MINUTES of the EXTRAORDINARY GENERAL MEETING

held at the Cottage Road Cinema, Headingley, Leeds on Saturday 16 January 2010 at

11.30 a.m.

1. Apologies, quorum and proxies: Present: Kate Taylor (in the chair), Derek Atkins,

Dave Biscombe, Johnnie Cliff, Victor Alan Edwards, Gerry Glover, Ian Grey, Martin Hall,

Ian Houseman, Colin Jeffrey, Ian Meyrick, Charles Morris, Shaun Richardson, Harry Rigby, Edwin Robinson, Jim Schultz, Paul Smith, Colin Sutton, Derek Todd, Kathy Todd,

David Williams. (21)

Apologies/proxies: 75 proxy forms had been received from those apologising for absence.

The total of those present and proxies (96) was more than the 10% of the 210-strong membership required for the meeting to be quorate.

2. Introduction: Kate Taylor welcomed members to what was a sad, but – because of the attendance – also rather a gala occasion. She thanked members for coming and expressed particular gratitude to Charles Morris for hosting the venue.

3. Minutes of the Annual General Meeting held on 12 December 2010 were circulated. One typo was corrected to confirm there was NO immediate need to relocate the archive or stock. Subject to this amendment, the minutes were approved.

4. Matters arising from the minutes:

4a Odeon Putney: Kate Taylor had written to the Odeon management and to the projectionist thanking them for hosting the AGM and showing us the projection facilities.

4b Archives and Stock: It was confirmed that the archives remained at Mervyn Gould’s home and that the bulk stock was stored securely in Doncaster. Some stock was held by the Chairman and Sales Officer at their homes.

5. Motion to Wind Up the Society

Kate Taylor, from the Chair, proposed the motion That the Society be wound up in accordance with the details set out in the Constitution.

She said that she was not happy to present the motion, but knew it was necessary.  It was a momentous and sad day; the Society had existed for 30 years and had many notable achievements to its name. Amongst these were persuading the Charity Commission to accept that MCS was performing a public service and was not just a private club, and obtaining a £5000 grant from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts.

Our publications stand as our great achievement.  Through Rosemary and Chris Clegg, then Brian Hornsey and herself, and for the last 15 years with design, typesetting and editing by Mervyn Gould, over 40 books had been produced. Mervyn’s voluntary work had enabled MCS to continue to produce books at a viable rate which would not otherwise have been possible.

We had been unable to find people with the combination of skills, time, the technology and the will to continue with our book and Bioscope publication programme; without these, we had nothing to offer our members.

Our membership of 210 was the highest we had been able to achieve, despite good publicity and excellent press coverage for our books, especially Coventry Picture Palaces, which had already sold out.  Comments on proxy forms had also underlined the aging profile of our membership.

In an email received from the Cleggs, Chris had written that it was sad, but we had to be realistic.  Looking at the past 30 years, he said that we could be proud that so much information had been published and so much achieved.

The Chairman concluded by saying we should close on a high note of success, rather than gradually fade away and on this basis she placed the motion before the meeting for consideration.

In discussion, it was suggested that we try and find a way in which we could get people to move over to the CTA (if not already members) in order to ensure continuity and to keep the name of Mercia CS alive in some way.  Kate Taylor said that this was one of the issues which would be discussed with the CTA Committee in due course; offering to give Mercia members a year’s CTA membership and perhaps ring-fencing some money for publications, with acknowledgment to Mercia, were two ideas we may put forward.

The Treasurer confirmed that Life Members would have any ‘unexpired’ portion of their subscription returned, and that there were sufficient funds available to meet all MCS debts.

The motion was put to the vote:

*including 2 votes left to the decision of the Chair

The motion was therefore carried with the necessary two-thirds majority required by the Constitution.

6. Any other Business

6a Charles Morris, a former Treasurer, expressed thanks to Kate Taylor for holding the Society together for so many years, which had included some very difficult times.  Members present warmly applauded his words.

6b At the AGM, members had appointed a Committee to take the necessary actions to wind up the Society subject to the outcome of the EGM; and to engage in discussions with the CTA over transfer of assets.  Kate Taylor asked if this were still the will of the members, and whether anyone wished to put forward other suggestions for potential recipients of funds, which would have to be disposed of in due course in line with the constitution.

No other suggestions were made, and the committee membership was ratified unanimously as below:

Chairman:                     Kate Taylor

Vice-Chairman:              Ian Meyrick

Treasurer:                      Ian Grey

Sales Officer:                Martin Hall

Committee members:    Johnny Cliff, Gerry Glover, Frank Manders, Paul Smith.

6c The Chairman closed the meeting by thanking all those past and present who had served the Society in so many ways over its 30-year life. She also thanked Charles Morris for allowing us to meet in his cinema.

The meeting was followed by the opportunity for members to visit the projection facilities of the Cottage Road Cinema.

Shadows of the Evening Steal Across the Sky

Mervyn Gould

“Yes, I’ve been around a bit,” said the faded old pro, hitching the bar stool closer to the bar, settling in the corner. “In fact, I nearly made it. For a time I was nearly up there with your Roger Friths, your Francis Reids, and your Jim Lawses. Before your time, of course, before you were born, in fact.” The eager young student interjected a question. “Of course, a pint, though, not a half.”

“More than thirty-five years ago, now. In one week I had my lighting at both dates in a city, No. 1 tour date and major rep. – I thought they’d beat a path to my door. Still here, waiting, dear boy.” The student asked another question.

“Well, we didn’t have all these courses and qualifications then. We just did it. No ‘hashes’ – real Pattern numbers. Of course, we weren’t an Industry then, we were just in ‘the Business’. I didn’t actually carry stuff from the railway station, but all the rest, lad. Hand-fed carbon arc limes, resistance dimmers on shafts, using a foot, both arms, and nose if necessary, lad. Counting to 5, or 7, or whatever the fade was. All good stuff, you know, with F.o.H. lanterns in metal housings so that bits wouldn’t drop onto the stalls, and some places even had the new Strand stuff with pre-focus lamps in. None of this multi-lantern complexity we used to read about in Fred. Bentham’s editions of Tabs, though, for us.”

“By the way, I’m ready for another. Yes a great thirst, dear heart. Well, it was the heat, you know, standing in a badly-ventilated lime box with two d.c. arcs going, using last week’s box-office card for a fade or strobe effect. Or on the board with 70-odd resistances therming away behind the metal front. Scratching around for odd scraps of gel. – and back then some theatres still had a box of real gelatine colour sheet. Digging around in the LX store to find a rusty old tin box still with a lens to rig as a special for the walk-down. Having the manager on the house ’phone about the Maximum Demand Meter at a Full-Up Finish. Changing the gas mantles on the secondary lighting. And twice nightly, sometimes. It drove you to it, really it did. And it was useful to fill the liquid dimmers when they boiled nearly dry.”

“Weekly rep. took it out of you (only once did I do twice-nightly), but then so did touring. What a way to earn a living. All those hours on the A1 in the scenery wagon because the trains wouldn’t get you to the next date in time for the get-in. Doing the get-out up the ramp at Aberdeen H.M.’s in a snow-storm. The cloth battens bouncing over the icy cobbles after coming down the cloth chute at Leeds Grand. Arguing the contra. At least the pro. pubs had lock-ins in the afternoons, so you were all right when there wasn’t a matinée. Whilst Stage Management were re-setting or propping, LX would be replacing the body fluids.”

“Summer seasons were your holiday, if you fixed for good digs. Get the four programmes on and you were away. No matinées, if you were lucky. Except Butlins, of course, where it was a sod getting lamps and spares, and you were forced to maintain the Hawaiian Bar Mount Vesusvius LX with fork lightning and water ripple effect. All that water around certainly made you wary of the lash-up behind the set.”

“Well, how kind, certainly another one.”

“I think it was panto that was your mainstay. A solid three or even four months work, then. At places like Nottingham, Birmingham, and Sunderland we ran till the end of February or into March. A bugger at the beginning, with two shows a day and three on Saturday, and on Christmas Day as well in Scotland, but after the New Year pro party with other companies, when old enmities flared and new alliances were made, you settled in to find a shop for your spring tour and summer season. Bit short-handed on matinées, of course, when your local firemen or dockers or ambulancemen were on shift, so no limes, and LX even had to muck in with the hairy lads of the stage department, but, like all pros., you gritted your teeth, swore lustily, and said to yourself it was all part of the glamorous side of show-biz. “

“Another? I don’t mind if I do.”

“Well, once it all died – by 1980 it was virtually all gone, the bottom had dropped out of it – what could one do? I’m empty, dear heart, isn’t it time you got your wallet out?  I thought, be clever about this, and went on to tell youngsters about the all the skills one needs to get a show in, up and on – tipping the resident staff, arguing with the M.D., thumping the mercury arc rectifier to get the striker to bounce, twitching relay contacts on motor-driven dimmer banks, trimming your arc gap, throwing and tying-off a cleat line, putting PAR38s in your battens – then along came steel-framed sets, par-cans and moving lights, and knocked the bottom out of the business. Not to mention Health & Safety fussing around. Tour dates rebuilding with the lottery, not the same world.”

He settled more comfortably in the corner; a snore came. The student crept away, possibly gladder in the heart, but certainly lighter in the wallet, as the late Tony Mulvihill once said of the subject.

The rest is silence….                                                                                                                                           ENDS 922 words.

At present there are no current plans to reprint it due to uncertainty over the future of the Society and the possible dissolution being discussed at the AGM on December 12th

My relationship with Mervyn, which stretches back thirty years, began in 1979 when he was appointed Theatre Manager to Loughborough University’s Department of English and Drama — or, as he was soon calling it, Department of Anguish and trauma. Not long after our first meeting I went into the Senior Common Room one morning and found him turning out his pockets in a search for money for which to pay for a cup of Coffee. “Do you lack the visible means of support necessary for your sustenance, my good man?”, I asked, and to my delight, Mervyn replied grandly , “Officer, I never leave home without four pence in my pocket.” He knew, you see, as I suspect few others did, that four pence was what in the interwar years a possible vagrant  needed in order to satisfy a policeman that he had the wherewithal for a night’s lodging.

Mervyn knew many things, and over the years, as our friendship deepened, I came to rely on him as a possible source of information on, among other matters, church and vernacular architecture, canal and railway history, Anglican Hymns, Edwardian, or as he pronounced it “Edvardian” society, the poetry of Jean Ingelow, music-hall artistes, and the early days of Cinema. In recent years I was also grateful to him for the annual gift of a Christmas Pudding prepared according to a recipe of his mother’s, whom he plainly revered, and which he labelled “Old Gould’s Ingoldsby Pudding.”

But it was his knowledge of the history of theatre lighting, of sound and of special effects, in all of which he was prodigiously learned, from which I most profited. So, I should add did the University at large. He not only gave some wondrous public lectures on the history and various techniques of lighting, he taught by example.  So greatly admired were his skills that he was asked to provide the lighting arrangements for the obsequies of a vice-chancellor who had died in office and whose inter-denominational funeral was to be held on campus. Mervyn agreed, but insisted on a dress-rehearsal. “Thank you, darlings,” he said, after the various dignitaries had gone through their paces. “Can we take it again please. And next time” — and the implied rebuke was magisterial — “a little slower.”

On another occasion, I came across a reference to an 1878 production of Antony and Cleopatra at Drury Lane which ended with the battle on the plains at Philippi, at which point, so I read, no fewer than a thousand arrows criss-crossed the smoke-shrouded stage. “How on earth was that managed” I asked Mervyn. And Mervyn said, “Well, petal, if you have half-an-hour I will explain all”. And he did.

He could and would explain such matters to enthralled listeners in public bars and other watering holes. He was also an invaluable guide to students, more than one of whom was helped by his knowledge and of course contacts into gaining work in the professional theatre. This made him enemies among a few academic colleagues less gifted, less knowledgeable, and far more egotistical than he ever was, and who were warped by sour envy of the unpractised ease with which he acquired friends and admirers. Because what made Mervyn so cherishable was that he had nothing of guile or calculation about him. Quite without self-interest, he was, I think, a deeply innocent man, someone whose storehouse of knowledge was filled for its own sake and never for the sake of reputation or advancement. The MA that he gained at the City University in the early ’90s was achieved for its own sake rather than for “career enhancement”, that dread phrase of the worldly-wise, of management consultants, professional advisers and be-suited administrators, those types of whom Mervyn went not so much in dread as in genial contempt.

Even his histrionics were self-deprecatingly and hugely comical. Dickens, who created the sweet, wide-eyed goodness of Mr. Toots and Herbert Pocket, would have loved him, and would have delighted in Mervyn’s ability to act out a role as blessed compendium of Dick Swiveller, Wilkins Micawber and Vincent Crummles. In fact, Dickens’s description of Mr Crummles receiving Nicholas Nickleby “with an inclination of the head, something between the courtesy of a Roman emperor and the nod of a pot companion” strikes me as bearing more than a passing resemblance to Mervyn’s way of greeting a friend. There were, as I say, many of these friends, some of whom are here today, others who can’t be. But all, I’m sure, would agree that Mervyn was a uniquely loveable person, I mourn his death but rejoice that I knew him.

John Lucas

Footnote- In the letter accompanying the above Eulogy that he read out at the Funeral,  he pointed out that he arrived as Professor and Head of English and Drama at Loughborough University in 1977 and was therefore one of the committee that appointed Mervyn to his post (which he notes was one of the best appointments he ever made). He left the University a year after Mervyn retired as Emeritus Professor and became Research Professor at Nottingham Trent University, where he invited Mervyn to talk to his Students who were as enthralled by him as their earlier counterparts at Loughborough had been.

I fully expect that the tributes to our friend posted on this site, plus a really adequate version of his C.V., would more than fill an edition of the Bioscope – and then some!  So, what can I add?

I once told Mervyn that he was ‘just a crazy mixed-up kid.’  He replied that he had no problem with the accusation, but resented it being couched in American terms.  As he often felt the need to not only ‘wave his own C.V. like a banner’ but also that of his friends, and would likely grumble that in order to evaluate anything I had to say about him folk would need to know a bit about me, he would abhor the use of ‘this is where I’m coming from’ -  but here goes……. Born of  theatrical parents. Child performer. Earned living in most types of UK and Europe Theatre/Cabaret/TV performance branches and productions, as Actor,Singer or Musical Act (Xylophone & other instruments, etc). Then, a decade ago, although agreeing with my increasing disgust at the way ‘the business’ was now being run, both Mervyn and our agent were astonished when I retired before my 60th birthday. (Okay, Merv?)

I sometimes think that we appreciate our friends as much for their faults as their virtues, as we may aspire to emulate the latter whilst accepting, but feeling comfortable in criticising, the former – hopefully, not being hypocritical in the process. In describing such a ‘cavalier’ character as our dear friend of nearly forty years , I think that one might well say that ‘they first broke the mould,  and THEN made Mervyn!”

He heartily agreed when I  once said that it might have been he instead of John Buchan who said, “There is nothing to be said against the retention of prejudices. I believe in every man having a good stock of them, for otherwise we should be flimsy ineffective creatures, and deadly dull at that.”  I’m sure that anyone who was more than a passing acquaintance would be likely to offer him as a perfect example of ‘A study in Contrasts.’  Boastful/self-denigrating. Clumsy/painstaking. Dismissive/caring. High-handed/self-effacing. Lazy/driven . Facetiously critical/Fiercely loyal.  Knowing him, which of us could not add to this description of someone who often faced the world at large looking like a slob but, devoted to the demands of ‘polite society’, would immediately ’scrub-up well’ when the situation demanded. Or deny that he would cheerfully own up to the most negative of these descriptions, whilst attracting friends who would rush to his defence if the need arose.

A chance remark could result in one being on the receiving end of a serious, erudite mini lecture on the subject or, conversely, a flippant, dismissive and sometimes quite bigoted rejoinder. If the latter resulted in a furious challenge, he could gleefully defuse the situation by quoting his highly-esteemed mentor at Loughborough University, who once remarked, “Mervyn, you are pontificating from your usual standpoint of complete ignorance of the subject!”

On one occasion, in a conversation about changing our destinies, I quoted a verse from one of Fitzgerald’s translations of the

Rubaiyat of Omar khayyam. Mervyn muttered something denigrating about ‘foreign poetry’, and I reminded him that it was only ‘half foreign’, as there was as much of Fitzgerald in this translation as there was of Omar.  And, as he shared the Persian poet’s devotion to the consumption of alcoholic beverage, he might approve the final stanzas being included in his epitaph.

After I had quoted the following lines he grinned broadly and chuckled, “Yes – Yes, I quite like that!”

BUT SEE, THE RISING MOON OF HEAV’N AGAIN LOOKS FOR US THROUGH THE QUIVERING PLANE.

HOW OFT, HEREAFTER RISING WILL SHE LOOK AMONG THOSE LEAVES -  FOR ONE OF US, IN VAIN?

AND, WHEN LIKE HER, YOU SHALL PASS AMONG THE GUESTS, STAR-SCATTERED ON THE GRASS

AND IN YOUR JOYOUS ERRAND REACH THE SPOT WHERE I MADE ONE  -  TURN DOWN AN EMPTY GLASS.

Merv, if there is an ‘afterlife’ I imagine that you’ll have your Booze and Fags removed, but should still be allowed your daily crossword. Similarly, your going has removed some of the sunshine from our lives, but they will still be enriched by memories of your ‘carryings on’, and we’ll always remember you ‘with a smile and a kind word.’

There are very few truly Renaissance Men left in the world, and even fewer genuinely ‘larger than life’ characters. Mervyn was both of these, in spades.

He worked of course in many branches of the theatrical profession….as electrician at The West End’s Palace Theatre; Stage Manager and Lighting Designer at major provincial theatres such as Sunderland Empire…..and at virtually all of the minor theatres too. He was Road Manager for Mike and Bernie Winters, and he even once essayed the role of actor in summer repertory. As Llewellyn and myself were working in some theatre somewhere else at the time, we never saw him play Winston Churchill. However, in his inimitable fashion, he assured us that, “worthy sources” had considered him “not f…ing bad!”

I met him in 1970, (and Llewellyn sort of acquired him as a fixture in our lives when Llew and I married a year later…..the duo of friendship moving seamlessly into a trio). In 1970 I was leading lady in the big Revue Show at the Butlins Theatre in Skegness, where Mervyn happened to be theatre ’sparks’…..quite literally in that theatre, as the lighting board was a deathtrap and should have been condemned long since. I do not think that Health and Safety would permit the flying sparks these days, particularly since the poor electrician stood habitually in a half inch of water due to a leak in the roof! Mervyn took it all in his stride as he struggled with the antique board, and the 30 ish people onstage grew used to hearing the colourful epithets emanating from the box set high above the O.P wings as the hapless Mervyn thought he was about to turn into a catherine wheel.

The 40 year friendship spiced with shared black Scorpio humour, the same academic interests, and the same intense theatricality of the 3 of us afford a million memories of Merve. It would take an entire book to catalogue even the most magical moments. I remember him once turning up to visit us at some stage door or other, and imperiously demanding entrance , as he was, “Miss Raymond’s personal lighting designer”. This caused some puzzlement for the staff as the lighting choices at this particular gaffe were twofold…..ON or OFF……and oh, that I could have afforded a personal lighting designer!

Having said that, I did actually employ him once in that capacity for a pantomime which I was Directing at the time, (not to mention Choreographing and playing Principal Boy…..smaller Managements liked to get their monies worth in the 1970’s). The Management were stunned by the brilliance of his work, pronouncing him “uniquely gifted”, and then adding, “if a trifle high-handed dear”.

Well, we know that the old lad could be irascible, bombastic and mercurial at times, but he was generous to a fault, consumed by guilt if he had offended, immensely proud of the achievements of his friends and supportive of them at times of crisis in their lives. In short, he was the loyalest of loyal friends, gaining a raft of friends from the theatrical profession, and indeed from all other areas of his life as witness the large number of people who attended his funeral and bombarded websites various with messages and tributes to his memory. In fact, had he been in the congregation at his funeral, he would have said, “not a bad house for a Friday matinee”.

At the funerals of each of my parents, one of my Drama pupils from my sideline teaching practice spoke a poem by Thomas Hardy. After the second of these occasions, Merve……who was loyally in attendance, even though he was suffering from a vicious attack of gout, which he described in torrents of colourful language……said, “the girl who did it at your father’s funeral did it better….nice unadorned speech and splendid sensitivity”. He was right of course. He had an excellent knowledge of, and a fine ear for poetry. One of his running jokes over all those years was to convince me that he was years younger than myself. I totally believed it for a lot of years until he betrayed himself and then screamed with gleeful laughter about the amount of time that he had managed to foster the deception We kept up the joke then, just to amuse him. We would be watching some programme about the Second World War on television and he would opine that the shortage of potatoes must have been difficult for me when arranging meals. I would counter with something like the fact that it didn’t matter too much anyway since it was quite difficult for my mother to force potatoes into my feeding bottle. He would shake and chortle with delight. So even after he had made the observation about the speaking of the poem at my mother’s funeral, and had then said in that wonderfully mocking way of his, “I like that poem, you can do it at mine”…..he still had to add, “if you havn’t long since snuffed it yourself, aged old bat that you are!”

Well, I was quite certain that he would find SOME way to send me notes if he disapproved of my rendition of it at his funeral, but I took a deep breath and said, “darling Merve, this is for you”.

THE GOING

Why did you give no hint that night

That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,

And calmly, as if indifferent quite,

You would close your term here and be gone

Where we could not follow, with wing of swallow

To gain one glimpse of you ever anon.

Never to bid goodbye or lip the softest call

Or utter a wish for a word, while we

Saw morning harden upon the wall,

Unmoved, unknowing, that your great going

Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why then latterly did we not speak,

Did we not think of those days long dead,

And ‘ere your vanishing strive to seek

That time’s renewal?

Well! All’s past amend,

Unchangeable. It must go.

And you could not know

That such swift fleeing, no soul forseeing

Would undo us so.

Addendum:   It was our tradition that Merve came to stay for a week with us at my birthday or his birthday, at Llew’s birthday, and for Xmas/New Year, (as well as once or twice in other parts of the year )once we had semi and then fully retired.

He had apologised for not feeling well enough to come for my birthday this year but would come for his own. In the event, he passed away on my birthday, but not before he had posted off a card and one of his justly famous fruit cakes The fact that he had managed to do that when he was so obviously terribly ill speaks volumes about the worth of the man, and his love of his friends. That gesture more than anything else made me weep inconsolably. Our festive occasions will be unbelievably poorer without the presence of this unique and glorious aforementioned ‘Renaissance Man’.

For those who know me, my profound apologies for not being here in person, since family commitments make it impossible for me to get away from Cardiff for this sad day.

It was with great regret that I heard about the passing away of Mervyn Stockbridge Gould.  A great leading light of the theatrical scene has gone out for good and remains forever dark.  Of course, if he were here, he would be telling me off for using the word ‘light’.  “It’s a lamp or a lantern you stupid boy”  would be the cry, for which misdemeanour I will almost certainly have to pay the price of the next round.

I had the delightful experience of learning the technical workings of the stage under Mervyn’s tutelage at the Department of Anguish and Trauma at Loughborough University in the late 1080s and early 1990s.  I also have it on good authority that it was Mervyn himself who coined the very term, which is still in use today.  I also believe he was responsible for the term ‘shabby-gentile’.

There are a couple of us who steered clear of the bitchiness and backstabbing that came with the actual performance of drama and tended to take on all the technical and backstage work on a regular basis.  Mervyn was always delighted when a student came forward in this way, since it freed his time up and gave him an opportunity to check on the flow levels of the hand pumps in the EHB bar.  Incidentally the EHB at the university did have a small technical and lighting capability, which fell under Mervyn’s due care and diligence.  It was on just such a mercy errand for a ‘special bulb’ with Mervyn that I discovered that the EHB was the only bar on campus which still served beer from old fashioned jug handled glasses.  These special bulbs required much diligent care and attention.

After university, I spent several years working as a stage lighting technician

for a number of theatres, including Nottingham Playhouse, which Mervyn lauded, and for a number of touring rock bands, which Mervyn derided as “new-fangled skiffle”.  I would not have done this were it not for his support and guidance, and the all important three-fold rule of theatrical timing:

“Never forger, Black, that there are three vitally important times in this business:  Opening Time; Closing Time and with appropriate brevity in-between ‘Show Time’”.

Mervyn remains forever in our memory – a lighthouse in a sea of mediocrities,

and one who sadly must remain bright only in our memories.  Please raise your special bulbs to the last and finest example of the old school.

Kind regards

Simon Black.

The one below was given by Kate Taylor, Chairman of the Society as the third reading, covering his involvement with Mercia. The others will be uploaded when available.

Mervyn Gould

Mervyn burst into Mercia Cinema Society at a committee meeting on 13 March 1993. It was a time of some difficulty for the Society as we were without a Secretary. Mervyn wrote to me offering to take on the role.  The Committee met swiftly co-opted him, and gratefully accepted his offer.  I see from the Minutes – which Mervyn wrote – that he thanked the meeting for its confidence in him and hoped it would not be misplaced. Of course his own confidence was such that he had arranged the meeting himself at the department of English and Drama here at Loughborough University and was full of plans for the Society’s future.

But our confidence was not misplaced.  Mervyn swiftly became synonymous with the Society. He had huge ambitions for it. You were never sure, as he bounced and flounced his way through our work for the next sixteen years, whether he was more a thespian or an academic. But he was a stickler for quality both in research and in presentation. He took over the design and preparation of our then rather cheap and cheerful quarterly Bioscopes, and turned them into excellent journals, well designed, rich in quality. He stopped us producing photocopied, comb-bound books, and set the trend for well-written, well-illustrated and well printed works. He wrote some himself. Just a few days before his death, he was delighted to receive a belated but laudatory review of his book on Boston, Spalding, and the Aspland Howdens. He cajoled others to extend and write up their research, and took the greatest care and delight in typesetting their work.

Without a grumble – or at least an audible one – he undertook the tedious donkey-work of arranging meetings, sending out agendas, and, of course, four times a year stuffing envelopes and mailing out the Bioscopes. He also – and far more reflective of his calibre – arranged a number of conferences on picture house history in the Society’s name.  And he loved indexing. He was, simply, tireless in his dedication to the Society. Practically,  he was the Society.

Such was his contribution that he had no difficulty in persuading an annual meeting to change his title from that of Secretary, to Administrator.

He did not suffer gladly those whose standards of research or literacy were inadequate for the status he demanded of the Society. He could be vituperative , volatile and dogmatic; he was meticulous and  talented; he could also be wonderfully kind and generous. He made the Society a beacon in the field of picture-house research and publishing.

Alas those delicious Christmas puddings which he made each year for his friends have been eaten, but his brilliant books remain. We are proud that they bear the imprint of the Society.

We shall not see his like again.

Mervyn Gould didn’t quite run away with the circus, but did do his first show whilst still a VIth-former. When the Regal Boston had a stage, fly tower, and dressing rooms built on in 1963, to replace the demolished New Theatre, he got a job as A.S.M. in the opening show, Babes in the Wood. After the Boston run he got leave from the new term, and toured with it to Crewe, Buxton, and Leake. In 1965 he went up to Marjons, King’s Road Chelsea, to read History and join the swinging 60s scene (not convincingly as he wore corduroy twills, suede shoes, hacking jacket and cravats – but a hell of a change from the Fenlands), and worked as a Showman in the West End. After scraping through Finals, he did summer seasons, pantos, and tours, interspersed with residencies at both provincial and West End theatres. These included a season at Bury S. Edmunds Theatre Royal – the only theatre not only surrounded by a brewery but owned by it – three seasons at the historic music hall Sunderland Empire, and a year as Deputy Chief Engineer at the Palace on Jesus Christ Superstar. For 17 years he was Technical Tutor and House & Stage Manager at Loughborough University Theatre, and then took early retirement to research and write on theatre and cinema architectural and technical history. He started writing in the early 70s, and since then has been published by Tabs, Cue: Stage Lighting International, The Stage, Focus, the Mercia Bioscope, and other journals. He has produced two books – Loughborough’s Stage and Screen and, most recently, Boston and Spalding Entertainment. Four exhibitions on entertainment history have been arranged and designed by him. At present he is working on booklets on the stage and screen history of York, Crewe, Burton-on-Trent. He hopes to resume work this year on his projected Ph.D. thesis on Richard Thornton and the birth of Moss’ Empires. He became secretary of Mercia in 1992, and some years later assumed the Administrator title. The society has honoured him by electing him an honorary life member.

Since he wrote the above back in 2006, he had also written two further books (York Cinemas and Basingstoke entertained) as well as completing Gil Robottom’s unfinished manuscript for Coventry Picture Palaces. In 2007, he agreed to take part in an interview for the Theatre Archive project, an oral history of people working in (& visiting) theatres between 1945 and 1968. A transcript of his contribution can be found online here which is well worth reading as  it provides further enlightenment of his background and temperament.

Mervyn Stockbridge Gould

14/11/1946 – 29/10/2009

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