A childhood memoir of life before polio, and immediately after, and my magical childhood adventures in and out of a wheelchair
Saturday Morning Pictures
It was always the same whether before polio or after. The only difference was that after polio they had to stash my wheelchair in the cupboard where they put the cleaning stuff; brooms, buckets, mops, that sort of thing. But it was ALWAYS the same. The manager used to appear on stage in front of the cinema screen. He was greeted with a shower of silver paper rolled into tight little balls; discarded ice-cream cones; empty popcorn packets and just about anything that could be used as a missile.
He was genuinely scared of this part of the procedure: he stood there in his evening suit, trying to fend off with his hands all that we could throw at him (brave man that he was!). He tried to speak. He was howled down. Only when the Saturday Morning Club song-sheet was projected onto the screen was there any semblance of silence. We roared out the words ''We come along on Saturday morrrning greeting everybody with a smile…'' The little bouncing ball keeping pace with the words on the screen; as far as we were concerned it was like the National Anthem. Glad when it was over. Only the song was sung BEFORE the films and not after. Though I couldn't get to the exit at the best of times, National Anthem or not.
Directly the song was at an end the manager disappeared, again fending off a fresh shower of missiles that were hurled at the stage. He looked as though he had spent three hours in Trafalgar Square with every pigeon scoring a direct hit! I feel sure that he had one evening suit for the adults and one for us kids, the latter being permanently at the dry cleaners.
Then we were plunged into a world of Tom and Jerry cartoons. Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers and Buck Rogers (no relation) and Jungle Jim played by Johnny Weismuller. Monsters loomed large and luminous. Space ships wobbled and sparked and gave off pretentious gases that today would fool no one. Flash Gordon and Superman were my favourites.
The imagination filled in all the cracks, cementing reality so real that they would live on in our minds until something better came along. We were hungry for excitement, hungry for adventure. And when we finally left the cinema, our senses heightened and our imaginations huge with hope and bravado, we went out into the world and fought other battles, real or imagined, in the arena of life as we knew it…or could make it.
The manager may have thought ''little bastards''. But then he too was caught up in the arena of life as we knew it. We would always remember him with growing affection. Oh, did he dread Saturday Morning Pictures! But then he was a part of it, and played the part to perfection.
POSTSCRIPT to SATURDAY MORNING PICTURES
My brother Kevin, when it was an A. Picture (A. means you had to be accompanied by an adult!) used to ask ANY adult whether he could ‘go in to the cinema’ with them – as indeed we alldid in those days (“Can you take us in, mister?”). This day was a very special day because the two people who said ‘yes’ were Mike and Bernie Winters who were just killing time before they went on stage at The Pier. In those days Mike and Bernie were just climbing up the pole to fame and in a few years they were household names!
My Sister Josie
(My sister Josie was a bit-part actress. She appeared in a film with Diana Dors called PASSPORT TO SHAME. Years later she again brushed shoulders with this voluptuous blond actress. ''I don't know whether you remember me?'' said my sister. ''La Girls,'' said Diana who would play cards with the crew and swear like a gaffer, ''of course I remember.'' Josie played the part of one of a posse of prostitutes in the film. When it was shown locally at our cinema Reg the projectionist gave my mum and dad a private viewing. When Josie's part came up he 'froze' the frame. And there she was MY sister, all ten feet of her.
When the film had been showing for about a week my mother was stopped in the street by a well-meaning busy body: ''I don't know whether you know or not,'' she said, ''but your daughter is on the game.'' Mother didn't waste her time trying to explain.)
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