Mac Cinema and I didn’t quite know what to expect but inside it was perfectly normal, a news- theatre type building with pretty festoon curtains. The show was a bit of a let-down though, as it was a continuous performance of about 70 minutes with an interval (to sell hot dogs) then the entire show was repeated again, presumably twice. (I stayed for the cartoons the second time then went!)
These memories came back to me from an e- conversation with our local Morley Historian Ronnie after noticing that in the Elsie photos in the last blog, the Bingo hall was still advertising Saturday Children’s shows and it looked as if the screen frame was still in situ-on stage (flown out, with the electric number board tied to it below). Ronnie recalls that they did keep on running the shows for a time after it stopped being a Cinema and thinks it was a Morley tradition to have the show in the afternoon. Back in the 1930s when he first started going it was always known as the “Tuppenny Rushes”
Contrast that with the Wakefield Cine-world saturday shows where kids were £1, adults free, but there were three on at once and if you were unlucky you had to wait ten (or twenty) minutes for two of the staff with a charisma bypass to come in, play some lame half-hearted “boys are better than girls” type shouty games then eventually roll the flick. I can’t see kids getting nostalgic for that in the (20)40s.
In: Memories, Shady stuff, Showbiz · Tagged with: Saturday Cinema
on January 25, 2010 at 8:14 pm
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It is a kings ransom to take the family to the pictures now, an increasingly rare occurrence for us. Haven’t been by for a while now. Glad you are all well.
on January 28, 2010 at 4:45 pm
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Being of a ‘certain age’ ahem I do remember the utter chaos of the Saturday morning rush, Uncle Ernie (was it the same bloke) being pelted with orange peel, the booing through the National Anthem, the ice cream slowly sliding down the screen, whilst lassie/flash gordon/tonto strode across the silver screen
Only went a couple of times when it was to wet to play outside, unattended for hours and unmolested by paedophiles hiding behind EVERY bush.
Happy days,jumpers for goal posts etc etc