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.

MERCIA CINEMA SOCIETY

Registered charity no 1001524

From the Chairman

19 Pinder’s Grove

Wakefield WF1 4AH

kate@airtime.co.uk

9 November 2009

Dear Member,

Mervyn Gould

It is with very great sadness that I have to report the death of our Administrator, Mervyn Gould, on 28 October.  The funeral is at Loughborough Crematorium on Friday 13 November at 3.30pm.

Overleaf you will find details of our Annual Meeting on 12 December. Mervyn’s death is a massive blow to the Society. He was wonderfully dedicated to it, giving a great part of his time and all his talents, in design and writing, as well as in ‘networking’, to its success.With the death of Mervyn, cinema and theatre history have lost a major player.

I do not myself believe that we can carry on without him although I know he would have wished us to do so.

I shall propose from the Chair at the Annual Meeting that the Society, which was founded in 1980,  be wound up in accordance with the details set out in our Constitution.  Members will, of course, have the opportunity to debate this motion fully.

Yours sincerely,

Kate Taylor

MERCIA CINEMA SOCIETY

Registered Charity no 1001524

Notice of Annual Meeting 2009

The Annual Meeting of the Society will be held on Saturday 12 December at the Odeon, Putney, at 11.15am (Committee meeting at 11.00am)

Agenda:  1) Apologies for absence

2) The Minutes of the Annual Meeting held on 13 December 2008

3) Matters arising from the Minutes

4) Reports from officers: Chairman’s review of the year,

Treasurer’s report

Membership officer’s report

Sales officer’s report

Editor’s report

5) Motion from the Chair that the Society be wound up in accordance with the

details set out in the Constitution

If the motion fails:

6) Election of officers for 2009-2010

The refreshment facilities in the Cinema Foyer will be available and we are promised an opportunity to see the projection facilities.

This is, obviously, a critical meeting and members are urged to attend or, if unable to do so, to send the completed proxy form to the Chair, Kate Taylor, 19 Pinder’s Grove, Wakefield.  WF1 4AH

The motion that the Society be wound up follows the death of the Administrator, Mervyn Gould, but is presented also in the light of the Society’s deteriorating financial position and the need for new officers at least in terms of a Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary, and Membership Secretary,  We have 210 members and, although the committee meets only once a year, overall expenses, including the costs of room-hire and the production and mailing of the Bioscopes, outweigh subscription income.

But we must bear in mind that the Society is the principal publisher of research into the history of picture houses.

If you feel strongly that the Society must continue, it is important that you indicate what you can do yourself to sustain it. It would need, at the least, an able new Chair and Secretary, and someone with design and typesetting skills and the time to use them in a voluntary capacity for the benefit of the Society.

Kate Taylor