The cinema

I was intrigued by Robert’s blog about his filmgoing. I have been a film fan for over ninety years and still am.

My earliest visit to the silver screen was in West Ham when Mum was delighted to lose Bert, Dorothy and me for a couple of hours at the local cinema. Saturday morning matinee…thrilling with usually a cowboy serial lasting a few weeks. I remember Hop Along Cassidy - marvellous value for a couple of pence. I graduated to proper films when I was at Cardiff High School. Once a week without fail - easy too as the school had games on  Tuesday with Thursday afternoons free .- we went to school on Saturday. 

I was evacuated to my Auntie Flo  so and one afternoon aafternoon a week I made a beeline for the Splott Super cinema on Splott bridge.

I watched everything. Two films I remember were the Hound of the Baskerville and Jamaica Inn, both based in Cornwall.

Cardiff was the Mecca for film goers with a whole clutch of cinemas in the city centre apart from the ones in the suburbs like the Plaza Robert mentions.

My first date with  Rosemary eighty years ago was to the Odeon while over the years we went to most of the cinemas

The Capitol was outstanding, not just for its size but for still having a resident organist playing a massive ‘ up and down’ organ. The classical organist  was Fela Sowande.

I had practical film projecting experience when I was in digs in Hengoed. Alwyn my landlord was the regular projectionist at the Palace cinema in Ystrad Mynach - he did if for nothing and I used to help him. He needed it as there were frequent breaks, with the audience jeering as the film poured out. American popcorn became essential but I never liked it.

When on the Argus on a few mornings I took in a trade show.

Years later I produced a few films, one of the new London borough of Hounslow and three promoting Cardiff, its airport and Wales.  The downside result was I spent many evenings showing them.

I met a few cinema stars including Ray Milland, an inevitable  mining story, and became friendly with a local writer, a bus driver, who made a popular film featuring a valley being drowned  for a reservoir.

I still watch films regularly - on my iPad now in bed, a pleasant relaxing diversion in a dull life.

Most popular film yes, A Christmas Carol which I have seen time after time.