Charles Picken

Charles Picken  -  My Cinema Life

CHAPTER ONE - MY FORMATIVE YEARS

From my earliest childhood the magic of the Cinema had been firmly entrenched in my life. In those days television had not yet begun its inexorable march into the living rooms of the nation and the weekly visit, or in my fortunate case more often than that, to the local movie picture theatre was the form of escapism of the masses. Having been born and brought up in Edinburgh I can probably claim to have visited nearly all of the operating cinemas in that city on many occasions before, in my senior secondary school years, starting to contemplate actually working in the industry. In fact the excellent book on Edinburgh Cinemas and a later DVD on the same subject brought back wonderful memories and remembrances of films viewed in all of the venues mentioned … and even of a couple of cinemas that even the author of those tomes had omitted!

This passion had intensified during my final years attending George Heriot’s School as I started to become more involved in the local school Film Society becoming  its Treasurer and then playing a major part in creating a new concept in “school film society” by initiating the Edinburgh Schools Film Society. The idea was a simple one born out of the frustration of working with restrictive budgets necessitated with a single school operation and its small membership potential. Combining that membership with several other schools in the Edinburgh area meant having a potential five times multiple for the membership fee income which, without increasing the level of the fee, would provide a far bigger film hire budget to secure better product. Selling the idea to headmasters did not prove to be as big a hurdle as feared as the core concept of this ESFS would enable the various schools’ facilities to be used for screenings and the Society was prepared to pay a nominal hire charge when using them. To enable some measure of control, it was also agreed that membership would be restricted to the upper three years of the senior schools which, conveniently, would allow X-Certificate (then minimum age 16 restrictive) programming to be included if justifiable. Teachers from each of the member schools were co-opted to provide adult supervision cover as and when their school premises were being used. For my sins I ended up programming and writing the booklet notes for screenings and running the organisation as its President for the three years it operated … despite having left school and attending Edinburgh University at the time. It was a rewarding experience but sadly folded a year after my involvement with it ceased.

As if running one mega Film Society operation wasn’t enough at this time, in my second year at Edinburgh University I was elected Treasurer of the University Film Society and for my final year (and the year after graduating!) became its President. Once again the expansionism bug took root and during that year as Treasurer my great friend Graham and I took our ESFS concept and adapted it to the University operation. It had been using a 120-seater hall in part of the old campus for screenings with a maximum membership of 150 but when a new Live Performance Theatre opened at George Square, and was being equipped with 16 mm projection kit and had a seating capacity of over 500, it was only natural that an expansion of membership drive would be possible. Working on the principal that not everyone turns up for every show, we felt that 1000 was a realistic new ceiling for membership numbers as well as allowing us to programme loads of extra shows for the same old membership fee level. The bonus in Year One of our expansion drive was that we still had funds left over to buy an anamorphic lens for the new theatre to allow films to be presented in their Cinemascope ratio if they had been so shot. This expansion plan was continued by Graham who took over the reigns after my joining the Commercial Cinema Industry in 1968 - of which more later - meant having to give up this involvement. Within three years of the first expansion move, the Edinburgh University Film Society found itself in the luxury position of being able to hire the Odeon Cinema (where I was now working) for shows on the Sundays when the cinema did not open (a one-in-three rotation was imposed in those days) thus providing the ultimate in professional presentation standards, including up to 70mm film gauge, for the membership. The “value for money” concept was remarked on favourably many years later by one of our former “occasional members” (who was also attending Edinburgh University at the time) when Graham encountered him at a civil service meeting he attended in London. Spotting Gordon Brown standing alone at the gathering, he wandered up and introduced himself as one of the team who ran the EUFC while the Chancellor was an undergraduate. The master of fiscal prudence looked wistfully at the memory of those film screenings and summed it up as “really great value for money!!!!!!” Nice to have a fan.

Having become embroiled in school and University film societies it was probably only logical that the dynamic duo should also have found themselves embroiled in the operations of the Edinburgh Film Guild. As regular members we had become familiar faces to some of the Committee members running one of the UK’s oldest Film Societies from their base at Film House in Randolph Crescent. This building  also served as the HQ base for the Edinburgh International Film Festival and Films of Scotland which acted as a sort of national liaison contact for film companies planning shoots involving Scottish locations. It was with the 1968 Edinburgh International Film Festival that Graham and I became enmeshed with these organisations on a more than casual basis. I successfully applied for the position of Films Officer for that year’s Film Festival which involved me having to collect and catalogue all the films submitted that year‘s event, organise selection committee viewings and then, during the Festival itself, ensure that selected films were delivered to the cinemas participating in good time for the screenings and collecting them in again afterwards. That I was using only a Lambretta scooter to perform this arduous task had been greeted with raised eyebrows in some quarters - and indeed by many of the projectionists with whom I liaised! - but after all the dust had settled on that year’s event and all the films had been safely re-despatched to their home countries, the Treasurer called me aside and said it had been the most efficient (and the most economical) performance of this complex operation that he had ever witnessed. Graham had successfully applied for a general dogsbody gopher role at this Festival and we both had a great time especially as we were both invited to participate on the selection screenings committee. That autumn we were both invited to join the Edinburgh Film Guild Committee and in the following few years between us held the positions of Secretary and Treasurer with me laterally being elected Chairman until the pressures of travelling back regularly from my by then base in Newcastle made continuing with this a bit too time consuming …but again more of that time jump later.

Meanwhile back in that heady August of 1968 I had finally made my move to join the Commercial Cinema Industry. This wasn’t my first attempt as an earlier one in my final year at George Heriot’s to join the ABC Circuit had been stymied by my Headmaster refusing to sign off on any reference forms for me. In his view, as expressed forcefully at a meeting to which he had summoned my parents, his argument was that I was clever and should take up the University place I had been accepted for. His clinching argument was that with television making inroads into people’s viewing habits all the cinemas would be closed within five years and my “chosen career” would be non-existent. Oh to have been able to sit down with him as my later self after the forty year career I enjoyed after finally getting into the business and challenging him again! But sometimes things work out for the best in the end and by going to Edinburgh University I had been able to expand my pre-Commercial cinema programming experience with school and University film society operations and acquire a bit of a personal reputation among hard-nosed industry professionals in Edinburgh before I had even started to become the cinema manager I would become. Part of this period involved the projectionists at the Film Guild accepting me as one of their own and teaching me the craft of film care and projection which stood me in great stead in later years especially when some projectionists tried to indulge their favourite pastime of baiting this manager with bull**** excuses about technical problems only to have the faults analysed and corrected by yours truly! When you have earned the respect of the Edinburgh, and Glasgow, projectionists you know you had graduated from the real hard core school of professionalism. One of those projectionists, David Bain, would become a staunch personal friend and will make several unanticipated “Guest Appearances” during this saga.

.CHAPTER TWO -  THE ODEON YEARS 1968 - 1971 Part 1

In the summer of 1968 I had been successful in my application to join as a management trainee with the Rank Organisation and was scheduled to start at the Odeon in Edinburgh in October that year once the new General Manager had been appointed and moved up to Edinburgh. This gap was the reason I came to involve myself with the Edinburgh Film Festival and out of that came another temporary work fill-in with Films of Scotland where I spent three weeks checking all their film library stock on viewing machines and effecting repairs where necessary to damaged prints to ensure there would be no glitches when they were hired out. When you spend such an intense period of time watching little other that highland cattle in their natural habitat and constantly marching regiments playing their bagpipes you tend to yearn for a more normal cinema experience with traditional plots and action sequences! My temporary appointment with Films of Scotland may also have come about due to the good relationship I developed with its director H Forsyth Hardy during the Film Festival selection committee viewings and by willingly helping him out on a “stunt” he came up with for the Premiere of one of that year’s Gala presentations. The film in question was the thriller NOBODY RUNS FOREVER which was to be premiered at the Odeon in Clerk Street and the event would be attended by stars Rod Taylor and Dalia Lavi. With Edinburgh having recently been selected to stage the Commonwealth Games in a couple of years time, and I suspect with some input from then Odeon General Manager George Gibson, they thought it might be amusing for Hardy’s MC duties introducing the stars to be interrupted by a scantily clad female screaming while being pursued by a character in running gear from one side of the stage and then returning again from whence she had come with the runner again trying to catch her. This episode would climax with a “pay-off line” involving a withering look of resignation from the host claiming that “Well, nobody runs forever!” One of the Film Festival hostesses provided the glamour for the chase while my performance in hot pursuit would come back to haunt me a few weeks later when the staff recognised their new “Trainee Manager” as having been the erstwhile runner at this Premiere. If nothing else it had provided the opportunity for me to come face to face with a couple of movie stars as both Taylor and Lavi were waiting off-stage while the chase was on. Taylor was a bit non-plussed but Lavi was more sociable and very charming … even if my own personal preference for the encounter might have been her other co-star in the film Camilla Sparv had she been the one to turn out for the premiere!

My professional life in Commercial Cinema started at my home town Odeon and I was fortunate in enjoying a terrific relationship with my first General Manager Ted Way. We both loved film and from him I learned that it was possible to combine this passion with the commercial practicalities of the business and also to realise that such interest enabled you to appreciate that not all cinema audiences were the same. A good manager can quickly assess which product works best for their audiences and Ted and I shared a firm conviction that the Clerk Street Odeon audience was a discerning one that should not be insulted with cheap programming. The cinema was Rank’s Roadshow Theatre in the Capital and had recently enjoyed a near two-year run with THE SOUND OF MUSIC. When not playing the separate performance high ticket advance booked shows it would revert to normal release product on continuous performances. This normal programming involved a rather bizarre rota-share on releases between the Odeon and the independently owned THE PLAYHOUSE. There was always intense scrutiny of the release schedules for the latest Disney animated features and even more so for the Bond datings. Sometimes the Odeon would cede its entitlement to the Maguire family if the split had been more in favour of Odeon for several major releases and this rather unique relationship was one that I came to cherish and have remained firm friends with Walter Maguire from that family to the present day.

In terms of the many other cinema exhibitors in Edinburgh, there was the traditional national rivalry with the ABC Circuit houses in town but Ted built up strong relationships with them and the Cameron Family who ran, and continue to run to this day, THE DOMINION as well as the Poole family who ran the city’s main art house cinema The Cameo, one of the suburban screens and the only place to watch horror movies …the Poole’s Synod Hall. Despite tribal rivalries if anyone found themselves short of retail stock due to some ordering/delivery glitch or just unanticipated business levels there was never any stigma in phoning each other up to borrow some of their stock on the clear understanding that it was always given priority return speed in the event an auditor turned up unexpectedly. Needless to say we always looked after each other whenever we wanted to watch any of the films being played and invited each other to press screenings and premieres when they were staged so it was all one happy family in the same business … with one exception!

No-one really got on with Councillor John MacLauchlan who ran the Caley Cinema in Lothian Road. At the time of the Disney release of GREYFRIARS BOBBY, which had been on the Playhouse’s split, he had used his position as a town councillor to coerce Disney to stage the World Premiere at his Caley Cinema. The trick having worked then probably had emboldened MacLauchlan to do the same dirty on the Odeon just after I started with Ted. 20th Century Fox had wanted to stage the World Premiere of THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE at Edinburgh’s Odeon but once again local politics interfered with accepted business etiquette and it was scheduled for the Caley. My GM, from his recent years working in London’s peripheral area cinemas had enjoyed excellent relationships with the Marketing Executives of many of the Film Distribution Companies that supplied their releases to Odeon so when the Fox official who was charged with making “on the ground” arrangements for the BRODIE premiere realised the Caley had no idea of initiating, let alone maximising publicity and promotion for the event, it was to Ted that he came a calling for a “behind the scenes” assist. The premiere was a big success thanks to Odeon using its many media contacts but receiving no “official credit” whatsoever. Ted didn’t even get an invite to the star-studded event but a few years later, in the true traditions of “revenge being a dish best appreciated served cold” we did arrange payback for Councillor MacLauchlan and I learned the important lesson that sometimes biting your tongue and being patient can produce tangible profitable results better than any short-term outbursts of pique. But again more later at the appropriate chronological juncture.

For the present I was on my initial “learning the business” probationary training period which should have taken six to nine months. Thanks to Ted and his careful scheduling of my learning programme, which recognised my enthusiasm and ability to assimilate the essentials very quickly, I had passed my “keyholder stage” assessment in just over two months and was now allowed to don the Evening Suit attire and maintain it via the rather less than generous 12/6d weekly laundry allowance! I was also now allowed to be left nominally in sole charge and thoroughly relished the responsibility when over Christmas Day that year - yes, this cinema opened on that day and enjoyed two full-house separate performances of OLIVER - the newbie was Duty manager with Ted at the other end of the country spending the Christmas period with his family in Plymouth. Mr. Hewitt, the Senior Assistant Business Unit Manager, had rather inconveniently - and we suspected opportunistically - gone off on the sick. This unit management position, one I would later occupy, was affectionately but rather inconveniently known by the acronym A.B.U.M! . I’d like to say the Christmas Day screenings went smoothly but at the start of Act 2 of the musical’s evening performance the “bell ring” on the play-in soundtrack sounded dissonantly rather than tunefully and the amplifying unit died. Ever tried getting the official Westrex Sound Engineer on Christmas Day? Somehow I got through and in the hour it took him to arrive I had to make the decision to offer refunds to those who would be unable to catch transport home due to the show now going to be finishing much later than scheduled. I was in trouble for making this decision before the Engineer had authorised it - as that Company would be picking up the costs, apparently - but thankfully Ted backed my actions to the hilt when he returned to the unit after his short break and got my side of the decision making process.

This fun period from starting in October 1968 to April of 1969 was highly enjoyable as I loved the paperwork and had two wonderful mentors in Auntie Nell (Mitchell) our local Assistant Manager and Sadie Swann (the wages/stock control administrator) who kept me right in ensuring everything was completed to the high standards of accuracy expected of this unit. It was a happy working environment and as Nell often summed it up in later years “it was a time of joy” and one that I have always remembered with fond affection and indeed tried to recreate in some small way in other cinemas I have worked in. The Odeon in Clerk Street was a very special and possibly unique unit in the Odeon Circuit that anyone who ever worked in it always remembered with similar fondness. Mrs. Mitchell’s husband Norman was the long-serving Chief projectionist at Odeon but I only met with him briefly during the Edinburgh Film Festival Films Officer runs dropping off films scheduled for screening at the Odeon Gala Performances that year. By the time I started as a trainee, Norman’s health had deteriorated and he was never to work at this unit again. He would eventually be replaced by Jimmy Corrance who had been working for an independent chain in Bellshill at the time. Jimmy hit a bit of flack from other Odeon Chiefs in other units for not only being an outsider but, in their view, having been given a nepotistic leg-up into the Circuit by his brother Hugh who, at that time was the Regional Technical Officer. One thing Norman had approved of, as a result of updates he got from visits to him by the other projectionists Fred Symonds and Lottie Tweedie, was my arranging special tapes of music (particularly on the road show presentations) to tie in with the mood of the film and embellish the intermission sequences as well. I had fallen out on this issue with Hugh Corrance when he heard about it through his own grapevine but he had the decency to come one evening with his wife to a screening and experience what I had been trying to do and afterwards gave me permission to “carry on doing it”. This would become one of my trademarks in nearly all the cinemas I worked in and earned me extra respect from many of the hard-nosed projectionists including those in Glasgow and Manchester.

Jimmy and I didn’t get off to the best of starts when he found out I was “in on the secret hiding place” for the key to the sanctum of the Projection Suite! Lottie and Fred, with whom I’d often pop up to enjoy a cuppa and a chat with, had shown me where it “lived for emergency access”. Jimmy eventually mellowed after realising I wasn’t a traditional “ignorant and interfering Managerial oink”. Perhaps after settling in and starting to socialise with the local Projectionist teams in Edinburgh, and indeed Davy Bain, helped broaden his perception of me? In future years Davy would become the Zone Engineer for the ABC Circuit and Jimmy would be appointed to a similar role in the Odeon Circuit and, as you will see in all due course, our paths intertwined  on several occasions!

Part of Odeon’s “unwritten policy” for new management trainees was to move them to other units to gain experience with different business patterns and management styles. Due to Brian Bint, the General Manager of the Manchester Multiple Unit, being scheduled to go into hospital for some major treatment that summer, I found myself given two days notice to move down to Manchester to boost the management resources. This I found out later was a complement recognition for the way I had performed during my training induction period with Ted. The Manchester City Centre units comprised The Gaumont (a roadshow type, separate performances operation akin to much of the Clerk Street unit’s operation), the Odeon (mainstream continuous performance and because of its large capacity used for Live Pop Concerts) and my little baby The New Oxford which, with its smaller capacity, was easy for accommodating either separate performance presentations or continuous scheduling that did not require the larger capacities of the other two units. Although I would work in all three, the New Oxford was my favourite although after finding my feet there I usually found myself at the Odeon and would ultimately find myself, due to staff leaving the business to pursue other interests or moving to other units in the Company, as senior at The Gaumont. My first impressions of the operation was that the GM’s style of management was extremely autocratic and staff performed their tasks more in fear than for the fun of the job and through being able to work in a happy environment where there efforts were appreciated. For my own developing management style I found I got more out of support staff through the style that had worked between Ted and I so while having to “toe der Fuhrer’s line” - yup, that was how staff in Manchester referred to the GM out of his earshot! - I made mental notes that his modus operandi would never be a part of mine!

Sunday afternoon Duty Manager shifts at the Odeon Manchester often involved having to eject seat-shifting toucher-uppers on a regular basis. In a summer that included such sexually sensational movies as BABY LOVE and CANDY (famous for Ringo Starr’s immortal dialogue to the effect of “oh, theeese man wet hees pants , Viva Zapatta!”), it was a rather surprisingly a Winnie the Pooh short that caused me the most trouble in generating a record four incidents to deal with in its 26-minute running time one fateful Sunday matinee. After surviving the trials of the afternoon issues, Sunday evenings provided their own variety of the bizarre. I often wondered why, when it came to rounding up the usherettes for ice cream tray duties on the main evening screening, they were often found to be congregating at the back of the Mezzanine level of the auditorium trying to get a sneak at an odd couple who regularly visited. I had my own close encounter with one of the duo, a six-foot plus blonde with very heavy face and eye make-up whose choice of dress was colourful to say the least. This “might-have-been easily-mistaken-for-an Amazonian warrior” had approached me while I was helping dispense drinks from the kiosk to complain, in a very deep, masculine voice, that “my friend’s lemon and lime drink is very weak”. It was the voice that possibly roused my curiosity and drew my attention to the stubble growth on this “clearly a male” chin and made me realise what it was that had aroused the curiosity of my staff. All I could do was politely change the drink and then find someplace to privately get over the experience … my first of a close encounter with a cross-dresser. And this was the year 1969.

If I have a “most embarrassing moment” memory of working at The Odeon, I am ashamed to admit it involved an encounter with a prominent member of the England Cricket team at the time. One of the major perks I took occasional advantage of during that summer was thanks to the amazing contacts and reciprocal arrangements Brian Bint had put in place over the many years he had been in charge of Manchester’s Multi-Unit. It was a card for free admission to Old Trafford in the members’ stand which a fellow DM and myself often used to pop up on our “extended” lunch break to enjoy some county match sessions and which I had used to watch the first three days of the England Vs West Indies Test that year. Such reciprocity was also made available as an open invite to players even if not playing for Lancashire. A Duty Manager would normally have a message passed that a named individual person had been told to ask for them at the box office and you were then expected to show them to the best of the available seating at the show of their choice. My message on the day in question was rather vague in that “some members from the teams currently playing in the Roses Match might pop in so if they do, take care of them”. One did and I went up to greet the player in the foyer and asked out of curiosity, as I didn’t quite recognise his face, which side he played for hoping he might also identify himself. The minute he opened his mouth there was no doubt of his White Rose County status and if I could have found a big enough hole to crawl into once he told me his name I would have dived in head first. Fortunately Mr. Geoffrey Boycott sensed my discomfort as I grovelled an apology for not recognising him without the glasses he normally wore when playing. Very graciously he said it was amazing how many of even his friends in the game had also failed to recognise him with the contact lenses he was trying out as a means of minimising issues he had suffered batting in Test Matches when the rain started to fall and the umpires delayed taking the players off the field. Given the fearsome reputation, and ego, he developed in later years I was probably fortunate in making this colossal faux-pas at this juncture in both our careers!

While Manchester had its notional Deputy General Manager in Alan Mason, the Company also decided to second Aberdeen’s genial General Manager Alex Grieg down for the first couple of months of Mr. Bint’s hospitalisation which came thankfully within a few weeks of my moving down. Greggy and Ted were good buddies so I enjoyed an instant rapport with the TIC GM and he “held my hand” while we staged a special launch for one of the summer’s big Disney release’s that year … the first Herbie movie THE LOVE BUG. As Duty manager at the Odeon at the time I was contacted by a representative of the major local VW dealership about the possibility of holding a late-night Premiere for their staff and contacts. This sounded great so I floated it with Mr. Grieg who gave me the go ahead to pursue the negotiations. From a simple one-off late night show it quickly mushroomed into them wanting to kick things off with a convoy of Herbies driven by Dolly Birds as chauffeurs to bring the top VIP’s to the cinema. Again such logistics proved no problem for the two Jocks to agree on and the only drawback for me personally was that, due to not having a full driving licence, I was not allowed to take up their offer of my own personal Herbie to drive around town in. I did, however, help in providing a bit of “Picken Special” to the event through my interest in often keying the music played prior to shows to the films being presented. In the run up to the summer releases I had provided a nice instrumental album of Disney Favourites by Tilsey Orchestral.  One of the organists from the Blackpool Tower who often played the organs in Manchester’s Gaumont and Odeon on weekend evening performances had been in one evening on a normal show watching a film when this album had been playing on the non-synch. Somehow he had been made aware of the upcoming Late Night Premiere and volunteered his services for the pre-show entertainment if I’d be interested. When I bit his hand off over the offer he also asked about the Disney music he had heard that evening. When I told him it was my LP he asked if he could borrow it to try and get some ideas for his repertoire. He assured me afterwards that he had only played it a couple of times before the Premiere at which he was note perfect and provided something special which many people said just made the night that little bit extra special. My efforts earned a special mention in the “Film Promotions” section of the trade paper Kine Weekly when I submitted the evidence.

The summer passed fairly pleasantly until the return of the GM. By this time I was based at The Gaumont where Mr. Bint had his office so there was no escape. His first day back took me by surprise as he appeared unannounced in the office I used and didn’t take too kindly to me enjoying a cup of coffee, catching up with the local newspaper and being unable to confirm that I had carried out my morning Theatre inspection Somehow I suspected there was some genuine feeling in his threat to “kick my a**e back up to Scotland” if I lapsed again. Giving him a very large benefit of doubt I did suspect there might also have been a strong element of Der Fuhrer trying to re-impose his authoritative management style given that he had probably had feedback on Greggy’s far more relaxed style. Whatever, as it would turn out I would not be forced to bite the bullet for too much longer. The one iota of comfort during my re-acquaintance with BB was that he did say he had been impressed by my contributions to film promotion during his absence. My “reward” - or punishment? - was to be assigned with our latest Management Team Member John Grundy to work on the logistics and promotions for the upcoming local Premiere of THE BATTLE OF BRITAIN. John had come from the Film Distribution side of the business where he had worked in promotions until cutbacks had necessitated him finding alternative employment in the industry. I held his hand in terms of the cinema operational paperwork he needed to assimilate and he taught me a few tricks in terms of establishing good working relationships with media contacts other than those directly involved with writing the film critic pieces.

Our working relationship tended to be a bit naught boy prankish at times and there was one occasion when I well and truly pulled one over on John. The Gaumont’s main telephone lines came in and were lorded over by a member of staff located in the main foyer who would act as first line of defence before passing calls to the relevant duty manager or members of the technical team. There was also a public call box line located on the first floor level near the bar which in itself was the level below the Management suite and administrative offices. This phone line, depending on your mood, was sometimes answered if you happened to be passing at the time it was ringing. On one fateful morning - for John! - I happened to do just that and had to deal with a lady whose haughty domineering voice conjured up images of a posh Peggy Mount who clearly considered male flunkies inferior to her as she insisted on speaking to “the person in charge of security as she had left something in the theatre and could not fly to America without it!” I apologised that there was nobody available on this line who could assist but if she redialled on the cinema’s main line which I gave her that she would be put through to someone who should be able to assist with her problem. After putting down the phone I dashed down to Judith who was working the main switchboard that day and asked her to put the call she would shortly be getting through to Mr. Grundy who was in the general office at the time. Like an innocent babe I casually sauntered back up about five minutes later to find John on the receiving end of both barrels and constantly uttering platitudes of “yes madam, no madam, three bags full madam!” and assurances that a full search would be undertaken for the missing item at the earliest opportunity. John was on that call for about 35 minutes and after he hung up I asked innocently what on earth the call had been about to upset him so. He then conjured up his image of the person on the other end of the phone as being some spear-waving Valkyrie determined to skewer him if the missing item was not found. Curious as always, I asked what the item was and both of us fell about uncontrollably over her description of a Marks and Spencer’s bag containing the outsize panty girdle without which she would be unable to fly to America! Thankfully we were able to reunite her with said item so all ended well. John eventually forgave me when I confessed later that I had arranged for the call to come through to him!

We were left to get on with the Premiere and had organised lots of razzmatazz involving the special cooperation being offered to us by local RAF contacts. Uniformed cadets would be on duty on the night of the Premiere to add colour to the cinema foyers and act as honour guards for the many civic and military dignitaries we had rustled up to show face on this special anniversary of one of the key aerial, if not pivotal, battles fought in World War 2. We had generated lots of advance interest with colour articles in the main Manchester newspapers as well as prize competitions that included tickets to attend the Premiere. The broadcast media had also been fired up to provide their input on the big night. In short it was something that Der Fuhrer could rightly take pride in as happening on his patch. There was just one teensy-weensy glitch that neither John or I had anticipated.

The weekend before the Premiere I had enjoyed a couple of days off up in Edinburgh and called in to see Ted. Our conversation turned to the BATTLE OF BRITAIN Premiere which he’d also be staging at Clerk Street. He had asked how our arrangements were going as, due to management staff shortages at Edinburgh, he was struggling to get his up to speed. When he sussed out ours was all but in the bag he sounded me out about coming up to assist with the Clerk Street Premiere if he could persuade Brian Bint to release me for a couple of days. When I got back to Manchester I got the summons and grudging permission to go back to “bloody Edinburgh for a couple of days as long as this would not impinge on the Manchester show”. He seemed satisfied that John Grundy had everything under control and I was allowed the luxury of flying up to Edinburgh and back again which was a real treat for a humble assistant manager, even if Ted would end up footing the bill on Edinburgh Odeon’s petty cash! In conjunction with my old Chief Jimmy Corrance we worked late into the night on the one item everyone who attended the Edinburgh Premiere really remembered above all the other marching bands, honour guards and interviews with some of the pilots who had flown in the Battle of Britain. It was a simple enough little touch involving an album of the RAF Band playing marches and “flying battle related movie themes” with the added magic ingredient of aircraft engine sounds from the differing planes used by the RAF during their sorties. It also included the one item I had been nervous about including but which Jimmy and I thought we might get away with … a vocal rendering of the fighter pilots’ wooing cry song  “Roll me over  etc etc” This tape not only proved a great success on the night but the RAF Association asked us to run off a copy for them to use at RAF displays in the future. The veterans, apparently, loved the sound of the familiar planes in which they had fought so valiantly and joining in the lyrics of that song also appeared to bring contented smiles to their faces! At one stage in the afternoon of the day of the Premiere we had a foyer full of press, radio, a replica plane and TV cameras recording interviews when in walked Ted’s Regional Manager David Williams. He cornered me and asked what was going on. As I outlined everything that was happening and likely to happen for the rest of the day he asked me to pass a message on to Mr. Way to the effect that he was going off to Aberdeen and would call in and visit Edinburgh tomorrow!

All too soon my happy sabbatical came to an end and I flew back to Manchester. Out of common courtesy when I returned to duty and bumped into Mr. Bint I asked how the premiere had gone. To say not well might be the understatement of the decade. What I had not been aware of was that John Grundy, as lead coordinator, had not prepared an “Orders of the Day” for the Premiere and indeed had made no notes at all on everything we had arranged or at what time the various components were due to happen and merge into place. He was carrying it all in his head. All very well except that John, unbeknownst to either Mr. Bint or myself, was highly strung and had phoned in on the day of the premiere suffering from nervous exhaustion and was going off on the sick. Thankfully Mr. Bint, being an old school professional, trusted us enough to realise that things were going to fall into place on a regular basis to some sort of schedule and he would play them as they fell. As he told me, he just stood there waiting for each component to appear and played it by ear. At the end of the day everything had clicked into place and it was a successful event … but what I wouldn’t have given to be a fly on the office wall when John’s phone call came in and BB realised he’d released me to Ted’s tender care for a couple of days.

My relationship with the GM during the latter stages of September proved slightly less fractious as he came to trust my abilities a bit more, even to the extent of telling me on the first Saturday evening of the opening weekend of BATTLE OF BRITAIN that he was off home and would not bother turning up on the busy weekend evening shows as I clearly could cope. No doubt “to his exacting standards” was the unspoken addition to what he was reluctantly implying.

My own progress through the Odeon infrastructure was soon to enjoy a happy change. What I hadn’t realised during the assist on BATTLE OF BRITAIN in Edinburgh was that during the period I had been “on loan” to Manchester since April Ted had got rid of his senior ABUM whom he made no bones about not coming up to the high standards he wanted for Edinburgh. Regional Manager David Williams had placed several other “experienced assistants” with Ted during the summer months and they too had failed the quality test. In need of having a quality team in place for Edinburgh Odeon to develop, he listened to Ted’s arguments for my return and agreed to the move back for me as ABUM. This joyous news, which I had been totally unaware of even being under discussion, was conveyed to me in typical Brian Bint fashion one morning with “you’ll be relieved to know you are going back to Bloody Scotland where you obviously enjoy yourself!” Although his was not an example of the sort of management style I would ever want to follow, I will give Mr. Bint his due in that he did knock my socks off on my last night on duty at The Gaumont. Judith was on switchboard duty that night and transferred a call through to me “from Mr. Bint” and my first reaction was “What the hell am I going to get my butt hauled over the coals for now … and on my last night?”  Instead he was total sweetness and light, thanking me graciously for the invaluable help I had been in keeping the unit running smoothly during his hospitalisation and all the promotional contributions I had helped out with during the summer months. He also wished me a safe journey back to Edinburgh where he fully expected to hear news of my further achievements working with Ted again. You could have knocked me down with a feather!

With the invaluable benefit of hindsight, although my sojourn in Manchester had not been one of the friendliest, I did come away with some happy memories involving the staff and fellow members of the management and office administration team. Arriving at The Gaumont when THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE was playing meant that taking staff parade developed its own hidden code as the staff would send a delegate to summon me for the then traditional Sunday afternoon fire drill and pep talk with “Mr. Picken, your Brodie girls are ready for your inspection now” in a passable impersonation of an Edinburgh accent.  I got my own back on them one Sunday, working in conjunction with Chief projectionist Percy Gough who I had primed to play the “Fire Evacuation music cue” and switch on the emergency lighting signals that went with this at a time of his choosing rather than the way we traditionally did it by rote after the pep talk. As I blandly carried on talking there was no response from the staff on parade when he did so until I asked them if they could hear anything different. Their reply of “the projectionist has started playing the fire music before he should have” helped me get over to them that the music and the light cues superseded anything else that might be going on and should be acted on immediately as they signalled an emergency evacuation was  about to be undertaken. Afterwards I was pleased to receive an acknowledgement of the variation I had tried out from Chief Gough himself (an old school traditionalist) for being a manager who had thought out of the box and used a bit of personal initiative for once to get such an important point over.

I have mentioned the New Oxford was my favourite of the three cinemas as it was there I encountered Barbra Streisand in FUNNY GIRL for the first time. I was so knocked out by this film, and her performance, I always made a point of being in the auditorium for the pre-intermission number of Don’t rain on my parade and the finale solo of My Man. The New Oxford was also a favourite of my management colleague Norma Cooke who was running that when I moved across from the Odeon to The Gaumont. With the business week finishing in those days on a Saturday it was always a nightmare getting all the paperwork finished off. Thankfully at The Gaumont I had the dynamic duo of Ellen Page and Margaret Lally running the box office operation and coordinating the nightly cashing up and banking operation which left me only the box office weekly return and the business reports to complete. Usually about 10:00PM, with all The Gaumont’s paperwork completed and Ellen and Margaret rounding off their day with a well-earned libation, I’d get a phone call from Norma asking for my now traditional assist with her end-of-week paperwork due to that unit suffering from a delightful veteran cashier who was great with the public but hopeless in terms of the accuracy of the entries she made on the daily box office returns. Norma and I spent many a happy Saturday evening re-doing the whole week’s box office returns and crawling out of the building around midnight. It  was a great working relationship with probably the one member of the management team Mr. Bint totally trusted. She may even have been responsible for the change in relationship I had enjoyed with the GM in the final months of my Manchester placement.

Visiting Manchester in recent years it saddened me to note the Odeon site, like those in Pilgrim Street Newcastle and sadly Clerk Street Edinburgh, were now closed and in advanced stages of dilapidation. The Gaumont had been converted into a multi-storey car park while the New Oxford continued to flourish …at least for those whose gastronomic desires extended only to McDonalds! I couldn’t help wondering, as I looked on them again what happened to the several ghosts who had considered The Gaumont and the Odeon sites to be their personal haunting zones? The paranormal occupant of the Odeon confined his activities to occasionally switching off all the lights on the projectionist while he was carrying out his final end of day exit security checks prior to giving the Duty manager the all clear to set the burglar alarms and lock up the building. While I had no real feelings either way on the veracity of this manifestation, it was a different story with at least one of the ghosts patrolling various other parts of the Gaumont. My changing room to get into and out of evening attire was at the end of a long corridor leading off from the Management Suite level and crossing over one of the emergency exit stairways leading downstairs from the Dress Circle. On some nights as I went to get changed I was acutely aware of a sudden temperature drop which had no consistency in terms of which part of my route it manifested itself. The Duty Manager changing room was shared with Peter, a long-serving doorman who had earned the right to this little loyalty perk. He was a lovely guy and always interesting to exchange experiences with. One day I happened to mention the strange chill I sometimes imagined and he said it was a well known phenomenon that dated back from the days before the building was a cinema and had operated as a Variety Theatre. One of the acts was a married couple who performed a high trapeze act but the lady also had a relationship going with another performer which she was keen to pursue on a more permanent basis. Her would-be inamorata tinkered with the trapeze and his rival fell to his death as there had been no safety net in the act to stop his fall. It was his ghost that was reputed to wander this corridor and who had a penchant for turning his unwanted attentions on female staff members (usherettes) who also used this corridor to access their staff room changing area which also led off from the same corridor. These “actions”, according to my chronicler, involved the girls occasionally being spun round by an unseen presence or on other occasions suddenly finding the invisible torment ruffling their hair. I obviously got off lightly! Another paranormal manifestation dating from the Theatre operating days, or perhaps it was the one from the Odeon enjoying a change of scene, was also prone to interfering with the projectionist’s nightly exit check and was the reason there was usually a back up to restore lighting in the event of checker number one being plunged into darkness. The third well-chronicled presence dated back even further in the building’s history to the days when it had been a workhouse. The area of disturbance was in what was now the Cinema’s fridge room, about one floor below stage level, where staff heading off to load up their trays ready for the sales intervals would sometimes open the door and see a shady figure at the far end of the room apparently making biscuits over the more solid form of the ice cream freezer. One theory had this being some poor inmate who had passed on while carrying out her menial task and for some reason would appear in the then more modern times. Thankfully the New Oxford had no unhappy presences though at times, as Norma and I spent the witching hour sorting out those inaccurate box office returns, we may have been tempted to add a nominated cashier to the roster!

My return to the Odeon Edinburgh was one I was really looking forward to and as I rolled up one Saturday night in late October 1969 just to say hello again to Ted, I soon found myself gainfully occupied. While we were catching up I noticed he was struggling with a pile of stock check returns and all the other end of week forms he was trying to wade through. Without bothering to ask or be asked I just grabbed some from the pile to help out which got the job done so much quicker. Our re-bonding process was like we had never parted as he outlined some of the things he was hoping to work on over the next year to raise the business profile and profitability of the unit now that he had a second-in-charge he could trust and who shared his attitude to and love of the cinema business.

One of the earliest of these was to try and build up a late night show audience which we both felt should work at this site because of the location of all the student accommodations and Halls of Residence for Edinburgh University nearby. This concept was relatively new at the time in Edinburgh and one cinema, the Jacey on Princess Street (a former News/Cartoon theatre which had developed into screening some of the “risqué continental offerings” that were starting to appear as its main core programming) was the only screen attempting to corner this nascent market on Friday evenings after their normal programming had finished. Although not over-adventurous in terms of programming they appeared to be doing OK but had a reputation for rowdy audiences … perhaps due to their proximity to Edinburgh’s notorious Rose Street and the West End with their many drinking venues? Within a few months due to our more selective programming and taking a tough line on rowdies by refusing entry to anyone obviously under the influence, Booking Department were soon instructed by our Regional Manager to book whatever Edinburgh requested for these shows as the few selections we had demanded were taking way in excess of the programming they had been coming up with previously. Anyone who knows the mentality of Circuit Film Booking Departments will realise Unit Management having this autonomy was virtually unheard of but the bottom line having always been “money talks” meant they had to, very reluctantly, concede … and then pop some of our blockbusting double bills into other Odeon screens around the country who also fancied trying late night shows! One of our early clinchers for this autonomy had been a Friday night double bill of PSYCHO and THE BIRDS. David Williams, our Regional Manager, who had only recently recovered from his encounter with our BATTLE OF BRITAIN premiere action scene popped in on a late night visit and had to battle through the conga-line queue winding its way round the building where he eventually came across Ted and I manning the box office, The two cashiers, both relatively new, were clearly struggling to get these numbers through in the time available so we had kicked them out and cranked out the tickets between us. Mr. Williams passed a quick note to Ted that he would see him tomorrow and left us to our good work of cramming in over 1500 people into the 1808 seat capacity venue. A very profitable and circuit record breaking night notched up by the Clerk Street Duo.

For a bit of “on the day” mischief as part of our attempts to make these shows fun experiences, a late night presentation of the Steven McQueen sci-fi horror movie THE BLOB was given an extra tweak courtesy of yours truly waggling a rabbit-shaped raspberry jelly in front of the projector beam during the sequence in the film where The Blob invades the projection suite and devours the operator. The jelly was the only “cast member” harmed during this presentation after being safely disposed of, after the audience had left the building, in the Manager’s office with a blob of ice cream! The real star of “unexpected experiences” at this Cinema, however, lay in the capable paws of Noddy, the rather fragrant cinema cat. He was prone to wander the auditorium and you’d often hear a squeal during screenings as his erect tail brushed against some mini-skirted female’s thighs as he passed by in the dark. Noddy’s finest hour occurred during a late-night screening of WHAT’S NEW PUSSYCAT? During the film’s title sequence I was checking audience behaviour from the rear of the stalls when a shadow started to appear at the bottom-right of the screen. Noddy had strolled onto the stage and decided to try and catch some of the funny shapes dancing around on the cinema’s massive screen. I had to go and retrieve him, while wearing my de rigeur for the period dress suit, earning myself a few boos from the audience for spoiling his fun! Perhaps they thought I was rounding up “raw materials” for the hot dogs we sold?

With the late night shows ticking along nicely Ted turned his attention to some possible occasional live show performances. While working at his previous base in Ilford, London, he had made good contacts with promoter Harvey Goldsmith and it was through him we secured our first “unofficial” live show. I say unofficial because the Odeon Live Show Booking Department did not consider Edinburgh a suitable venue because of its fixed 70mm Screen and relatively small available stage area in front of the curtain. They had agreed to us having Peter Saarsted but he withdrew from the arrangement and we found ourselves back to square one. Harvey wanted us to stage The Who but their destructive behaviour at several other Odeon properties had led to a circuit-wide ban being imposed on them. Eventually it was full-steam ahead as Ted arranged for a trial concert late-night on a Saturday evening during the Edinburgh Festival featuring DEEP PURPLE. Like THE WHO, we knew about the destructive finale to the set they featured at the time which involved breaking up their organ (albeit a fake one) on stage. As part of the arrangements it was made clear to all concerned that this could not be part of the show and to eliminate any possible risk of damage to the cinema screen they would be performing their set in front of the curtain. This was re-iterated to them by Ted during the sound check set-up at which the group members all politely acceded to our request claiming they understood fully our need to prevent any possible damage to the screen. The other aspect of the group’s performance at that time was their tendency to belt out sound by maxing the settings on their amplifying equipment. This was a concern given the timing of the show starting at 11:00 PM on a Saturday evening and likely to run into at least 01:00 AM on the Sabbath. This was an issue we should have anticipated better than we did but, in our defence, we were both in some respects making things up as we went along with no input or help from Head Office’s Live Show personnel. They had probably taken the same umbrage to us as Film Booking Department over our tendency to go behind their backs a little and do our own thing. As the show got under way and DEEP PURPLE set about entertaining the full house audience they had attracted by belting out 3000+ Watts of sound (like THE WHO they were reckoned to be one of the loudest performing groups at that time) it didn’t take long for the local constabulary to come-a-calling on Ted due to the local station being inundated with calls from local residents about the disturbance being caused by the show’s noise emerging even through the well-constructed building. They were OK about the show likely to carry on into Sunday - let’s face it we had been required to apply for a special extension of operating hours licence for the concert which had been approved by one of their senior officers - but wondered if we could turn the sound down or at least deal with the one main complainer who had been on at them non-stop since the show had started. Ted offered to go round and talk with the lady - armed with a generous handful of complementary tickets for future film shows at the Odeon (the traditional palliative cure-all needed in such situations) - and returned forty minutes later looking a bit the worse for the experience. He described his first contact on entering the house, at the invitation of the husband, as witnessing the mother and daughter kneeling by the religious shrine in their front room entreating the Good Lord to bring down his wrath on the evil Management of the Odeon Cinema for their desecration of His Sabbath. Using all his skills Ted managed to calm them down a little, pass over the “appreciation” comps and returned to figuratively cry on my shoulder and enjoy a restorative cuppa.

Our night, or by now early morning, was about to go from bad to worse. Ted and I, both in Evening Suit mufti, had popped down to stand at the back of the stalls to savour the last half hour of the set. As the group started to work up to the finale we spotted one of their members head off to actor’s stage left. There was only one reason for going there and that was the one thing we had insisted could not happen. With only an exchange of looks of disbelief we both set off at top speed down the side aisle, through the emergency exit corridor and onto the side-stage access for the apron in front of the screen the group were performing on. By the time we got there the wandering group member had enlisted another of the group - while in the best traditions of show business the others carried on playing! - to help him drag the mock organ towards centre stage. The audience frenzy was starting to increase in anticipation of what they expected to take place but became utterly confusing as a couple of persons in dress suit and bow-tie appeared on stage and started to engage in a tug-of-war with the band members and try to secure possession of and remove said item. It proved quite a tussle and was cheered on, or booed, by the audience depending on who appeared to be gaining control over the organ’s direction of travel. Thankfully, this being a rather primitive live-show set up in those days, all the group’s power amplification was being run off one 15-amp socket and when Ted threatened the two organ draggers with “pulling this (Unchristian language for a Sabbath morning deleted) source of power” they released the organ to our control and we escorted it away from any possibility of causing damage to our screen. Needless to say this was to a chorus of booing of the sort you would normally only encounter from audiences at Pantomimes when the villain does something bad. We didn’t care as, mercifully, we would not have to phone up Head Office on Monday telling them we needed a new Todd-AO sized screen!

With Glasgow’s Odeon having a larger seating capacity and proper stage presentation facilities in those days it had built up a healthy programme of Head Office booked shows. Typically whenever one was staged, the management staff had to be temporarily (i.e. on the night!) increased by borrowing from other locations. Edinburgh Odeon being a mere 40 miles away was a natural source and Ted agreed that Pat Brader (Glasgow Odeon’s GM and the person who had interviewed me for joining the Company) could borrow me for a two-show-night featuring THE BEACH BOYS. My duties that night were the dreaded “Front Stalls Security” where the prime task of myself and my sub-team of specially hired bouncers was to fend off the onslaught of screaming teenage girls trying to leap on stage to touch their idols. As well as having to deal with this, it was also the loudest place to experience the show as the team were positioned in front of the massive speakers groups used. In truth they probably didn’t need them as the noise of the screaming girls drowned out any chance of listening to the songs being sung! Having finished clearing out the early show and checking all the exits had been secured again to prevent any sneakers-in, I had just given Front of House the OK to open up for the second show and battle was in the process of being resumed when out of the corner of my eye I spotted Mike Love (one of the founder members of the group) popping his head up from the orchestra pit to have a look round. Thinking only of preventing any possibility of him being engulfed by the mob, I instructed him in as strong language as I dared to get back out of sight. He did and I breathed a sigh of relief. At the end of the second show I just had time to catch the last train service back to Edinburgh but it would be few days before my hearing returned to anything like normal. It had been an experience and one that I was secretly rather relieved not to have been allocated to during the many live concerts staged at the Manchester Odeon during my recent sojourn there. On that secondment my worst live-show experience had been the madness of dealing with disappointed fans calling for their ticket refunds when Engelbert Humperdink had to cancel his concert a few days prior to its scheduled date due to contracting laryngitis.

A few months later the Edinburgh Odeon team again ventured into the realms of live show performances but this time decided to play safer in terms of the timing of the event. Thanks to the excellent cross-promotional relationships the Odeon enjoyed with the main daily paper, The Evening News, we had agreed to cooperate with them in staging a Sunday Afternoon showcase of seven talented young up-and-coming Edinburgh pop groups as selected by their readership. Clearly all seven groups had big followings which meant a rather parochial mixture of fans having to be dealt with in terms of audience control. Of the seven groups selected the “biggest” and “most likely to succeed” was considered to be SUGARBEAT who were given the prestigious Top of the Bill slot. Like another five of the groups on that bill they would never achieve any of the potential perceived at that point in time while the group that was a laggardly 4th on the bill did. Not only were their fans the most noisy supporters at the event, especially when their “boys” came on stage, but their enthusiasm and patriotic choice of tartan clothing gave an early indication of what live show venues around the world would be having to deal with a couple of years later when THE BAY CITY ROLLERS phenomenon took off.

Our motivation for the experimentation with such live shows was due to upcoming plans to transform the ABC venue in Lothian Road, which with its larger capacity than the Odeon and moveable screen was the main live pop show venue of choice at the time, into a three-screen operation which would involve losing its stage area. A few years after Ted and I had long moved on, Odeon did bring live shows under their “official control” at the Clerk Street site and also replaced the fixed Todd-AO screen with a moveable one that could be rolled back to take advantage of the Odeon’s generous stage area. I did make a trip up with Sue - during the period when David Elliot, who had become a good friend through various crossings over in the early years of our Rank careers, was running the venue - enjoying MUD during their chart peak period and on another occasion Paul McCartney’s WINGS during their Wonderful Christmastime tour when they delighted the audience with a full pipe band accompaniment marching onto the stage while they performed Mull of Kintyre. It was nice to see our pioneering work finally come to fruition.

One of the major stepping stones on that pathway took place as a result of the Evening News show and Ted’s ability to sense a great opportunity to lure one of the regular Edinburgh performers at the Festival and other times of the year away from their current base … at John MacLauchlan’s Caley Cinema!  Meeting up with Ronnie Browne and Roy Williamson (a.k.a. The Corries - Scotland’s very popular folk duo) after one of their concerts he got on so well with Ronnie, the business brains of the duo, that he suggested they might do even better taking advantage of the Odeon’s larger seating capacity and much more upmarket reputation in the City. Ronnie, whose home was in Edinburgh, had been well aware of the buzz our venue had been generating in recent times and agreed to a trial one-off dating. They never went back to the Caley which gave Ted a great deal of personal satisfaction for all the hard, and totally unappreciated or even acknowledged, work he had done behind the scenes for 20th Century Fox that had made their World Premiere of THE PRIME OF MISS BRODIE at that cinema such a success in terms of local and national publicity promotion coverage compared to what they would have achieved otherwise if it had been left to John MacLauchlan.

Corries concerts at the Odeon were staged usually about four times a year on a one-night basis with marathon runs during the Edinburgh Festival when their two-week engagement of late night concerts would see them welcoming other Folk artists from around the world to do their own spots as part of the shows. These were indeed fun events and the last night after-show parties would often run on into the wee small hours of the morning with the artists and theatre staff mixing together and enjoying free-flowing refreshments laid on by the duo. There were also some impromptu combo performances from the artists letting their hair down a little. One of the stand-out moments I remember from this period was an occasion during staff parade before opening for the concert when the staff were lined up in the inner foyer and Cy Grant, one of the guests on the bill, popped out from the backstage area and proceeded to “inspect” the assembled personnel. Ted took it in good stead as he was probably still recovering from a bizarre interchange during the Fire Drill briefing earlier when he had thrown out a casual question as to whether any of the long-serving staff who worked for us had ever experienced a real incident. Up piped Madge Agnew with a tale of how she had been on duty when The Gaumont, another Rank Cinema in Edinburgh, had gone up in flames. She continued her tale with the experiences of her sister who had been on duty when the St. Andrews Square cinema had likewise been destroyed. By this point the look on Ted’s face showed he was in two minds whether to continue employing such a clear “fire risk” but he politely thanked her and hoped the Odeon in Clerk Street would not make it a family collection of three! It lightened the evening for all on duty.

Ted and I got on really well with The Corries themselves who were always on the invite list for any Premieres we staged and would often mingle during the post-show receptions in the Office. Ted and Ronnie both enjoyed a wee dram and one night Ronnie turned up with a bottle he had picked up on the duo’s concert tour around the more remote areas of Scotland which he thought might be appreciated … and was. He offered to provide supplies at a very reasonable price which was how the Odeon Edinburgh manager’s office found itself with a remarkable selection of whiskeys at Press Shows and Premieres. The whiskey may have come in Johnny Walker, Teachers, or other familiar labelled bottles but in reality was “moonshine” from unknown sources in the wilds of Scotland that, even to connoisseurs, hit the spot. I say this with conviction based on a later incident which I will come to in due course when this tale reaches the Premiere for WATERLOO. For the time being, however, I will conclude my recollections of Ronnie and Roy with the occasion they turned up for the sound check in a state of cloud nine anticipation of the concert they’d be giving that night. Ronnie told me I must ensure that Ted and I went in to the auditorium at a certain point in the show as they would be introducing a new song they had collaborated in writing and which they felt really proud of. The audience went wild at the end of their performance of it and it became a must-include part of their repertoire alongside their comedy songs and the rabble-rousing Rattling’ Bog. The song didn’t take long to escape into Scotland’s collective consciousness to such an extent that FLOWER OF SCOTLAND soon became the de-facto National Anthem of Scotland and is sung before international sporting events featuring the national team. Their excitement on that night was well justified.

One of the strangest of these experimental try-outs for live shows was a late-night Festival Gig arranged featuring Chris Barber and his Band. There had been no problems anticipated with this group’s behaviour or indeed any risk to our screen so it proved a relaxing operation. Ted and I had left the set-up, sound check and discussion about lighting cues in the very capable hands of our Chief Projectionist Jimmy Corrance and had concentrated on our Front of House and normal operational duties. We had extended an invitation for the band to come up to the office after the show for refreshments if they wished but as it turned out we were left like jilted brides at the Church Altar. Mr. Barber had come, done the set-up, entranced his faithful fans and after coming off stage he and the band had, like the apocryphal stories of Elvis, simply left the building.

Returning now to the main business of the Odeon I will include some movie highlights, premieres and associated activities to flesh out some of the fun times that were had at this unit.

Ted’s rebellious streak emerged again towards my second Christmas in the business when the “big” release we had secured was Barbra Streisand’s new musical HELLO DOLLY. For some reason, possibly its star’s reputation for being difficult, this movie was not in favour for any red carpet treatment in the UK with its distributor Fox making clear that no “premieres” were to be staged on the opening night of its release. Our attitude was that surely something should still be done to get some extra publicity for the film’s run. Ted being Ted, used one of his contacts from London days to contact Dora Bryan who had played the title role on the London West End stage during its run there. She agreed to come up on the “opening performance” and be interviewed on stage before the film and we also got some help by bringing in the Evening News promotion team to work out some sort of charity benefit ruse for the film’s opening night. None of this was cleared with our Head Office or 20th Century Fox who only found out about it when the newspaper coverage reached them through the usual channels. The night itself provided a full house and while Ted was out front of the curtain talking about the charity that would be benefiting, I was behind it and in front of the screen with Ms. Bryan who asked me if there were any funny things happening in Edinburgh that she might use to give topicality in her interview. The only thing that came to mind was the fuss over the city having recently introduced parking wardens which she thought was ideal given that her part of London was also facing similar intrusions. As Ted was winding up his introduction and it was nearing my cue to pull a gap in the curtains for Dora to step through, she turned to me and said “Would you mind holding my handbag while I’m out there?” This meant that not only was I acting as her “joke arranger” I had found a new part-time position as handbag holder to the stars!

While the event on the night went off smoothly, the aftershocks once Fox found out about our “Premiere with Star Guest” rumbled on for nearly two months. Ted took the first call from the Head of Fox UK Publicity and managed to forestall him with one of those “sorry, but have an urgent appointment, I’ll call you back later” excuses. Thereafter whenever the man phoned and asked to speak to Ted it was my job to run through a gamut of variants on the truth ranging from “it’s his day off”, “he’s out at a meeting”, “he’ll be off for a few days with this bad flu that’s going around” and even “he’s off on holiday for a week”. I’ll give the Fox Boss his due, he was persistent and eventually got the chance to vent his spleen at Ted over our contravention of the “no publicity” edict. All we had in our defence, and to our personal vindication, was that the circuit takings from the Odeon Edinburgh for the film were among the best in the country. Not that this guy cared a jot about that.

The nice thing about the cinema business is that things eventually even out and we would help get the entire Fox UK upper echelons out of their self-inflicted doo-doo later in the year when their ultimate boss arrived at the Odeon Edinburgh to be presented with a prestigious award from Films of Scotland at the Film Festival. I would presume this award was in some way recognition for his having helped green-light location work shooting in Scotland for THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE but also some years earlier for JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE  EARTH. The recipient in question was the legendary Darryl F Zanuck and the power he wielded at that time was clearly evident by the way these Fox executives were in constant states of tension trying to ensure they would not incur his wrath should he be displeased with anything at the event. Ted and I had already worked out our own “red carpet protocol” and it had all been positioned on the day of the event long before any of the “advance guard” arrived. We had arranged for posters from as many of the upcoming Fox release schedule to be sent to us and placed them in every available quad frame in the foyer … even though there was little likelihood of some of them playing. Taking pride of place was one for what was generally accepted as a twenty-carat stinker but which we had researched as featuring Mr. Zanuck’s current “new protégé” who was rumoured to be accompanying him on the trip. The wows of appreciation from the Fox Execs at our unexpected initiative for something they should have suggested in the first place was mooted by their querying why we should have included HELLO GOODBYE on display and a strong suggestion we might “lose it”. We didn’t … in fact I promoted an extra copy of it to a free-standing quad frame which I positioned in front of our island cash desk located centrally in the first entrance foyer area. Proving why he had the reputation of an eye for detail, as Zanuck walked through the entrance door - with said aspiring starlet on his arm - he spotted it immediately, turned to her and said “Look Honey, they got your movie coming!” To a man, the Fox Executives heaved a sigh of relief and started to fawn round in earnest suggesting they had been involved in it! Sycophancy had always been a strong trait at this executive level in the movie business.

In terms of the stage presentation of the award, this would be done by H Forsyth Hardy and it had been my job to escort him, Mr. Zanuck and “companion” down to the stage access area. While Forsyth went on and did a preamble about the work of Films of Scotland I was with Mr. Zanuck who turned to me and asked what the award was all about and what was expected of him. My thoughts about why Fox Executives hadn’t done so already had to be swept to the back of my consciousness. Fortunately I was familiar with Films of Scotland and this award being made on an annual basis at the Film Festival to persons who had helped make a difference to promoting the Country though making feature films on location here. I explained that Mr. Hardy might express such sentiments on stage and possibly engage in some general two-way conversation with him to enhance the audience experience for this presentation and also explained the importance of coming off stage by the same side he went on from as there was no access from the opposite end. He was absolutely fine with my briefing and, when his cue came to go on stage, turned to me and asked me to keep hold of the cigar he had been smoking at the time and also to look after his companion until he returned! Both items were returned in the same condition as they had been left in my care and I could now add “cigar holder for one of the most powerful Hollywood Studio Moguls” to my list of credits! As for the Fox Executives they too had been as delighted as their Boss and expressed their appreciation to Ted who had taken it upon himself to look after them while I had escorted Mr. Zanuck and party. The little touches we had put in place to make the day run so smoothly were remarked upon favourably and thankfully there were no mentions of our HELLO DOLLY premiere ban contravention!

Another major Premiere event we staged was CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG. In those days the “major roadshow releases” (those presented with separate performances and advanced booking) were staggered around major cities in the UK. As there were then no threats from multi-channelled TV services or video to contend with this allowed the “staggered release pattern” to remain viable. Having already dealt with the business this film generated during my sojourn in Manchester I was able to anticipate a repetition during its normal run at Edinburgh. With the City due to stage the (then) British Commonwealth Games in the summer of 1970, it was agreed the premiere could double as a fund raiser for promoting this event and be staged on a Sunday afternoon. There was no problem in securing a full house for the event. With the film carrying its official “cliffhanger” intermission the sales interval scheduled for 15 minutes rather overran. Making things worse for the audience eager to find out if the magical car and its passengers would survive the drive off the cliff was the fact that the “organising committee for the fundraising” wanted to make their own speeches in the interval. To say they were a bit longwinded would not be unkind and, as the interval dragged on towards the fifty minute mark, they finally wound up and left the stage. Ted and I, who had been exchanging increasingly worried looks as we checked our watches regularly, were relieved we could stop tearing our hair out and resume the film while making mental notes that on future premieres any speechmaking would be restricted to pre-film!

Although “stars” attending the regions at this time was virtually non-existent - it tended to be the GM and a couple of leading Press would trek down to London to interview them there - there were the odd occasions when we did rather tangentially succeed in securing a celebrity encounter. One of the strangest involved a “master plan” that took advantage of our one-in-three rotation of Sunday commercial openings when we would normally play one-off double bills rather than the main release programme. Having been aware that the Lyceum Theatre would be staging a pre-London two-week trial run of a new comedy starring Rita Tushingham, the brains trust - Ted and I - came up with one consisting of THE KNACK AND HOW TO GET IT and THE GIRL WITH GREEN EYES from her earlier screen roles in the hope that on the Sunday she might be curious enough to pop in to see them. Sadly it didn’t work but Roy Hudd, her co-star in the play, did and after the show accepted our invite to refreshments in the office where he provided a fabulous insight into how they were working out their characters’ back stories in the play to round out their performances as well as some wonderful anecdotes about Showbusiness. Having told Tush he was planning to catch the double bill she declined the invite to join him. Apparently she is a very shy and private person who was uncomfortable watching herself on the big screen. It was after midnight by the time our guest - a really nice guy who made sure Ted and I received tickets to catch the play at the Lyceum - decided it was time to leave. The whiskey bottle having run out may also have influenced the decision!

On more normal release patterns, the Odeon enjoyed a purple patch with the split arrangement we had with the Playhouse working in our favour with BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, M*A*S*H and the latest Bond release ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE coming our way and doing excellent business. For the Paul Newman and Robert Redford film our promotions department had arranged a visit involving a “cowboy and a horse” who would go round one of the busy housing estates in the city and distribute fliers for the film. No prizes for who drew the short straw in escorting the “Redford substitute and his four-legged friend”. It was definitely a bit of a come down to Manchester’s leggy lovelies in Herbie cars or CANDY girls - actually some of our Odeon staff with very short skirts and blonde wigs - mingling with the crowds welcoming Manchester City’s victorious team back after their football success in 1969 as their open-top bus tour passed by our location. There was one other in-house “stunt” at Clerk Street involving a re-issue double-bill run - filling in between 70mm Roadshow engagements - of Lana Turner starring in MADAME X with one of her earlier tear-jerkers IMMITATION OF LIFE as support feature. Identifying the female “weepie” profile of our anticipated audience we went for a lowest-common-denominator stunt to secure a little local press boost on the programme by hanging lines of paper tissues across the entrance and inner foyers for ladies to help themselves to in readiness for those inevitable tears the movies would produce. I wasn’t able to witness the effectiveness of this assistance from within the auditorium as my corpsing with laughter when Ted and I had watched the trailers led to him imposing a ban on me entering during any of the screenings lest I ruin the mood. Was I the first Assistant Manager ever to be banned by his GM from watching a film? Probably not!

Much more enjoyable was the promotion we were lucky enough to stage for the run of OHMSS. As a result of Ted having managed some London cinemas for Odeon and spent a few weeks in Head Office he had become good buddies with Maurice Keys, one of the Company’s in-house film promotions team. A quick phone conversation with “Maurice moi boy” - as Ted would affectionately refer to him after their promotions together while Ted was running the Ilford Odeon prior to taking over Edinburgh - and we were able to gain access to the elaborate Scalextric recreation of the ice lake car chase sequence from the film that had been made up specially for the Odeon Leicester Square premiere. Maurice also provided some of the Blofeld’s henchmen costumes and gadget displays to mount an elaborate display in our inner foyer area. Add in a car model similar to that used in the film, courtesy of a local dealer, for the outer foyer and we fancied being in with a shout for the “Best promotion of the film” prize being run by the circuit. This had a First Prize for the winning manager of a brand new car. Thankfully Ted didn’t drive so he wasn’t too disappointed that our valiant efforts went unrewarded. The prize was won by the GM at Leeds who had managed to secure the film’s star George Lazenby to attend his premiere, the only cinema outside of the Empire Square Odeon he agreed to visit. Might this have had anything to do with that cinema agreeing to his rumoured condition that “personal female companionship” be provided for his visit … and not just one in the singular? Like most other managers we had considered this was way outside our normal duties in terms of promoting any film.

What we did, however, have a lot of fun with was the Scalextric mock-up set display which proved immensely popular with all ages among the audiences who packed the cinema during the run. The object of the display was to win the major prize of a top-of-the-range Scalextric set - not the actual display! - by beating “James Bond’s Time navigating three laps of the course” with prizes of free cinema tickets to the next four fastest times. The task of setting 007’s target time fell to me and, having never owned or used a Scalextric set in my life, I was totally amazed that the time I set after only three trial runs was not beaten during the entire run. In the end we had to award the prize to the closest to “Bond’s time” and the next four in line.

In talking about promotions it should always be made clear that developing good relations with local Film Critics, newspaper promotions departments and other local contacts in broadcasting was an essential task for the management team. Brian Bint had Manchester all sewn up, an area of his operation that I really admired, and in the short time at his disposal Ted had strengthened the already good relations established by his predecessor George Gibson who had been my first, and very helpful, point of contact in my attempt to secure employment with Rank Cinemas. Edinburgh at that time had two main papers, THE SCOTSMAN and the EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS. The former was the morning paper of record and probably targeted a more upmarket section of our potential audience while the latter, the one with the wider local circulation from our point of view, had survived as the one main evening paper when its rival THE DESPATCH had been merged with it in one of the Thomson Newspaper Group rationalisations. The film critics, or reviewers, wrote for their readership with the morning paper being the slightly more cerebral in tone. Among local cinema managers the most revered film critic was the legendary John Gibson. As a teenager I had enjoyed his witty and sometimes scathing reviews when he was chief critic for The Despatch and as he had transferred to The Evening News when they merged I was able to continue this now in my cinema working career. I had always found that when John liked a film so did I and when he didn’t I tended to share his opinion. That consistency and honesty in style was one of the reasons he was so well respected in the business. The other reason I enjoyed John’s reviews so much was that, like me, he was an ardent fan of the Poole’s Synod Hall which often specialised in showing schlock horror and Sci-Fi double bill re-issues with eye-catching titles. During my later school years, being the tallest in my peer group, it had been my task to buy the tickets to get us in to those “X-Films” which then carried a 16-years age restriction - while for the musclemen spectaculars and other general releases at other cinemas, the less-tall members of our group were charged with securing our “child-price admission” to such films. The Poole’s was an institution in Edinburgh and watching films there was an experience. Those in the rear of the circle could, and often did, try to censor the film by standing up and blocking the beam from the projection room positioned above them while thanks to the side-balcony positioning on either side of the Stalls, sitting in that part of the auditorium could prove hazardous as acquaintances seated on one side often spotted a friend on the opposite balcony and would hurl oranges or cans across to them in a gesture of sharing while those below the trajectory path would watch and cross their fingers that gravity didn’t overcome the safe passage of the items. November the Fifth was a wonderful experience at this venue with the audience having smuggled in their supply of fireworks choosing to set them off frequently during the performance. Sadly, plans to create an arts complex in Edinburgh meant the building being forced to close, despite its viability. The last night of public performances was a sell-out and with a few of my friends I had made a point of attending. It was bizarre watching the genial manager, resplendent in his dress suit,  patrolling the central aisle of the stalls with head bowed and tears welling in his eyes while all around us some of the audience were in the process of attempting to dismantle the seats to take home as a permanent souvenir of this Institution. John and I met during my period based at the Odeon at receptions after Press Screenings where we soon established a great rapport based on collective experiences and especially in terms of memories of the Poole’s and its legendary closing night which John had also made a special point of attending. Ted got on extremely well with John through their shared support of the Hibernian Football Club in Edinburgh whose matches they would regularly attend and also from their mutual enjoyment of Scotland’s famed whiskey!

One of the rewards for long-serving staff in Odeon at that time was an annual lunchtime get together funded by the company staged at a central cinema for each region. With plenty to drink and some food to soak it up the event was always a lively one. The usual sort of entertainment provided on such occasions would be a bingo game with some prizes and some raffle prize draws. With the hosting onus falling on Edinburgh in 1969 Ted and I came up with something a little off the wall. I had previously brought in my own 16mm projector to hold a private screening in the manager’s office of a print of the Lon Chaney PHANTOM OF THE OPERA I had borrowed. Yes, while the Saturday night audience enjoyed one of the latest releases on the Odeon’s big screen in the 1800-seater, Ted and the office team had got through all the cashing up and admin in record time and were winding down with a Silent Classic. This I suspect was a sight that would never be witnessed in any other Odeon cinema. This had possibly set us to thinking about the upcoming 25 Year Club event and considering showing all these cleaners, usherettes, cashiers, projectionists and managers a “cinema business” classic with THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH. We secured a print from Rank Film Distributors and got their permission for me to edit it down to selected sequences running about 20 minutes … as long as I guaranteed they would be restored in proper sequence when the print was returned to them. Given my time with the Films of Scotland archive this operation was a dawdle. The editing committee, Ted and I, had no problems over including the cash desk sequence, the unusual interval sales boosting techniques tied in with auditorium temperatures and appropriate movies, the problems with the show being interrupted due to the projectionist (Mr. Quilp played by Peter Sellers) having imbibed too liberally or a passing train having caused mayhem. Even the touching scene involving the private viewing of an old time classic screened by Quilp for the cashier, a former silent movie accompanist, passed muster. Our one area of dispute was the scene where the manager (Bill Travers) attempts to keep the show going when the projectionist has passed out through over-imbibation and fails spectacularly. Despite my arguments that we should be able to laugh at all the components of a cinema’s staffing I was told not to include it.

Having survived incessant ribbing from the Projection team at Clerk Street when they heard I’d be showing a film for the attendees largely consisting of cleaners, projectionists, some cashiers and usherettes as well as one veteran cinema manager still working at his unit, the fateful day finally arrived. There was one additional attendee who, unbeknownst to Ted and I, decided to make a surprise visit that day … our Regional Manager David Williams. In terms of the Edinburgh contingent, our Head Cleaner Isa Sterling always rose to the challenge of topping her previous year’s consumption of Cherry Brandy to maintain her bragging rights over the two projectionists, Fred Symonds and Charlotte “Lottie” Tweedie. Fred could be a crusty old soul and would normally be of that old school who specialised in eating fresh-faced assistant managers like me for breakfast. Thankfully I had mellowed him before even starting at the Odeon when I was Films Officer for the Film Festival and had needed a short film urgently for a Press Screening at Film House. He had already made it up and told me it would cost me “ten shillings” (50p) for him to spool it off again and was totally shocked when, after that Press viewing, I returned the film to him to make up again and handed over said sum … a fact he remembered and kindly took me off his snack menu when I joined the management team! His colleague was a lovely lady called Lottie who had worked on the projection team at Clerk Street since the war years when the shortage of males to do the job due them being away on military service had provided her with an “in” that she enjoyed so much she still continued to work full time and was a fantastic member of the crew. To see her lift up the often heavy reels of 70mm film and raise them above her head to load onto the top spool of the projector was a sight to amaze … in fact one relief projectionist from Glasgow, who had helped us out in the interim caused by the Chief’s illness (before Jimmy Corrance was appointed) once confided in me that before he went back to working at his home base he was determined to prove his theory that “she may have a hidden secret in terms of gender equipment”. At 25 Year Club events they both let their guards down with Fred occasionally known to give Lottie an odd cuddle of affection while Lottie, after trying to match Isa in the Cherry B consumptions stakes, would tilt her hat at a coquettish angle in riposte and transform from her prim and proper schoolmarm persona to something that might not have been out of place at a casting call for Wild Women of Wonga. The numbers would be swelled that day with contingents from the projection and management teams at Edinburgh’s suburban-run theatre The Regent and from across the water in Kirkcaldy.

As I started the screening, to cheers from the projectionist contingent that I had achieved both sound and vision first time round, the response to my edit proved enlightening. The cleaners present chortled heartily throughout and were kept company largely by the usherettes and cashiers. When it came to Quilp’s efforts to maintain the image on screen as the train passed by there were cries of derision directed at the Regent’s projectionist who often had to deal with a similar real-life counterpart due to the main Edinburgh to London rail line running by within a hundred yards of his booth. The entire projectionist contingent were noticeably silenced when Quilp proved unable to perform his duties due to passing out from too much internal lubrication but were quickly back to their vociferous best when “the manager” tried to fill the breach and failed miserably in his efforts. At this point I was desperately trying to avoid making eye contact with Ted! At the end of the show everyone had happy smiles on their faces and the fact that David Williams had enjoyed the presentation and made a point of congratulating Ted on the idea meant I didn’t end up in the dog house. All that remained now was for the Duty Manager (me, naturally) to ensure that all those attending got away safely and made their train connections where necessary. Given the bacchanalian nature of the alcohol intake this wasn’t always the easiest of tasks and would often involve sending them to the station in a taxi. One of the most hilarious demonstrations on this occasion involved that rarest of phenomena in the industry at that time, a manager and his Chief Projectionist who actually got on very well with each other professionally but who, at the 25 Year Club event, engaged in an enthusiastic contest to see who could drain the bar the quickest. As I escorted them to the front door to await the arrival of their taxi they had probably excelled even Isa, Lottie and Fred in their consumption on this occasion. The manager lost his footing on the two steps to pavement level and landed in an ignominious heap in the gutter totally oblivious to how he had got there. His caring projectionist, having successfully negotiated the hazard zone, wandered over and peered down at the apologetic specimen lying there. Rather than offering any assist he merely addressed his manager, in terms that on any other day would have earned him a telling-off, with the slurred admonition: “Come on Basil, get up you drunken bum, the taxi will be here soon!”

During the Edinburgh Film Festival of 1969, in addition to the Darryl F Zanuck presentation and the major Film Galas of new films staged on the Sunday evenings at the Odeon, there was a major controversy over plans to screen a film called QUIET DAYS IN CLICHÉ. At one stage they had hoped to include it as one of the Galas but the Edinburgh City Council committee responsible for licensing cinemas, and indeed allowing films that had not yet received their BBFC certification to be shown at the Festival, took exception to this film and banned it from the Film Festival at any venue. Having had our curiosity piqued by the furore Ted and I, in collaboration with Jimmy, came up with a top secret mission to secure our own private screening of this film. The plan was for me to gain access to the Film House vaults. In my capacity then as Secretary, I held a set of keys for the building which allowed me to get in, borrow the film and return it again later that night under cover of darkness. Once the building had been long closed, around midnight I popped in and found the film transit case containing the offending film, loaded it into my the faithful Reliant Robin van, locked up the building and brought it back to the Odeon where Jimmy made it up ready to show. The audience of two, Ted and I, watched from the stalls while Jimmy kept an eye on it from the projection room. After the presentation, which we agreed was a bit racy for staid Edinburgh at that time but not the most offensive film we’d ever seen, it was spooled off and returned safely to the Film House vaults by 03:00 AM with no-one any the wiser.

CHAPTER THREE -  THE ODEON YEARS 1968 - 1971 Part 2

PERSONEL SHUFFLES

Sadly, as is always the way of things with big companies changes were starting to impact on the Edinburgh Odeon. The good part was that the efforts of Ted, and perhaps my modest contributions, had seen the unit up-rated by the Company and it was now in the Key Provincial 2 group as opposed to the Group 3 classification it had occupied formerly. The bad news was that in March 1970 Ted confided in me that he had been asked by the Company to take on a new position in charge of their burgeoning interest in Motorway Service Stations with effect from Mid-April. Given Ted didn’t hold a driving licence my first question was how he was planning to travel up and down the network but, typically, he had already covered this “problem” and was going to be supplied with a driver. The other big change in Rank Cinemas that coincided with this transformational period was that the then Chief Executive Brian Quilter was also moving on and his replacement, according to the in-house scuttle, was an arch rival of our own genial Regional Manager. Had this appointment been the other way round, David Williams would have ensured this rival would leave the Company but as it was he would be the one pursuing a career elsewhere. For the immediate future, our new regional manager would be Stuart Hall, a man who would also have an intriguing future career path that would also criss-cross on occasions with mine.

Outside the world of Odeon in Edinburgh other old acquaintances would reappear in my professional world. Davy Bain, one of the ABC Circuit projectionists who helped out occasionally at Film House and who I had got on with very well during my tenure with the Edinburgh Film Festival - and maintained a good friendship with despite my decision to join the arch-enemy of Odeon! - was appointed Chief of the newly reconfigured ABC in Lothian Road when it had reopened as a triple screen venue thus impairing any live show rivalry and clearing the decks for Ted and I to exploit this market at the Odeon. Davy had previously been based in Glasgow where he had sorted out all the teething problems at the ABC’s Cinerama Theatre there and was also Chief when the ABC on Sauchiehall Street was twinned. We would occasionally meet up for a catch-up and socialise when our days-off coincided and often these sessions would be interrupted with Davy receiving a distress call from the Lothian Road crew and having to make an emergency visit. I always loved the way one of his first instructions to Max the projectionist or the manager making the distress call was for them to pop out to the Chinese Restaurant located just down from the ABC and ask for half a dozen of their plastic cocktail sword sticks to enable him to deal with the problem. Having helped put all the equipment in, Davy was all too familiar with the fact that one master control unit was responsible for running all three projection boxes which, in the early days of automated technology, was prone to losing connections between certain components in the circuitry which could be re-established by lodging one of these “low tech components” in the relevant slot to restore normal operation until the following morning when Davy could find time to solder in a permanent strengthening of the weak link.

One of the main reasons I had so much admiration for the professionalism of the Edinburgh projectionists was that quite a few years previously they had realised among themselves that technology would be changing and indeed that fresh recruits would need theoretical training as well as the practical sort to succeed in the new environment. Putting their thinking caps on they came up with a technical training scheme for new apprentices which would be run at the Napier Technical College in Edinburgh and persuaded cinema owners to allow paid day-release to the apprentices employed in the various cinemas to attend the course. The old hands also ensured the same course provided themselves with the updated skills they too would need. I was so very appreciative of these same wise heads having taken me under their wing at Film House before joining the Cinema business formally and instilling in me the rudiments of film make-up and repair splicing, spooling off, lacing up and running a show as well as a basic grounding in easy to correct presentation faults for those inevitable times when the show doesn’t quite go as planned. This would serve me well throughout my long career and on occasions earn me the respect of cinema projectionists in other units when I carried out relief management duties through being able to communicate in their language the fault that required their attention. It also provided me with ample opportunities, in some cinemas where old school booth personnel enjoyed trying to “big up the faults they were asked to correct” engaged in their attempt at baffling what they perceived as a fresh and gullible new member of the management team only to find they were dealing with somebody who knew they were bull-sh***ing and told them exactly what they needed to do to correct the problem! Even in Glasgow, a far tougher environment than Edinburgh, word rapidly spread around the three screens I occasionally relieved at and they’d approach me with due respect enquiring “out of curiosity” how I knew so much about projection. I always gave full credit to my teachers in Edinburgh who were “legends” even among these hard men of Glasgow. On our occasional social get-togethers, Davy would thoroughly enjoy hearing how some of his old co-workers had been caught with egg on their faces as a result of his teaching me these basic trade essentials at Film House assisted by Willie Temple from the George Portobello, Gordon Lucas from the Astoria in Corstorphine and Jimmy McGregor who with his Caley Cinema colleague George Mavers were the two principle elected officers of the local branch of the Cinema Employee’s Trade Union NATKE. Was it any wonder I had secured such a fabulous grounding? The Union “double act” of Jimmy and George were a really tough pair of negotiators who always ensured that “discussions” with local managers were carried out with the common courtesies of mutual respect and civility. The pair “dined out” among the Edinburgh crews who knew me with tales of one of their visits to see Ted at the Odeon where they were served cups of tea and biscuits by “Mr. Picken” … as protocol demanded they refer to me on such visits. One of Jimmy’s “negotiation ploys”, which he had confided in me during our conversations at Film House, was to switch off his hearing aid when managers went into areas he didn’t want to discuss and then switch it back on when they had finished … at which point he would continue making the points he wanted to make! It was a joy to behold though not one to relish being on the receiving end of.

Another aspect of my friendship with Davy involved some tales of his childhood experiences where he had been brought up in the house in Edinburgh formerly occupied by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle in his later years was well documented for his interest in spiritualism and the afterlife. From Davy’s experiences of sometimes awakening from sleep in the wee small hours and encountering a spectral presence on the end of his bed who engaged him in conversation - according to Davy it was the ghost of Conan Doyle - the author may indeed have proved a point about what happens after death. These childhood experiences may well have kindled a sort of distanced interest in matters paranormal which would be further evidenced by two incidents I was personally involved with while in his company. The second will have to wait for later in my narrative but for now I offer in evidence an evening chez Bain when the topic of conversation turned to who might be the next manager at the Odeon Clerk Street to replace Ted. For some reason, earlier in the evening one of the conversation strands had involved Davy’s occasional setting up of a Ouija Board at parties as a bit of fun. Those present on the night agreed to him setting one up and after a few trial tests of questions that only the individual posing the question could know the response being given was accurate, we asked the general question of whether the Board knew the name of the new manager who would replace Ted at Clerk Street. Rather confusingly it did not spell out a full name but did quite positively offer up the letters C and J before going into its inactive mode. The new appointee proved to be Chris Johnson so judge this event for yourself and should you still have doubts then await Episode 2 of Davy and Charlie engage the services of the Ouija later in the chronicles.

When Chris turned up I was relieved that he turned out to be in the “hail fellow, well met” mould rather than a graduate of the “You vill obey mein orders or else” school. Chris had transferred from Colchester and employed a totally different mindset to the Cinema Business than Ted had. Film wasn’t a main driving force for him but the commercial aspect of the business was. He could probably have walked in to any customer-facing business and proved successful in running it. The principal area of the cinema operation he widened my knowledge of was in cinema sales and the importance of how the display layout of products on the kiosk areas could be targeted to boost sales of specific ranges. That the Odeon Edinburgh would win many of the Company’s Retail Sales drives in the next twelve months was testament to his talent in this area. As Chris had enjoyed excellent relations with the Company’s retail manager through his efforts at Colchester, Dickie Foster ensured the Odeon Edinburgh would be one of the first units to be supplied with the new large microwave oven concept the Company was hoping to roll out as a replacement for the traditional water-steamers currently in use for preparation of hot dogs. The initial range of hot dogs was now being expanded to include burgers and cheese burgers all already in the bun and these could now be readied for peak periods of business and kept warm by being stored in foil heat-retaining bags awaiting the rush of the customers. It certainly cut down on serving times per transaction and provided a bit of a challenge trying to anticipate just how many to pre-prepare to avoid dealing with excessive wastage write-offs that might cause the auditor to raise eyebrows when making one of his check-visits. I don’t know if Dickie would approve of the extra use we put his equipment to, but Chris would regularly tell me to do a couple of freshly microwaved cheese rolls to enjoy as our lunch snack!

Another of Colchester Odeon’s successful modus operandi that Chris introduced in his first couple of weeks was to write to all the schools on our mailing lists inviting them to send a representative to a reception in his office to discuss ways we could tie in special screenings for them geared to films of books that may be featuring on their current English Literature lists. We enjoyed a reasonable attendance and managed to organise a few screenings which meant Film Booking having to do more work on the Odeon Edinburgh’s behalf … this time not any of my doing!  

As was traditional when a new GM took over a unit we also sent out a special invite to local press and media contacts to come meet him. Thankfully nearly all of them took the time to do so and it wasn’t just because of the lubrications and snacks they knew would be on offer! As I expected, Chris struck up a good rapport straight away with John Gibson which was always the most crucial one to establish. With the Glasgow Odeon conversion into a triple screen nearing completion and about to stage an official opening, Chris extended an invitation to John to take him through for the opening night which was gratefully accepted. A few days later, Chris expounded his plans for the trip which, if nothing else, proved that he was clearly our new Area Manager’s blue-eyed boy. Having reported to Stuart Hall at Colchester his appointment to Edinburgh had been a shoo-in now that it was under his authority! How else could he have got away with hiring a limousine for the trip, stocking it up with a luxury-end snacking hamper of consumables and bottles of the best whiskey he could think off in Chivas Regal and 15-year-old Glenmorangie just so the two of them could attend the Opening in style. I was involved in the opening as well, although I travelled by rail (second class) both ways and had to make do with more simple fare! That opening saw General Managers and the best of support management from around the area seconded in to make sure General Manager Pat Brader’s new baby of the revamped Renfrew Street site was launched smoothly. Bizarrely I ended up in Odeon 2 working with among others Alan Mason and Nick Eggington from my short period in Manchester while also having an opportunity to exchange pleasantries once again with Alec Grieg who had been assigned one of the other screen to take care of that night. After the show all the GM’s enjoyed  a “wetting the baby’s head” knees-up in Pat’s office while the lesser beings (the Assistant Managers and “ABUMs”) had to quickly get out of their evening suits and grab their transport back to home base or find their way to a cheap hotel!

At the first Press Show in Edinburgh after the “Big Glasgow Day Out” I asked John how he’d enjoyed the trip and he laughed his head off at how Chris had been spoiling him rotten on the trip (and how he’d deliberately played along with it). He confided that he’d have been more than happy to travel through and back by train! John should be grateful Chris hadn’t offered to take him through in his own car, a blue Renault van, which he drove like a mad boy racer and which he claimed (and I believe him having experienced his driving) could get him from Clerk Street on his two days off back to his temporary home (until he moved into the property he was buying at Dalkeith) to Chester le Street in 90 minutes. My own best time in later years, when there were still no speed cameras, for Edinburgh to Newcastle was about 20 minutes longer … and that was for 15 miles less in distance!

In the opening months of the new Glasgow Renfield Street Triple Screen I was often called on to do “relief management” at the unit, mostly at the Gaumont, the Odeon’s sister-theatre on Sauchiehall Street. This was a relatively easy day out as the unit was on Separate Performances and had the perk that I could claim subsistence allowance for a meal. This I was able to enjoy at leisure well away from Pat Brader’s base at the Triple Screen which he tended to rule a bit like Brian Bint. As GM of one of the Company’s most profitable units Pat tended to be treated with awe and boy did he play on it. His favourite message to me at Edinburgh on occasions when he had to call often went along the lines of “Inform Mr. Way,” or in later times “Mr. Johnston” I am on holiday for the next two weeks and am leaving Scotland in their care”. Fortunately I never had to communicate their responses to him!

On one of my “relief” visits to Glasgow I was assigned Odeon 3 in the new Triple to “duty manage” and this would prove to be my final visit to Glasgow. My screen was on separate performances as was the Gaumont on that day where my friend Angus, who had often helped out at Edinburgh on relief, happened to be duty managing so over the two-hour break of house I had gone up to the Gaumont for a catch-up after ensuring the entrances to Odeon 3, which were separate to Odeon 1 and 2, had been secured and all the lights switched off in the foyer areas. About 18:15 the internal phone rang in Angus’s office and Mr. Brader asked him to put me on the line. Pat always used a slow and deliberate way of talking whenever he wanted to make his victim feel small and cow before his mighty presence. Without being given any chance of opening my mouth he proceeded: “Mr. Picken, this is not Edinburgh. Here in Glasgow, Management are in their Dress Suits and on the front of their Theatre by six o’clock!” He may not have liked my response of “Mr. Brader, my Cinema is not scheduled to open its doors until seven o’clock and is currently in darkness. I fully intend being back there well before that time to ensure it does open at the advertised time!” This may well have impressed him given the way we became good friends many years later when my employment path again found me working at Odeon Cinemas and Pat would often come to Newcastle to attend Manager meetings held there.

When I returned to duty at the Odeon Edinburgh the next day Chris picked up that I was not my usual cheery self and asked if I’d had any bother in Glasgow. After regaling him with the conversation I’d had he raised his eyebrows, picked up the phone and called Stuart Hall to tell him I would not be made available for relief duties at Glasgow again. Nice to work for a Manager like that.

Although by and large Chris and I got on extremely well we did have one major disagreement because he failed initially to appreciate, as Ted and I both knew, that the Odeon in Edinburgh had a classy clientele as well as a strong bias of students from nearby halls of residence and flats. At this time many cinemas on the Odeon Circuit had taken a leaf from some of the programming of the saucier end of the cinema world where film titles often attempted to lure in audiences with promises of salubrious excitement that were rarely delivered on screen. Normally the Odeon in Edinburgh, when not involved with Road Show releases, would stick to the safer end of main-stream releases but one day I opened the latest programme advice listings from Booking Department to find they had scheduled the notorious (at the time) double-bill of GAMES THAT LOVERS PLAY playing with the support feature ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER for us. I suggested strongly to Chris that he should get our booker to cancel this dating but was dismissed with a “Don’t be silly, Charles, its taking lots of money in all the other Odeon’s and so will we”. When the Odeon Edinburgh take for the week turned out to be the lowest (by a long chalk) on the Circuit for this “blockbuster business programme double bill” Chris was gracious enough to admit he should have listened to me!

One area of the Odeon Edinburgh programming we had wrested from head office Booking Department while Ted was GM was Late Night Shows. Chris immediately realised how effective this one-night-a-week strand of our operation was and at one of our tête-a-têtes came up with the idea of expanding it. Between us we looked at what had been successful and realised there was a strong possibility that, having now put the late-night-show opposition out of business, we could try to channel the horror/sci-fi programming that had been a main feature of the Poole’s Synod Hall success before its sad demise on one night and our more general main-stream double bills on the other. To distinguish between the two strands Chris, with his eye for a catchy tag-line and - like both our Secretary Lesley Mitchell (Auntie Nell’s daughter) and myself a fan of the then popular ROWAN AND MARTIN LAUGH-IN TV programme, came up with the FRIDAY NIGHT SCREAM-IN for the Horror/Sci-Fi double bills and the SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING SHOW for the other. Our local poster printer came up with suitable embellishments for the posters which were created on Ghoulish day-glow green for the Friday strand and Shocking Pink for the Saturday one. Imitation proving the sincerest form of flattery, it was fascinating to see Booking Department dating many of our successful late night show couplings into other units … while probably taking all the credit themselves for any business they produced!

Not content with sticking at double-bills, we also came up with a marathon all-night bill featuring all the Beatles films and another pop marathon that included MONTEREY POP, DON’T LOOK BACK and a couple of other “filmed live concert” movies of the period that had played the Film Festival circuit. While these were successful we did experience one major failure in trying to “double up” both parts of the Sergei Bondarchuk version of WAR AND PEACE but, thankfully, soon restored our reputation with a Peter Sellers marathon and a Bond extravaganza. Given the operational strains these placed on staff, and ourselves, the all-nighters were restricted to an odd occasion often coinciding with beginnings or ends of the student terms as this was the core audience for them.

In terms of staging Premieres, the year provided two Historical epics that allowed us to get our teeth into with CROMWELL and WATERLOO. For the first of these we received an unsolicited approach from Dalhouise Castle, which staged Jacobean Banquets just outside Edinburgh, offering us the services of the “Ladies of the Castle” to perform in the foyer before the start of the film and later continue with a further performance on the apron of the stage area prior to the Premiere starting which would include the Court Herald linking in a connection between the Castle and Oliver Cromwell as a special introduction to the film. It was a no-brainer of an offer and provided a fantastic atmosphere prior to the start of the main feature even if it had involved very delicate negotiations with the local Fire Prevention Officers who had jurisdiction over the Odeon. The Ladies of the Castle wanted their set, as happened in the Great Hall of Dalhousie Castle, to feature lit candles on tall free-standing holders on either side of their grouping. This clearly might have been deemed a fire risk in a packed auditorium. Thankfully our Fire Service local contact agreed to this staging on the one proviso that a responsible person would be located nearby in front of the stage with ready access to a fire extinguisher to deal with any accident. With Chris already involved with the on-stage introductions of the Ladies and the Herald there are no prizes on offer as to who was assigned Firefighter-in-Waiting duty for this part of the Premiere on the “Orders of the Day”. Services that thankfully would not be called upon.

The Premiere “extras” for WATERLOO required no such negotiations but did involve a much larger “cast” of participants. With many of the regiments who had fought in that historical encounter having come from Scotland there was a general eagerness to participate on the night. Nothing stirs Scottish audiences more than the skirl of the pipes and we had a full pipe band marching down the centre and side aisles of the stalls before parading in front of the stage. It was like being back in that editing room at Films of Scotland with the volume turned full up! Sadly, with all the usual Civic dignitaries, media and some of our friendlier rival cinema colleagues invited to come up to the office for refreshments at the end of the night we could not accommodate the full band so they were represented by the Pipe Major and his Pipe Sergeant. This duo provided Nell and I with one of the biggest challenges we ever faced in terms of not corpsing up at what ensued with these twa’ Usquebaugh McAfficionados.

But first let me digress just a little to explain that in those days cinemas staging Press Shows received a generous “entertainment allowance” from the relevant distributors and with our local Press being relatively restrained in terms of their imbibation capacity at such post-screening gatherings there was always plenty of surplus in the “booze kitty” to provide a nice spread at post-Premiere events. Chris and I both being tee-total meant that we had one of the finest stocked “Manager’s Drinks Cabinet” in Scotland with some genuine mega-premium bottles of Whiskey and other spirits … at least that’s what Area Manager Stuart Hall assured us on his regular visits to partake of the hospitality! While our provision was nowhere near as elaborate in terms of quantity as the one Brian Bint had stocked at Manchester’s Odeon, we did pride ourselves on what was on offer for special guests. For the after-show premiere receptions, the stocks on display on the Courtesy Bar that Nell and I dispensed from were often “expanded” with a range of bottles provided by our “unofficial” suppliers, Ronnie Browne and Roy Williamson (a.k.a. The Corries), from their trips round Scotland.

Going back to where we temporarily left the post-Waterloo battlefront for this amplification … Up to our dispensing area strode the two pipers who settled initially on a Johnny Walker Black Label. As they smacked their lips and made satisfactory appreciation noises while sipping the “Highland Bru” in their glasses, the Pipe Major glanced appreciatively round the range of bottles on display and his eyes lit up. Nudging his Pipe Sergeant he drew the subordinate’s attention to a bottle of (alleged) 10-year-old Glenmorangie claiming “That’s one of the best whiskeys in Scotland and you have to sample it”. As two fresh glasses were charged with the “Glenmorangie”, the duo sniffed, sipped, swirled and eventually swallowed the contents and uttered the comment between themselves  “Man, now don’t you agree that’s so much better than the Johnny Walker?”. Once they’d left, Nell and I revealed to each other how we’d been pinching ourselves painfully so that we didn’t risk giving the game away as to what they really had been drinking!

Another intriguing booze-related incident occurred during one of the occasional Sunday one-nighters when it was our turn to open … a rota system agreed only after being thoroughly haggled over at meetings of the local branch of the CEA in the days long before seven day opening became acceptable! Unlike the Rita Tushingham double-bill lure that Ted and I had laid deliberately, our selection of CASINO ROYALE (the comedy version in which just about everyone in the cast, including Ursula Andress, played James Bond!)  had no ulterior motive behind it. It did, however, lure in one of the supporting cast from the film in the shape of Scottish comedian Chic Murray who has the bit part walk-on of being in charge of the pipe band that plays in one of the sequences and whose bagpipes transform into dangerous weapons. Chic being Chic had arrived and asked to speak to the Manager. When Chris and I appeared, he introduced himself and asked if he could go in and watch the film (free of charge being the clear implication) claiming he hadn’t yet seen his performance. We settled him into one of the boxes at the back of the stalls which were always unused for other than special occasions but which came in handy for sorting out the occasional seating mess-ups on advance-booked road shows or when VIP’s such as Sean Connery’s parents occasionally popped in to watch one of his films. After the show, Chic came up to the office - more at his insistence than our invitation it must be said - and thankfully we settled him in the outer office where we held premiere receptions rather than Chris’s personal office where the booze cabinet de luxe was stored. Offering him a drink Chic asked if we had any rum as this was his tipple of choice. Thankfully, in our extensive stocks, we did have one unopened bottle. As the evening drew on and passed the witching hour it must be said that some of Chic stories were very funny and by about half-past he had worked his way through the full bottle and was looking hopefully for more. Chris picked up on this and popped through to his “storeroom” and came back rather apologetically claiming that sadly we didn’t have any more rum but offered to provide him with a glass of gin from the bottle he had brought through with him. I must admit being rather surprised at how this offer caused our guest to make a point of looking at his watch and saying “My God, is that the time … I better get going”. We saw him safely off the premises and after tidying up and getting ready to go home ourselves I remarked to Chris as to the speed of the departure and he explained to me that actors dread drinking gin as it is the comfort they turn to when out of work for long periods of time … a fact he was well aware of and had decided to adopt as a ploy to ensure we could both get home before dawn. Under Chris’s “tutelage” I was certainly widening my “management skills for awkward scenarios involving celebrity guests overstaying their welcome”!

Another bit of rivalry the two of us often indulged in was over what we would wear on Premieres and Festival Galas. In those days Managerial staff would always be in evening dress on the front of house from about half an hour before the start of the last house, or the evening performance if we were on Separate Performances. For premieres we would add a bit extra by getting buttonholes from the florist along from the cinema to help us stand-out from the other black-tie guests we sometimes had at these events. We started off both settling for white but then Chris decided to be a bit different and asked for a Pale Blue one to match the dress shirt he planned treating himself to. My riposte was to ask for a pink one and to seek out a frilly-fronted dress shirt. On future occasions, as Mrs. Mitchell often remarked with a mischievous wink, we were like a couple of Lotharios arguing about the colours we’d be wearing so we didn’t clash and who got first dibs on choice of shirt colour and matching carnation. Auntie Nell always outshone both of us with her impeccable black dresses, sparkling earrings and pearl necklace … she was the real bobby-dazzler of these occasions with daughter Leslie running her a close second in  terms of her own smart dress-styles.

In the run-up to that year’s Film Festival I found myself on the “most Unpopular Person” list among the organisers at Film House. With Chris off on holiday about two months before the event I had been approached by an Inspector from the local section of the Police charged with supervising the special licences that often had to be issued allowing uncertificated (by the BBFC) films to be shown in any cinema screening it. These were normally not a big issue with Film Festival events - especially as virtually 99% of the programme involved films not yet lined up for UK release meaning most titles would be waived through automatically when they were to be part of the Edinburgh Film Festival. On this occasion, however, one of the films was the Roger Corman gangster film BLOODY MAMA starring Shelley Winters in the title role. This had attracted a bit of controversy for the level of its violence and the Inspector insisted I make a formal application to the Council for the proposed screening. This I duly did and the doo-doo hit the proverbial fan with as much of a splatter as Mama created in the film. The Council turned it down point blank and their decision was splattered all across the media. As the Gala Premiere of BLOODY MAMA was part of a Roger Corman retrospective included in that year’s programme, there was added pressure to have it included as the director and also Sam Arkoff, the head of American International Pictures, were going to be at the Odeon screening. Eventually after an intercession by John Trevelyan, then Secretary of the BBFC, that this was a one-off screening and indeed that the Board would be viewing the film after the Festival dating - when it would probably receive an adult certificate - Edinburgh Council agreed to the one-off show which, needless to say, provided a capacity audience for the Festival Gala.

Once Chris got back from his holiday and was updated on the situation, and their antics, he made it quite clear in his own media release to correct the leaked press release from Film House that appeared in several papers with graphic headers along variants of: “Odeon Assistant Manager puts Film Festival Gala in Jeopardy” that I had been doing what I was required to do in complying fully with the Cinema Licensing Requirements for the Odeon Cinema! Thankfully, that was the end of the rather childish brouhaha on their part. In the period during which this was all being argued over and resolved, I must admit to being a little hurt over the reaction at Film House where I was one of the Office Bearers of the Edinburgh Film Guild. This was made worse by three of my former Committee Members from the days of Edinburgh University Film Society spearheading the invective and placing the “Charlie Picken Must Go” placards around their offices there. David Will had authored a book on Corman, his “favourite director“, for this year’s Festival and his regular companions Lynda Myles and Jim Hickie were also actively involved in the current year‘s programming. Lynda and Jim would later enjoy spells as Director of the Edinburgh Film Festival while Lynda would subsequently work with David Puttnam’s company and receive an Executive Producer credit on the 1985 thriller DEFENCE OF THE REALM. Yup, the Edinburgh University Film Society committee produced some great alumni … as well as my friend Graham and yours truly.

The dynamic trio earned more demerits from Chris and I by trying to cash in on the “success” of the sell-out Gala by trying to go ahead with a second screening of BLOODY MAMA at another venue. The Local Licensing Committee took less than a nano-second to deny this request.

The Film Festival’s good relationship with Sam Arkoff had been kindled during the 1968 Festival when Director Murray Grigor offered one of the Gala slots to American International’s film WILD IN THE STREETS. This early experience had proved fruitful for this year’s team in securing access to some of the classic Corman Poe-cycle movies for the retrospective programme they had included as well as the personal appearance by both parties at the BLOODY MAMA screening. David, Lynda and Jim were probably blissfully unaware of how the Odeon staff got them out of one of the biggest faux-pas they were in the process of making by a piece of timely intervention during the night of the BLOODY MAMA Gala. Chris, resplendent for this Premiere in a White Tuxedo to go with his pale-green carnation - I had stopped trying to compete by this stage! - had done a great job with the stage presentations and our understanding was that the Film Festival triumvirate would look after their VIP guests at the end of the screening and escort them back to Film House or wherever they planned holding the post-Premiere function. As Chris and I were doing our outer foyer Front of House “bidding adieu to the audience” routine we spotted the threesome in the inner foyer area swarming round Corman like star-struck groupies. Our immediate shared curiosity, however, concerned the location of, to us at any rate, the more important Movie Personage attending the Premiere who was nowhere to be seen. At the same moment we both spotted an unaccompanied Sam Arkoff making his own way out of the cinema’s front doors and trying to hail a taxi for himself. I was totally relieved to spot that our alert doorman Andy had also realised the unfolding scenario and long before we could make our way to the rescue, had gone up to the Studio Head and taken over securing him a vehicle. The all-fawning triumvirate had demonstrated their naivety in not showing common courtesy for all their VIP’s and probably would never know how the professionalism of one of the lower ranks of Odeon Edinburgh’s staff had got them out of their potentially self-inflicted doo-doo!

The 1970 Film Festival also saw the organisers experimenting with some screenings of classic movies in repertory and it was one of those that provided a late night experience quite unique in the annals of Clerk Street Odeon. Somehow they had obtained permission to screen an archive print of the 1922 F W Murnau silent Gothic Classic NOSFERATU, one of the earliest films to feature a vampire. The print, thankfully on safety film and with a music track added, had been secured from Germany which was where the challenge started. The silent film titles were all in German which meant having to find a way for this to be “accessible” to the late night audience likely to be attending. In conjunction with the organisers at the Film Festival’s base we suggested providing a “live translation” via a person familiar with German seated in a good viewing position in the cinema who would provide translations of the titles with a microphone connected to the PA system of our auditorium speakers. Stepping up to the plate was Mrs. Milne, one of the Edinburgh Film Guild’s committee who in her professional life taught this language at one of the City’s schools. Cometh the night and with no chance of a run-through of the film we did a quick sound check between the end of our normal performances and opening the doors for the Film Festival screening. The event was very well supported and from her seat in the front of the stalls our translator set to with a will. The first few mood and scene-setting titles being fairly short caused her no problems but then a couple of two and three-liners involved her struggling a little due to having to read the whole title before being able to translate. The audience soon cottoned on to her difficulties and a few minutes later, when the entire screen displayed a passage longer than the opening roll-up on the STAR WARS movies, a loud voice that would not have been out of place heckling at the Poole’s Synod Hall in its glory days rang out with “Come on Missus, hoo aboot that yin then?” John Gibson, needless to say, was in the audience in one of our special boxes and we would often talk about this screening with affection on later occasions. It was the origin of the “Noshie” nickname he gave me because of my love for such horror themes and, in sending him notifications of Press Show dates, I would get my own back by simply “signing them” with a set of blood-dripping fangs doodle!
 
Later in the year, our respective driving skills would be called upon by the Company to preserve the profit margins of a few of the Scottish Odeon units still relying on the steamed hot dog operation. A strike had been called in the bakery chains responsible for supplying the bread rolls to these units which would have been disastrous given the profit margins this retail line produced. Thankfully, the Odeon Clerk Street had a local independent baker with premises just round the corner from us and Chris was able to negotiate decent terms for supplying large quantities of the rolls needed during the dispute. Now in addition to all our other little management tasks, we made twice-weekly calls to the affected units for the quantity of rolls they anticipated getting through and “Operation Bun Run” was initiated. After picking up the rolls from our very happy baker, Chris in his Renault van would set off once a week on the delivery run to Kirkcaldy, Falkirk, Paisley and two Odeon units in Glasgow followed by Ayr before returning back home while I would undertake the same journey in my beige Reliant Robin Van - yes, just like the one Del Boy Trotter would immortalise in later years in ONLY FOOLS AND HORSES! - on the other supply run of the week. Thankfully the dispute was resolved after a few weeks and we were demoted again to Cinema Management duties.

With the UK due to make the switch to decimal currency in February 1971, Odeon undertook a series of separate training sessions for General Managers, which Chris attended, and Assistants. My session  involved a long drive to Bradford and I used the opportunity to call in on the way for a meet up with someone who up to then had been a disembodied voice at the end of the phone, David Elliott in Leeds. Dave had been my Regional Office contact at York and had relocated to Leeds with the switch of Regional Manager following David Williams replacement. David was the guy who signed off on my overtime claims and had phoned me rather enviously when Ted and I had respectively set a new Circuit Record for the amount claimed by a GM and a AM during the 1969 Edinburgh Festival period! He did admit he wouldn’t have enjoyed doing the hours we had done during that near three-week period which had involved Early morning screenings on most days, late night performances every night apart from Sundays with the Gala premieres for the Film Festival on the Sabbaths meaning we didn’t even get a day off then …“Biblical considerations” not having been built into our contracts when profit making opportunities for the Odeon were available. We didn’t feel any guilt about the big pay cheque as the extra profit generated from these extra activities had also provided a new Company takings record for this Cinema during that period. David would get first-hand experience of this working routine a few years later when he was appointed GM of the Clerk Street site and remained there for many years before taking over the Glasgow City Centre units on Pat Brader’s retirement.

After completing our “decimalisation”, Chris and I were responsible for training the rest of our support management team and all the cash-handling staff to ensure everyone was up to speed by the February 1971 deadline. It was a fun task and our pupils responded to it and were ready for the off by the due date.

Before that there was the Festive Season to get through with the traditional Corries concert, the Evening News OAP’s Festive Film show, the presents for the Sick Children’s Hospital collection beside our foyer Christmas tree (in conjunction with this same paper) and one of the peak business periods for our bread-and-butter movie showing operations. With Chris having now completed and moved into his house outside Dalkeith it was nice to have a GM working the Christmas Eve shift with me. While we’d both been in traditional Dress Suits at the start of the evening, with Chris doing his best to upstage me by having obtained a Festive Green carnation buttonhole, I had my only little surprise up my sleeve having borrowed a Santa suit from one of my Council Members at Film House where it had been used for their Christmas Party. We may have looked an “odd Couple” as we stood in the foyer bidding goodnight to our audience that night but we did get a bit of banter going with the customers as they left including hints of what they’d like in their stockings that night! As we were having such fun we thought about how to make best use of the Santa costume. Knowing Auntie Nell and Lesley would be at home that night and their flat being conveniently located just round the corner from the Odeon, Chris suggested we deliver their present from us with me still dressed as Santa. Had it been current 21st Century times, the sight of a man in a brown mackintosh sporting a Festive Green carnation in the button hole accompanied by “Santa Claus” wandering the now near-deserted streets of this part of Edinburgh, the internet would have been swamped. As it was we were not arrested and the smiles on the Mitchell ladies’ faces made it worth the effort.

CHAPTER FOUR - Moving on to TYNESIDE.

As we moved into 1971 changes were about to take place in management personnel and this time they would involve me. The opportunity came about through one of those bizarre/lucky chances that blessed my Cinema career. On this occasion it had its roots from a connection made way back in the old days before I started working in Commercial Cinemas. In setting up both the Edinburgh Schools’ Film Society and through expanding the Edinburgh University Film Society, Graham and I had been involved in lengthy discussions with the Federation of Film Societies over the required Constitution format for these “Societies” to enable them to secure films from the various 16mm Film Distribution Companies. The Secretary for that British Film Institute sub-branch at the time was Barrie Wood. With the BFI taking some initial steps into trying to test expanding the National Film Theatre concept out into the country they had set up three full-time trial operations in Manchester, Brighton and Newcastle-Upon-Tyne run directly within the BFI umbrella and Barrie had moved across to the team liaising on those. Our paths had crossed in 1969 when he’d been up on preliminary sounding out for a future Edinburgh Film Theatre operation sometime down the line to be based at Film House and I’d invited him to meet with Ted and I at the Odeon. During the 1970 Film Festival, where he’d been up taking a look at new Art House releases that might be worth programming regionally, we exchanged pleasantries again over the controversy I had caused for the Festival over BLOODY MAMA! This “excitement” may have triggered him deciding to suggest me as a potential replacement for the Administrator (being the BFI they didn’t do “General Managers”!) of their Tyneside operation which they felt could be improved by my cross-over experience with both Art House and Commercial programming and operational procedures. After discussions with the people he reported to at the BFI, and securing their permission to sound me out, he phoned and arranged for me to fly down to London for an interview. I must admit it was one of the most bizarre interviews I ever underwent. Having been introduced to John Huntley, then Controller of Regional Operations, and enjoying a very general conversation with him about the Film Society operations I had been involved with, he asked me when I could start in Newcastle. No questions from him about how I saw the unit being run by me or even mentions of salary. I would find out later that John never bothered getting himself involved in such “trivial matters” if he took a liking to someone as being a kindred spirit with an interest in film.

I did pursue my own enquiries with Barrie and the other personnel who had provided the London end back-up administration for the Tyneside Film Theatre and picked up some info that gave a clearer picture of issues that might lie ahead. The BFI had set up their Newcastle operations in 1969 in what had been the old News Theatre operation on Pilgrim Street - directly opposite the Odeon - under a rental agreement with the owner of the building Dixon Scott. The Scott family had enjoyed a long involvement with cinema operations in the area and Mr. Scott was now the main man in continuing the legacy. Relations with London had not got off to the best of starts due to the film selected for the “Gala Opening” of the new Film Theatre to which they had invited him and his wife. HUGS AND KISSES, a 1966 Swedish Art House release opens with a full-frontal exposure of the female lead character’s pubic region which shocked the Scott’s and he never forgave the BFI for the embarrassment it caused them. My other area of likely contention involved the publicity and mission statement issued by the BFI in the run-up to their new concept on the Newcastle Film Scene. They would be bringing art house and other quality films to the area that would otherwise not secure a screening in other commercial cinemas. In many ways it was an expansion of the “Film Society” modus operandi into a more publicly accessible format and as such would justify the fact that its operational losses would be met by BFI subsidy. While the major chain cinemas had no real problem with this concept there was one Independent cinema chain owner who ran, among other units, the Jesmond Cinema. Located right in the heart of student bed-sit land this cinema often played the sort of films the TFT might also want to screen. The BFI had promised him they would allow him “first choice” on such films but sadly had not always kept their side of the gentleman’s agreement. Arnold Sheckman, while a hard-nosed businessman, was a proper old school gentleman and had not taken kindly to this breaking of their promise which meant another hurdle would need to be overcome by the new Administrator. In terms of local input into the actual running of the TFT, the liaison committee would meet with BFI officers on a bi-monthly basis to suggest programming although this would ultimately be finalised by the BFI. The committee comprised several survivors who had run a Newcastle Film Society operation almost as successful as the Edinburgh and Glasgow Film Guilds, local Councillors and representatives involved in Film Education Courses at the local University and Polytechnics as well as the Films Officer for Northern Arts. Another major activity within the current Tyneside Film Theatre operation was the very successful North East Educational Film Project (NEEFP) whose main driving force and initiator had been Councillor Colin Gray who, in addition to serving on the Tyneside liaison committee, was also Headmaster of Heathfield School in Gateshead. The “concept” was to provide additional film input into various aspects of the school curricula from a central point to which all the participating schools would send parties of pupils to screenings held in the mornings and afternoons at the TFT. These resulted in sometimes a weekly additional throughput of between two to three thousand pupils. The BFI provided film booking services for these screenings and the Tyneside itself received a token hire fee for each use by the NEEFP.

Given I would have a bit of input into the programming for the main TFT activities and a largely free hand in operational matters I expressed an interest in the position subject to my undertaking an undercover visit to check its operation out. After returning to Edinburgh and discussing with my long time cohort Graham and the Edinburgh Film Guild’s film programming expert Norman Graham we agreed to set off on an expedition to the Tyneside and settled on a vintage Classic Horror Double bill being presented in the smaller second screen. The drive down in Norman’s pride-and-joy Jaguar proved a bit too much for Graham’s delicate digestive system and he lost the battle just before we arrived at Otterburn. The decision was made that we’d leave him, and his then girlfriend (but future wife) Pat, to recover at a hotel there while Norman and I continued the recce trip. First impressions were good in that staff were friendly and helpful to the two “customers” they were dealing with, the building was in reasonable decorative order and ideally positioned opposite the Odeon which from a plus side might not make me feel too lonely! Cinema Two, which I knew did not have a public exhibitions cinema license - the BFI got round this by making this the “members club cinema”- was very much like its original use as … a flat-level meeting room with a small stage area at the front onto which the screen had been positioned. At least this meant enough elevation to allow reasonable sightlines and the seating was well-spaced to provide decent leg room. In terms of the sound insulation from the operating box it was rather like the one in Film House where projector noise would leak out if someone left a communicating door to the auditorium ajar or, even worse, one of the box viewing ports! Norman and I both enjoyed the experience and picked up Graham and Pat on the way back. Thanks to the hotel making a room available to them - for a modicum charge for four hours - the patient was looking much less peaky and survived the journey back to Scotland.

Having decided to accept the position I advised Barrie that my available starting date would depend on whether Odeon would release me from my contractual one month notice period to allow me to start at the beginning of April which would also be the start of the BFI’s accounting year. Chris was rather disappointed that our happy relationship would not be continuing but fully understood my not wanting to turn down this great challenge and opportunity to develop my management skills and film programming interests. Our Regional Manager Stuart Hall kindly agreed to me leaving for the date the BFI wanted me to start and admitted being a bit jealous as it was an area of interest he also shared through being a big film fan himself. Stuart, several years down the line, would fall victim to the “executive level cull” that had also claimed David Williams on an earlier occasion but, in following his later career, I was delighted to note his name coming up regularly in Cinema trade publications with various appointments as Chief Film Booker for some of the main chains allowing him to enjoy the long term career he did in a business that, like me, he loved working in. These Booking Director positions would be like allowing the prize porcine free reign in a bounteous trough of cinematic delights!

My final sojourn at Clerk Street passed pleasantly and among other treats I had one final chance to enjoy working a Corries Concert before making a move to England that I hoped might provide a more welcoming environment than the rather unfriendly period I had endured in Manchester. Needless to say the Odeon Edinburgh’s conversion to decimal currency had gone smoothly helped by the staff taking to the training with enthusiasm even though some may have been rather traditional in their attitudes to change.

Among the things I would miss would be Head Cleaner Isa Sterling’s mothering of the duty manager (and indeed the General Manager) on the morning shift with a nice cuppa and a freshly buttered roll from the home bakery across the street to start the day, my regular ribbings from the Projection Team and indeed a lot of the friendly staff I had worked with. In terms of the happy working Office environment, Nell and I parted with glistening tear-filled eyes on my last shift  and I would  no longer have my Monday mornings brightened by Lesley breezing through the office door with her cheeky impression of Goldie Hawn’s character’s “Hi, everybody!” greeting in the ROWAN AND MARTIN LAUGH-IN TV series (plus the actions accompanying it) or even her occasional “alternate take” on Area Manager Stuart Hall’s walk that she had perfected. On one near-miss occasion I only just prevented this from turning into a calamity as said visiting Area Manager was thankfully in with the GM at the time and I intercepted Lesley before she reached that area while in full impression mode! One other fond memory I would take with me involved both The Corries and Nell’s daughter. It was of one of those famous after-show parties that were often held on the last night of the Festival run and regularly ran on into the wee small hours. With the Cinema now having the use of a space formerly occupied by the Top Rank Dance Studio - an area that at one time Ted and I had submitted a feasibility study for turning into two mini-screens to show quality art house movies - these wind-down socalising sessions were held here. On the occasion in question, some of the other guests performing on the bill had joined Ronnie and Roy as well as the rest of the management and technical staff. An impromptu jam-session sing-a-long soon got underway while lubrications and nibbles were being consumed. Having heard from Nell how proud she was of her daughter’s singing voice, Roy invited Lesley to do a solo and she delivered a wonderful rendering of Plaisir d’amour during which Roy started accompanying her on his flute. The appreciation shown afterwards by the assembled professionals left her a bit embarrassed while Mum discretely dabbed tears of  joyous pride from her eyes. Yes, whenever I look back on the Odeon Edinburgh it is always with great affection … a feeling shared by many management colleagues who had been likewise privileged to work at Clerk Street.

CHAPTER FIVE - THE TYNESIDE FILM THEATRE YEARS

Any trepidations I had over people being difficult to engage with were shed the moment I walked into the foyer and met the staff. They had decided to help me get off to a good start in being able to understand the local lingo by presenting me with a copy of Scott Dobson’s definitive tome LARN YERSEL GEORDIE while Jenny Lamb my box office cashier cum secretary may have stolen a leaf from the Manchester Gaumont staff’s ribbing of me with their Brodie Girls stunt by wearing a micro-mini tartan kilt to make me feel at home! I would also meet my deputy Roy Girdler who had also enjoyed many amazing experiences working with Odeon around the London and other areas before moving North. Completing the office staff complement were Viv Collingwood who looked after the 3000+ Membership operation and Leslie Irish who took care of stock ordering and control as well as ensuring all the BFI purchasing orders paperwork was raised, completed and submitted, along with relevant invoices, for payment by London. In terms of “office accommodation”, the kindest thing that can be said about it is that it would not be passed “fit for purpose” under current Health and Safety regulations. The “main” office was a small alcove cubby-hole at the end of a corridor located beneath street level on the Pilgrim Street frontage of the building. At the other end of the office corridor was the boiler house that heated the whole of the Newe House building of which the Film Theatre occupied a small section. It smelled atrocious as well as exuding so much heat that it was often uncomfortable working in the evenings while trying to complete the nightly cashing up. My other office, where Mrs. C wisely chose to work, was at the top of the building in a small room leading off to the left of the stage area in Cinema Two. At least this had daylight coming in through a window but was really only usable during the day as accessing it in the evening meant any entrances and exits would detract from the audiences’ enjoyment of the films being screened. It was from here that the Membership Secretary meticulously collated all the applications and renewals as well as preparing the mail-outs for the quarterly programme brochures whose content was prepared initially from London. A quick initial assessment of the membership subscription fee level suggested it currently covered the costs involved which meant one less issue to resolve as a “priority”

The auditorium staff were headed by Brenda King whose speciality of always being ready to pop the kettle on for a cuppa at the slightest invitation was very welcome and filled the gap I had feared might exist through having lost Clerk Street’s Isa. The other usherettes (as they were referred to in the normality of those pleasant pre-PC days!) tended to be youngsters in the last years of school education or students earning a bit extra to boost their grants. One in the “school education category” at the time would come to play a big part in my post-TFT career … but, as usual, more of that later!  Given the number of school children audience numbers generated by the North East Educational Film Project throughput it was fortuitous to have a resident Handyman in Terry Jones to carry out regular seat fixing and unblocking of the loos. Terry had his faults but his heart was in the right place and if asked to do a specific task he would do his best and if needed could also turn his hand to ticket checking or assisting with getting the school parties into their seats quickly. For the technical side of things, given the large number of films that were screened in the course of a week, we employed a Chief and four other projectionists with at times also a trainee on this staffing. Unfortunately it became clear early on that a couple of the projection staffing had a tendency to enjoy spending time while supposedly on duty at the pub located, too conveniently close for them to resist, at the end of the lane adjoining the TFT. My initial attitude in entering a new cinema operation over which I would carry responsibility was always to leave well alone initially and get a good handle on what needed to be changed and then make these in a carefully thought-out manner. Given that the TFT default mode when there was a film breakdown during a performance (if one of the problematic duo was on duty) appeared to be despatching an usherette to The Grapes to tell them they were needed to fix it, This was an area of personnel change that would need dealing with in the short, rather than the longer term. My top priority, however, was to organise a sign writer to update the price boards mounted on the building’s external canopy supports which were still showing admission charges in pre-decimal currency! Obviously this had not been a top priority in the scheme of minor detail observance in the often “cloud-nine” operational world of the BFI given the blank “Oh!!!” response I received when I pointed the lapse out to them.

As well as all the normal BFI-driven operations, the TFT had a regular hire-out operation on Sundays for Cinema One to the local Indian community. The bookings and publicity for this were organised by Bal Jassal and his family with the Cinema merely providing the ticket sales and refreshment sales on the day and our projectionists being responsible for screening the films as well as their make-up and spooling off. One of my initial nightmares over these shows was the phone calls on Sundays asking what the film to be shown that day was and who the stars were. Mr. Jassal’s son Robin and his other brother and sisters would enjoy my discomfort at trying to get my then still-slightly-Scottish-twang around some of these marathon titles or unfamiliar stars’ names! Thankfully over the next four years I was told I showed signs of big improvements from my first pathetic attempts. This family were all easy to get on with and very sociable which meant that Bal and I would often pop out for a meal between the shows on Sundays and on occasions I would be invited to their house for a meal prepared by his wife and the daughters … a delicious experience and one thoroughly different to the restaurant experiences normally classed as “Indian Curries”. Another Sunday hire that brought in extra income during non-operational hours to help reduce the amount of subsidy needed for the TFT’s main operations was to the local Chinese community. They had the use of Screen Two on Sunday afternoons only as we would use that screen in the evenings for various one-night screenings for the Members. There were two groups from the Chinese community who had different remits in their programming. The most regular one involved entertainment releases and caused no concern to our local licensing authority. Before I arrived on the scene, according to my sources, there had been occasional hires by another section of that community where the programming was more political in nature and apparently waving of Chairman Mao’s Red Book was much in evidence among audiences during them. For these screenings we had to make the local police aware they were taking place to enable them to send observers if they felt it necessary. Fortunately these did not take place on any regular basis. In terms of the local organisers for the “entertainment stream” screenings, I quickly established a good working relationship that would develop and expand in terms of the out-of-hours usage from this community from the second year of my tenure at the TFT. This extra screening schedule came out of the success of our more mainstream Friday and Saturday Late Night shows which had not gone unnoticed by the very entrepreneurial organisers of the Sunday entertainment product screenings for the Chinese community. They made enquiries about doing their own late night screenings perhaps on a Monday evening starting at 01:00 AM which would allow those staff working in restaurants outside the Newcastle and Gateshead immediate conurbation ample time to finish serving their customers and lock up with a sufficient time window to drive through to the Tyneside for the start of these screenings. These proved so popular that on special Chinese celebrations and indeed our own New Year’s Day they would also book the cinema for these late shows around those dates.

Our main term-time “questionable” revenue boost came from the North East Educational Film Project (NEEFP). This involved often different film programmes in Cinema One most weekday mornings and afternoons during term time which kept the projectionists pretty busy. It didn’t take long for my eyebrows to rise sceptically over the “Educational” justification of this project, especially at the end of school terms when programming was more of a “freebie film show” to entertain the pupils. Where the content was more geared to expanding on the current curricula in various subjects I would have been happier if all their screenings were being introduced by qualified teaching staff rather than, as happened rather frequently, the less-qualified dynamic duo of Roy Girdler or myself carrying out this “educational task” The “bums on seats numbers” justification of these end of terms treats was an area Colin Gray and I would agree to differ regularly about during my Administrator years but I will give full credit to him for getting NEEFP off the ground in the first place and organising it so efficiently. This had been a real labour of love on his part. My other concern, once I got a handle on the amount of staff time absorbed by the screenings, was that the peppercorn rental fee for these screenings barely, if indeed at all, covered the operational running costs. As I had not been around when these had been negotiated and the BFI did not want to rock the boat with this “prestigious operation” it would take me a couple of years to secure an uplift to one that at least did not diminish my overall BFI subsidy allocation to run the main programming brief.

I had little input into the first three month’s of “Main” programming but the two-week Buster Keaton season (with piano accompaniment) which was underway when I arrived in Screen Two seemed to go down quite well. This season also proved a bonus in my initial encounters with Dixon Scott as it was something that brought back memories of a period of cinema his family was familiar with given the number of cinemas they had run in the North-East. After the expected “haranguing” over the BFI’s Grand Opening Screening selection choice of HUGS AND KISSES we found more common ground with my enthusiasm for ensuring as wide a selection of film screenings as possible within the budget I was working to. Mr. Scott sadly, due to a stroke, was a mere shadow of the formidable presence and shrewd businessman he must formerly have been. Conversing was difficult for him but I felt that over my tenure I healed the damage initially caused by that Opening Night screening and indeed it was he who, sympathising with my “office location” in the boiler house, in my second year offered the large space opposite his own current small office that had previously been his own company’s administration centre for our use … for which a mutually agreeable uplift in rental was levied! One of my projection staff had been a long time employee of Mr. Scott when he ran The Tyneside as a News Theatre and Short Features Cinema and told me how the week’s programme content would be personally vetted by Mr. Scott, with the projectionist then removing any sections he considered “offensive” prior to the programme being shown to the public and then being charged with restoring them to their rightful places in the reels before the films were returned to the renters. The wider Scott family’s history (and indeed the Tyneside Film Theatre’s history) is covered in depth in the well-researched book COME AND SEE by Michael Chaplin. The Scott family legacy now encompasses Sir Ridley Scott and (sadly deceased too early) his brother Tony both of whom would make major contributions to box office successes in the last decades of the 20th Century.

During Year One I started introducing some “commercialisation” to help reduce the subsidy requirements needed including using revenue from more aggressive and profit focussed ancillary sales operations (ices and sweets to use their more familiar terms) and expanding the after hours operation at weekends with the two strands of late night shows I had helped develop at the Odeon Edinburgh. I also tried out some of the “marathon all-nighters” Chris Johnson and I had experimented with in my final year with him including Horror Marathons, all of The Beatles films (including the 16mm version of MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR which we were capable of showing at the TFT thanks to our well-fitted projection room) the Bondarchuck version of WAR AND PEACE and some other assortments. In also controlling the (to my mind) excessive amounts previously spent on “press entertaining” these all made for a significant drop in subsidy requirements for my Year 2 and year 3 budgets. While the BFI bookers raised eyebrows at some of my choices, once they saw the results, they eventually acquiesced … as had the Odeon Circuit Bookers. With no other commercial cinemas engaging in such presentations I had no problems from Mr. Sheckman and was flattered when Freddie Bower, the then manager of the Odeon directly opposite the TFT - with whom I developed a very good and mutually respectful relationship - tried some of his own. He gave up fairly quickly due to his shows somehow attracting more troublesome audiences than my hard-core student punters. The Tyneside also regularly filled another void with Saturday afternoon family shows which we carried on for three years until the Film Distributors’ “minimum guarantee hire charge” terms for such shows was introduced and increased to such a level that it was not viable to continue or justify as this aspect of programming was basically a “non-core” of the TFT’s main brief.

With programming being arranged in three-month blocks to accommodate the accompanying informative booklet sent to Members, I was soon becoming more acquainted with the members of the local advisory committee and the BFI officers who attended the monthly meetings with them to assist with programming and implementing any suggestions for film seasons. Once the programme had been “booked” it had been initially the remit of the BFI team in London to put together the brochures for their two full-time operations (Brighton and Newcastle). What was very clear, however, was the low priority given to the “regional film theatres” by the London-centric film distributors. This was understandable in that in those days the “specialist art house” releases were only commissioned with a few prints and the many commercial London Art House cinema venues and indeed those scattered around the UK’s major cities had first call on the prints. This also applied in some release patterns from the bigger film renters of their more specialist product (titles that might well cross-over into the films with artistic merit or foreign language films from recognised directors around the world) which could often prove frustrating when a title that clearly had Tyneside potential was “not available” due to the Circuits having first refusal on these releases and also, more locally, that Arnold Sheckman’s audience at the Jesmond was also a potential option for them. Two titles in particular spring to mind with DEATH IN VENICE and A DAY IN THE LIFE OF IVAN DENISOVITCH taking BFI almost a year to secure access to a print for TFT even though neither were shown locally by any of these “commercial interests”. While I could do nothing about the Specialist Art House Distributor’s London prioritisation, I did feel I might improve the local impasse by having a meet-up with Mr. Sheckman. As with Mr. Scott, I succeeded in calming the Sheckman rift by the simple expedient of having regular conversations with him in person or over the phone about titles he might possibly consider as “purely commercial” or have an interest in playing at the Jesmond before they were firmed up for inclusion in our programming. This simple “gentlemen’s understanding” - which I made it a top priority to honour between us - worked so smoothly that when, two year’s down the line, the BFI divested its direct involvement in running the TFT operation to that of total local authority funded control - apart from a matching BFI contribution from their main regional budget - I persuaded Arnold to participate as a Local Committee panel member and was delighted to have his support when trying to put over some more commercial facts of life of the Cinema Business to the more local authority and academic committee members.

The general format was for Screen One, the larger capacity with a full public exhibition licence, to play the major titles with retrospective or specialised theme seasons to play Cinema Two, the “Members Cinema”. With the various other embellishments I had introduced in terms of the out of normal hours screenings this tended to provide a nice mix catering for the pure cinema aficionado while at the same time providing a few more recognisable titles with a wider appeal to try to lure in some customers who may not have thought of watching classics in a “Film Theatre” and perhaps tempting them into experimenting with some films from leading directors they might not otherwise have sought out. To me this was my general interpretation of the brief I had been appointed by the BFI to implement and they generally went along with me. As in all such “committee environments”, even between the BFI’s Head Office and one of the their two full time Regional Film Theatres there were occasional exchanges and differences of opinion. The most heated was over a suggestion I made for a novelty compendium to play the Saturday family show slot and the Late Night Show slot. At the time Tom and Jerry cartoons were gaining good ratings on BBC so I asked for ten of them in a programme and to provide a bit of variety between the non-stop mayhem of the cartoon characters’ warring I suggested taking advantage of our capability to show 16mm copies and requested a couple of TeleGoons episodes (also currently enjoying a revival in popularity and becoming cult again with student audiences) from the BBC to complete the bill of fare. Despite questioning my sanity they asked the respective Renters who, when they stopped falling off their seats laughing, agreed to give it a go. The Saturday matinee filled all 350-odd seats in Screen One and it was again a full house for the late show.

As well as our normal audience, the late night showing of this bill of film fare attracted a fan base from local police officers patrolling the city centre who often made a point of coming in to enjoy the show for a short time and usually stood quietly at the back of the stalls. Rather than risk getting them into trouble when the Sergeant-in-Charge of the shift that night also arrived to indulge his love of these cartoon characters, I took him up to the Circle area to stand at the back accompanied by the other officers he had brought with him. My real high-spot that night was during a sequence in one of the Tele-Goons episodes where police officers “try to break up unrest being caused by the Goons” … this generated loud booing of the villains from the student audience and, to a man, the Sergeant and his companions discretely slipped off their identifying helmets and themselves laughed at the on-screen antics.  

With these various ancillary screenings done on a “for profit“ basis, the bottom line was that my overall subsidy requirements dropped over the first two years allowing for a fairly smooth transfer to local control at the start of April 1973. This was at a time of major economic issues in the UK that were having an impact on the amounts of public subsidy being made available from centralised funding to Arts Organisations. This was also the reason the BFI had been so keen to divest both Newcastle and Brighton Film Theatres to “local trusts” reliant for essential top ups of basic central finding on contributions from the local council budgets. As the Newcastle Arts budget was also being sourced out to support the Theatre Royal and the then University Theatre (now Northern Stage), the TFT was always way down the priority list for “dibbings into” from the communal begging bowl which made the last two years of my tenure ever more stressful as cinema attendances of all varieties were struggling in this harsh economic backdrop.

Northern Arts, the local funding body, had a very enthusiastic Films Officer in  Alan Knowles with whom I established a good working relationship that led to a couple of new ideas we both took pride in getting off the ground. With quite a bit of non-professional film making already taking place and being backed with some funding from his films’ budget there was a bit of a void in terms of showcasing the work of Amber Films and some of the other recipients of this support. As Murray Martin, one of the key drivers in the success of Amber, was willing to introduce some of their output and also persuade some of his collaborators and co-film makers to do the same, it was strategically very easy to set aside a Sunday Evening in Cinema Two once a month for a “Film Makers Talking Evening” at which the audience could see and interact with these local creative talents. With Sunday being a relatively quiet business evening the rental fee was kept to a bare minimum for them and unlike the NEEFP rate had been negotiated under my control.

Our other project was one that Alan had been giving serious thought to over a few years but finding the funding to get it off the ground had proved tricky. Somehow at the end of the 1972-73 Financial Year he managed to secure an allocation and between us we worked out the logistics of “taking film to outlying areas around the North East where the local cinemas had long closed” We initially reconnoitred potential venues and whittled down a group of 20 locations to be visited on a one-night every four weeks cycle. The films, on 16mm gauge, would be shown on a specially designed 16ft wide collapsible screen (capable of being erected and taken down by one person) and the projector would be capable of running the entire film through on a large reel without the normal “stoppage every forty minutes or so for a reel change”. Many may remember that scenario from School Film Society screenings in their youth! All films would be shown in the same ratios as their traditional 35mm commercial releases and the equipment would be transported in a specially commissioned van emblazoned with the NORTHERN ARTS MOVING PICTURE SHOW logo. One of my TFT projectionists leapt at the chance of this “one man on the road travelling Movie Show Man” becoming effectively an ambassador for the work of the TFT in the process. The film bookings and organising publicity materials (which were delivered for the subsequent presentation by the MPS van when it rolled into town) fell to myself with local organisers in the community being responsible for ensuring the supply of posters would be placed in good spots around their local communities to make potential audiences aware of what “This Month’s attraction” was. On the evening of the show it would also be the local organising committee’s job to ensure seating had been positioned in the venue and, if necessary, put back into storage at the end of the screening. They would also have to fully account for ticket sales (with tickets and suitable accounting forms also provided by me) and the net takings (after deduction of the individual location’s agreed premises rental charge) would be brought back to the TFT by the driver. Any ancillary refreshment sales they wanted to supply for their audiences were entirely their responsibility and all profits from these were for them to retain and account for according to their own procedures.

As anticipated some locations proved far more effective and turned in surprisingly good attendance figures while others where we had hoped for more were disappointing. With “my man” on the spot I had a second check available that the returns being provided were accurate. Overall this initial operation progressed smoothly and Northern Arts were encouraged by it to provide funding for a second unit to visit locations in County Durham. With all this administration on top of my TFT mainstream responsibilities - post Local Control implementation these also now included more actual programme collation and putting together the content for the Members bi-monthly brochure and a lot more site specific administration and accounts preparation for the Monthly Committee meetings - I decided to promote one of my box office cashiers to administer a lot of the day-to-day MPS work and also provide assistance to Mrs. Collingwood with keeping membership details up to date and helping organise the despatch of the brochures. This was Sue Girdler, my now former-assistant’s daughter, who was now passing time in this employment prior to being old enough to start her NHS nurse training indoctrination. Occasionally she would visit one of the locations to give me a bit of feedback on how the shows were being received. In terms of the budget, the MPS never drained from the main TFT funding which was a major plus.

My final two years at the TFT proved fractious at times. In terms of the programming I now had to deal with a “team of decision makers” - local Councillors, University lecturers, and film experts (!!!) in their own favourite genres - whose ideas were often far removed from my concept (and previous implementation) of the initial TFT/BFI brief. This was OK except that when admissions proved disappointing and in the recession which hit Cinema takings generally in that period and the Arts intensively these were at times dire, it was never down to their input (interference?) but down to the way the Cinema was being marketed by me. In true style they started organising committees among themselves to come up with the needed “transformational changes” without bothering to listen to any comments and concerns over costs from myself … or indeed the real-world cinema experience contributions offered by Arnold Sheckman. When my projected budget requirements for FY 1975-76 were presented, showing I needed to have £5,000 in subsidy (a figure this had been at when I took over in 1971), this uplift of £3000 from the previous fiscal year was deemed impossible to achieve from Newcastle Council funds and the cinema closed “temporarily” from April 1, 1975 until the funding issue could be resolved. It was perhaps interesting to note that this was the year when Newcastle’s Theatre Royal had needed to be given an extra £150,000 in emergency fiscal support … not that this was in any way connected!

All staff had their contracts terminated by the Committee but my suggestion for a skeleton care and maintain team to continue was agreed as it was possible for it to be funded on a no-cost basis from the regular Indian and Chinese lettings revenue. It was made clear I would have to re-apply for my job once they got round to “advertising the vacancy” and in my interview presentation I outlined how I felt using the BFI to undertake booking negotiations with the film renters on our behalf had often been lackadaisical resulting in delays in securing screening dates for the TFT and that a direct approach by myself (if I were to be re-engaged) would make more sense. Quite clearly (and not unexpectedly) the offer of an interview had been a token gesture and I was duly informed that, as they had not found a suitable candidate from “all” the applicants to fill the position, “the committee” had decided to re-advertise. This time there was no offer for me to submit an application but I had already made up my mind that I needed to return to the Commercial side of the business where “bosses” at least talked the same language of commercial cinema as I did and you could argue your points with someone who knew how the business operated. And so would start the next phase of my Film Business Odyssey, but before inviting you to set off on that with me, I will take time out to tidy up one or two other snippets of my time at the TFT and indeed provide a snapshot of the other Cinema managers in the area and of course the local Press during this period.

Having introduced late night screenings and “all nighters” as well as contributing to creating and operating two Mobile Cinema Units there was another legacy the TFT (under my administration) could claim for itself in the Newcastle conurbation in bringing the Chinese Kung Fu movie to a UK audience for the first time. As these had no certification from the BBFC, I arranged with one of the UK’s Chinese distributors to allow us a copy of ONE ARM BOXER (starring Jimmy Wang Yu) to play in our Members Only cinema. My local Press were given a preview a few days before and had their eyes opened with the action sequences. Within a couple of years this movie genre would be widely (and profitably) adopted by the Commercial UK distributors thanks to ENTER THE DRAGON gaining a release certificate rating and being given a full general release. Two other Bruce Lee movies, FIST OF FURY and THE BIG BOSS also gained wide exposure around the commercial cinemas of the UK … albeit with truncated running times due to many of the fight sequences being reduced from the versions shown to the Chinese community. In the case of THE BIG BOSS and indeed FIST OF FURY, these probably had less than a 25% body count after the final melées compared to the original uncut versions.

I was fortunate in having such an enthusiastic and knowledgeable group of Film Critics represented by Malcolm Grey and Phil Penfold at the Evening Chronicle, Peter Mortimer and Norman Davidson at The Journal, Keith Dufton and Coreena Ford at the Sunday Sun, Laurie Taylor at The Northern Echo and Jim Gibbons of BBC Radio Newcastle. Another strong ally was Charles Fiske who wrote the Eldon Column in the Evening Chronicle  and was always interested in intriguing snippets. For the remaining 32 years of my working life these correspondents, and their successors, would always be good contacts and gave me as much respect and support as I held them in. The one area they often tried to access, although I could never have accommodated them, was another little “secret” activity of the Tyneside. The Newcastle Watch Committee would come to the TFT to view any films that had not secured a BBFC rating and which the distributor wished to acquire a “Local Certificate” allowing it to be shown in Newcastle. Being on this Committee was something, apparently, Councillors climbed over each other to get elected to! As one Councillor summed up privately to me, their “purpose”  was to decide whether the film played at The Stoll, a commercial cinema in Westgate Road catering to what was affectionately referred to in those times as “the grubby Mackintosh trade” or the “members only” Tatler Cinema Club at the top of Northumberland Street operated by the Classic Cinema chain. The Stoll in later years morphed into the Tyne Theatre and Opera House in its modern day incarnation after an expensive refurbishment and a more culturally aesthetic renaming to banish its earlier “reputation”.

While I never worried about the likely reviews for any films we arranged to Press Preview there was one programming selection that I had concerns over … my own sort of HUGS AND KISSES moment. The film was a bizarre relationships movie entitled WR - MYSTERIES OF THE ORGANISM, the last word being rather easily misheard or misinterpreted. I had been pre-warned by the BFI booker that this film, directed by Dusan Makavejev, notoriously started with a full-on shot of the female lead immortalising her partner by making a rubber moulding of his fully erect penis (filmed in close up and occupying most of the screen) which she would later transform into a plaster cast to remember him by! The action veers between being a homage to the sculptress’s work and the theories of psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich (a one-time assistant of Sigmund Freud) with a relationships drama involving a Yugoslavian girl’s affair with a Russian thrown in for good measure. With both Phil and Malcolm on holiday, I was told Doris Frankish would be attending the Press Show in their place for the Evening Chronicle. Doris on first appearance you could imagine channelling dominant prudish elderly ladies in the mould of those played regularly on screen by the likes of Fabia Drake or Dame Edith Evans and I did wonder how she would react and later review this ultra frank movie. I need not have worried, she really liked the film director’s creative efforts and her review was very much appreciated by the film’s distributor as one of the best they had received for this release.

It was during my final two years at the TFT that I drifted into becoming a film critic/correspondent in my own right. It started with Phil Penfold and I often talking after Press Screenings about some programmes he was presenting on RADIO TYNESIDE, the local Hospital Broadcasting Service, and clearly having fun doing so. He asked (in 1974) if I might consider presenting a film music programme and suggested I do a mock-up tape with a potential script which he’d pass on to Station Director Peter Hetherington. Out of this came an invitation to present a weekly one hour show which Peter in his “originality” decided would be called CINEMA OF THE AIR. Over the next 25 years this was a staple of the programme schedule and gradually morphed into incorporating a look at the current offerings in local cinemas (in later years this would also include video tape and later DVD’s when those phenomena mushroomed in the 80’s and 90‘s). The show eventually expanded its brief and running time to cover live theatre and music shows, becoming THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT. At one stage I did wonder if Barry Norman of the BBC TV film programme had a spy in the RTN camp when in later years he started including run downs of the Top Ten UK Box Office movies and in later years Top 10 Video Charts … two features I had introduced to CINEMA OF THE AIR as it expanded. My reason for introducing this had been that it was all very well for Film Critics to pontificate about “the best films to see” but ultimately the arbiters were the public who paid their hard cash to see the films and therefore the current Box Office Top 10 I felt gave a better guide than my “humble opinions”. When the local Commercial radio station, METRO RADIO, started transmitting in July 1974 I made occasional film related appearances, usually in my capacity as Administrator of the TFT, but it would be many years later before I had my own (UNPAID) by-line in several papers.  

Since its initial transfer of operational modus operandi from Dixon Scott to the BFI not a lot had been spent on refurbishments apart from the token carpeting covering the “lovely marble tile floor of the entrance foyer area” which Mrs. Dixon Scott was forever “hinting” I should expose to the world again. The seating was going downhill fast and I was delighted when Charles Beddow, the BFI’s Technical Officer, let me know that as part of the transfer arrangements to being run by the local committee from the start of the Fiscal year starting April 1973 he had secured a “capital spending allocation” that would allow for refurbishing the seating in the circle of Cinema One and renewing its auditorium carpeting as well as doing some electrical upgrades to both cinemas’ projection equipment. This latter would be undertaken by Ian Hull, one of Charlie’s local “on call installation assistants”, and himself. Alan Knowles and I were allowed to select the local upholster and carpet provider. The former was a fairly bog-standard process and we agreed to replace the present “yucky green” in the circle area with a more serviceable brown upholstery. In terms of the carpeting, Alan’s research had come across a pioneering new longer lasting and easy-clean plastic-based carpet material that we would get a good price on as the manufacturer was keen to prove its durability in a high footfall unit with a view to expanding its roll-out to perhaps the non-circuit cinema chains and other entertainment venues in the area. In view of the “pioneering nature of this material” we arranged for our local Fire Authority to test it to ensure compliance with fire-retardant specifications that would meet current Cinema Licensing requirements. The flame test proved satisfactory and as a “trivia fact”, the carpet was fitted by “Black Jack Mulligan” - to give him his nom-de-wrestling ring name - whose main job was carpet fitting in the Northeast area.

Would that the other part of the refurb had proved as trouble free. Initially all seemed to have gone well with the Beddow/Hull upgrades but within a month or so we started experiencing occasional freak shut downs and other intermittent glitches which a couple of return visits by that Dynamic Duo failed to identify a root cause for other than assuring all the projection team and myself that they were probably just “minor teething problems” and would clear up in time. One afternoon shortly thereafter I was in the office when the internal phone rang and the projectionist on duty in Screen One informed me that something very weird had just happened. First of all the arc lamp had switched off followed shortly thereafter by the projector switching itself off and then, as he looked out the porthole into the auditorium, he saw the houselights come up and the cinema curtains close. The sequence then reversed itself in the correct order and without him going anywhere near any of the relevant controls to perform these functions. When the film proceeded he took time to check everything was OK from the audience’s perspective before informing me and asking if I could think of any cause or reason it had occurred. All four components of the “happening” were controlled by four individual and unconnected switches, buttons or in the case of the auditorium lights by a manually operated fader slide lever. I went up to the box to have him talk me through the sequence again and as I was there the “glitch” decided it had enjoyed itself so much first time round it would provide a complete encore as the two of us stared in amazement. As we were observing this the internal phone from the other projection booth (two floors up from this one) rang down to speak to me. The projectionist’s opening words were: Mr. Picken, you are not going to believe what just happened here” to which I replied: Let me guess. The arc light switched itself off, the projector stopped and then the houselights came up and the curtains closed … and then the whole process reversed itself and you were nowhere near any of the controls/switches or slides? When he recovered from my prescience, he said: “Yes, but the masking also went from widescreen ratio to scope as the curtains closed and then went the other way after they opened again”.

The “official expertise” opinion from CB and IH continued to be that this was a “settling in problem and nothing to worry about” and that Ian had checked out all the wiring on his most recent visit following my earlier complaints and found everything was as it should be. At this point I decided to explore my own private lines of communication and called up Davy Bain in Edinburgh. After explaining the “bizarre incidents” his response was, after a few moments due consideration, “Charlie, if it was anyone else telling me that story I would say they’d had too much to drink … but I know in your case that ain’t a possibility. Leave it with me and I’ll have words with “The Brain’s Trust” (by which I knew this would be a barn-storming session involving all the expert Edinburgh projectionists I had great respect for to come up with possibilities to check out as the root cause) and Jimmy and I will come down to have a look tomorrow evening after your shows end”.

Bang on cue they duly arrived armed with their electric gauges and meters as well as a motley selection of other essential tools of their projection maintenance trade. Having systematically checked out the suggested “possible causes” the Brain’s Trust had come up with, the only real observation they made was to ask which idiot had wired things up in such a messy way. After tidying some of this up to their standards, even with this proviso, my Dynamic Duo struggled to come up with a definitive reason for the technology high jinks that had been happening. With a mischievous twinkle in his eye Davy suggested we resort to his fall back emergency plan of using a Ouija board to try and rule out “possibilities” with some “special help”. The layout was created on one of the workbenches in Screen 1 operating box and two of my projectionists (my chief Ray Waller and Peter Buckley) and Jimmy watched with a mix of curiosity as Davy and I took up position with minimal fingertip contact on the matchbox we were using as the improvised pointer on the rough and ready Ouija we had drawn out.

After “testing” the board with some simple questions of varying complexity and receiving accurate responses from the Ouija matchbox pointer movement in terms of the Yes or No options to our questions, we proceeded with some specific questions pertinent to our “possible causes” investigations into the phenomena the Tyneside’s projection boxes had been experiencing. Were they caused by faulty installation? Were they caused by faulty electric connections at installation? Were they due to deliberate tampering at installation? Were they being caused by staff in the projection box deliberately sabotaging the equipment? To all these questions, as had happened with the test questions earlier, the matchbox movement had progressed without any prevarication to its answer and in the four very specific areas the movement was immediately towards “NO”. Despite our misgivings, Peter, a rather brash Scouser and proud of it, had piped up at this juncture suggesting asking “Was it the Spooks causing them?” Davy and I exchanged a look as to whether or not we should consider this avenue of enquiry, and my technical expert made clear he was not prepared to pose this question in such terminology and neither was I. Not so with Buckley who clearly had no respect for the “tool“ we had, with reservations, been employing. He placed his fingers at one end of the matchbox pointer while I made contact at the opposite end. Peter then asked “Is it the spooks causing it?” and within less than a second I noticed a strange shaking pulsing movement spreading up his fingers from their tip contact with his end of the matchbox. This continued to extend further up the back of the hand and started moving up his lower arm flesh until, claiming he had been experiencing some sort of electrical cramp like tingles, he rapidly removed his contact with the “pointer” and looked rather ashen from the experience. I had felt absolutely nothing, not having been the one to pose the question, but Davy immediately disbanded the Ouija markings on the bench and called proceedings to a halt. My two engineers then set off back to Edinburgh where no doubt the Brain’s Trust would again convene to consider their findings.

We never did get to the root cause but thankfully neither did we experience any performance interruption recurrences due to them. Had we somehow exorcised some malevolent mischief-making spirit? Make your own mind up, but bear in mind that the two senior projectionists from Scotland, and myself, were well-respected and technically experienced in the Cinema Business as well as not being known for possessing over vivid imaginations.

As an overview of the Commercial Cinema scene during my TFT years there was, in terms of the main circuits, still a good representation of venues in the North-East. Odeon had the Pilgrim Street site (directly opposite the TFT and still then a single screen site that staged the larger touring live concerts) and the Queens (just off Northumberland Street) which still had the magnificent Cinerama screen and the three projection boxes though now it merely screened films (35mm with occasional 70mm Roadshow separate performances) from the centre box. These were jointly managed by Freddie Bower, one of the real old school gentlemen of the Industry and one I developed a good relationship with. Freddie organised a monthly get-together lunch for local managers known as The Cinematurians Lunch which he extended a warm invitation to me to feel free to attend. This was held at the County Hotel opposite the main railway station. As well as the social chit-chat there was always a raffle of prizes with the proceeds going towards the Cinema and Television Benevolent Fund. The other “key” site operated by Odeon was The Pavilion in Westgate Road - another 70mm equipped unit that occasionally, as Edinburgh had, switched between Separate Performance runs and continuous performances programming depending on the product stream at the time. Prior to its closure in 1975, The Pavilion was managed by Jimmy Stewart who had been Freddie’s DGM when I took over the TFT and whose position there had been “earmarked” for me as a “next development move” in my career path from Odeon Edinburgh had I stayed with the Company. So however you look at it, I appeared destined to end up in the Newcastle Cinema Scene! Odeon Cinemas were also still represented in the suburbs with the Odeon’s at Byker and Gateshead as well as further afield in Sunderland and South Shields.

ABC Cinemas’ flagship was the ABC Haymarket which had been initially commissioned by Dixon Scott’s family in 1933.  It remained a large single screen unit (rented from the University Campus estate on which it stood facing onto the Haymarket) until its lease was terminated in 1984 to allow the expansion that was due to take place in the Campus of Newcastle University. On my arrival it was being run by Douglas Parkin, a man very much in the Freddie traditions although just a tad less sociable. Following his early retirement due to illness he was succeeded by Terry Charnock and then George Skelton … about whom more anecdotes will follow with the relevant passing of the years! Although initially part of the Essoldo Circuit, their twin-screen unit in Westgate Road would become part of the ABC Circuit when they made an offer that the Sheckman family owners couldn’t refuse! Managed by Mollie Scott, who transferred to ABC with her site, this was a well-run operation and Mollie herself, until her retirement to spend more time on the golf course, was a great Showperson in terms of film promotions and one of the most popular managers with both the local Press and fellow exhibitors. As with Odeon, ABC had units in South Shields and Sunderland which, as with the other Tyne and Wear peripheral sites, would close during the dreadful slump of cinema attendances in the latter part of the 1970’s and early 1980’s. The Classic Cinema Chain, as well as its Tatler (Club Members Only) at the top of Northumberland St., operated a triple screen at Low Fell, Gateshead, the four-screen Apollo Cinema site in Byker and a twin-screen site in West Monkseaton. Independent Cinemas still operating included Arnold Sheckman’s little baby The Jesmond in what was then largely a well-heeled local population in the process of transforming into a favourite area for students to take up residence during their terms at Newcastle University and Northumbria College (later to gain full University status). The Jesmond’s audience “profile” meant Arnold’s programming at times had caused me problems in securing films for the Tyneside as long as he had an option on playing these releases. There was also the Royalty at Gosforth (which would close in the Video boom decimation and later be converted to a Residential Home for the elderly) and the Carlton in Tynemouth which likewise would fall victim to the same culling process and close its doors.

Looking back with hindsight on my TFT period, I probably felt a bit hard done by at the time of my leaving but on reading Michael Chapman’s excellent book on the history of The Tyneside, COME AND SEE - The Beguiling Story of the Tyneside Cinema published in 2011 - for which the author interviewed me and indeed included some material I supplied from my archives - I gained a far wider understanding that this unit was never one in which any managerial tenure would last more than a few years. The common pattern was of initial impact by a new incumbent and then them falling out with the Management Committee’s current vision (at whatever time period they were employed) and departing the scene … while the Committee continued imposing their “expertise and methodology” on the next incumbent. My successors were fortunate in having much bigger budgets to play with (and were paid far more than the £47 a week I ended up with as a final salary after four years at this silver screen face) but many paid a far greater personal price in terms of ill-health, mental breakdown, alcoholism and in one case retreating into a Monastery for a less stressful life. Needless to say they all were allowed staffing levels that over the ensuing decades saw annual subsidy requirements escalate from my modest “less than £5k per annum” requirement to a recently revealed seven-figure level of “emergency support funding” as the UK emerged from the 2020-21 Covid pandemic. Against that scenario, emerging from my TFT years by only going through an acrimonious divorce from my first marriage would count as leaving virtually unscarred!

Of my immediate successors, the one I felt who moved the Tyneside on most in its intended direction was Sheila Whittaker (Tenure: 1979-1984). If my most left-field innovation had been screening a Kung Fu movie ahead of the commercial uptake of this genre, for me Sheila’s would be organising a special screening of Abel Gance’s Silent Era movie classic NAPOLEON at the ABC Haymarket with a live orchestral music score accompaniment provided by the Northern Symphonia Orchestra. This “live orchestra backed screening”, over the ensuing decades, has become an extra strand of programming options for concert halls and nowadays features relatively current movies such as the STAR WARS or INDIANA JONES series with the music track provided by a live orchestral accompaniment. Whittaker would progress her long career with, among other achievements, becoming Programming Director for the NFT in London and going on to run many respected International Festivals. Sheila died in 2013.

Where I would criticise a lot of the lattermost Directors/Administrators/General Factotums, or whatever the titre-d’année happened to be, was the trend - post the arrival of the multiplexes in the late 1980’s - to play many totally commercial releases day and date with the true commercial cinemas still operating, while still claming sky high levels of subsidy. Not only did this fly in the face of the BFI’s original TFT “statement of intent” to bring films to Newcastle that would not otherwise receive a local showing but if the latest James Bond movie was worthy of a subsidy from public funds for screening release date concurrent at the TFT then surely the Odeon and other chains should have received the same benefit! Deaf ears needless to say always fell on any such arguments but my conscience remains clear that while I may have played a previous commercial release as part of a genre season, I worked amicably with Arnold Sheckman to ensure that he would have an option of playing first on any titles that potentially might appeal to his Jesmond audience profile.

And to end the section here are some media snippets that I achieved outside the “normal sphere” of expectations. One “hazard” that had to be dealt with on more than one occasion was the Coffee Rooms (located on the Second Floor directly above Cinema One) and their lapses on occasions in failing to turn off the water taps in the kitchen sinks at the end of the evening when they closed up. This resulted in the overflows occasionally dripping through the auditorium ceiling. During my second year, I decided to trial “family oriented” screenings during the summer school holidays to try and widen the audience profile at that time when the core University Student audience were away from Campus. The BFI’s Booking Department came up with a selection of Disney Classic live action movies including 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA. When I turned up for work one morning I was faced with an unusual crisis management scenario. A large section of the auditorium ceiling in the main cinema had collapsed as a result of “lettuce leaves left overnight in the sunk with the taps still running” following the traditional laws of gravity and flowing downwards. Not only was a large area of the remaining ceiling looking dangerous but the auditorium itself (which had a sloping floor towards the front stalls with a final uptilt towards the screen which effectively created a “valley” in this part of the cinema) was very much underwater as a result. We closed that day to allow for drying out and the required ceiling inspection and repairs to be carried out to the satisfaction of the Council’s Licensing engineers. It wasn’t until, a couple of months later, I received my monthly package of newspaper and magazine snippets that had been collated by the firm commissioned by the BFI to garner such items that I spotted a bizarre one from TITBITS - a sort of border line scandal/sensation magazine that had quite a large circulation in that timeframe era and was not the normal publication I would have expected to receive coverage of the TFT‘s activities in. The short snippet - and I was unable to find out their source - described the cinema flooding and named the film showing that week with the sub-editing headline of “Cinema Manager takes movie realism a bit too far???” At least they didn’t pick up on a Coffee Rooms “encore” a few months later during a live screening where the torrents coming through coincided exactly with a scene in the film being screened involving a massive rainstorm.

One of the more unusual tasks I was called on to “facilitate” also provided an equally off-key Press Story. The BFI had a bit of a reputation in the trade for “moving films around the country at short notice” as a consequence of which I received a bizarre phone call asking if I could help the renter of “THE AWFUL STORY OF THE NUN OF MONZA” get a print to the Pavilion Cinema in Newcastle from  the Glasgow Film Depot for a Sunday Night screening as that weekend the Film Transporting Service (FTS) was not able to do so due to some industrial action. Having agreed to help out I then faced the dilemma of not knowing exactly where the Glasgow depot was so it was the familiar “Edinburgh Brains’ trust” I called for advice and my old Odeon Chief Jimmy Corrance agreed to come with me if I picked him up from the flat he had at the back of the Clerk Street site. This weekend in question happened to be the one when the annual Round Britain Road rally was taking place and Mother Nature had also chosen to grace it with rather severe wintry weather conditions which made the drive a bit of a nightmare … especially at times when I found myself unintentionally using the same route as these fast drivers. My little Reliant Van acquitted itself with distinction and the film was delivered to its destination in ample time for the Pavilion projectionist to get it spooled up. By sheer chance in the days leading up to the journey a journalist working for the SUNDAY SUN, who was related to Sir William Coldstream (one of the heads of the BFI), had called in for a chat after one of the Press Shows. During our conversation in my then boiler room office, he asked if I was getting up to anything at the weekend and his journalistic eyes lit up as I told him. Manager Jimmy Stewart hadn’t been aware of the situation, only that “a special courier” would be making the delivery, but when the columnist contacted him about my trip he very generously expressed a lot of appreciation for the assist … and no doubt included the snippet featuring “The Awful Story of the Run of Picken” in his monthly promotions campaign to Head Office.

The Moving Picture Show, a.k.a. Picken’s Portable Picture Palace by my projectionists, also provided a couple of juicy snippets for Charlie Fiske’s ELDON COLUMN in the Evening Chronicle. On a visit to one of the Northumberland locations I got talking with the local organising committee’s Chairman who told me how excited he was that a forthcoming visit would feature CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG as his daughter, through some personal connections with one of the film studio’s costume archivist, had managed to “borrow” Sally Anne Howe’s Truly Scrumptious white dress as her wedding gown. On another occasion, in 1973, the monthly film booking for the Northumberland circuit was the cartoon SNOOPY COMES HOME. As I personally carried out these bookings (on 16mm) via the relevant renters I had developed a good relationship with them and during the conversation over this title I was informed that this would be the film’s first public showing in the UK as it had never secured a commercial 35mm release. It proved even more intriguing as the first performance was going to take place in the village hall in Kielder, way out in the barren wilds of the Kielder Forest in Northumberland. Needless to say Charlie Fiske liked this “coup” for the Moving Picture Show and included it in his column posing the intriguing question of whether or not any members of the Royal Family might be attending. Sadly not, but the film itself went down well with its audience.

Sadly this touring film show would be discontinued once the Tyneside reopened for business but by that time I had returned to the “sanity” of the Commercial side of the Movie Business.    

CHAPTER SIX

THE CLASSIC “INTERLUDE” - September 1975 to April 1976.

Faced with the need to secure a new job to pay the mortgage on the new house my now-Fiancée Sue Girdler and I had chosen for moving into after our impending wedding, I had initially explored returning to Odeon and had a happy interview experience with Regional Manager Tony Ramsden who had now taken over the North East and Scotland area when Stuart Hall left that chain to pursue other interests in the business that would include film booking for some chains and associated responsibilities outside Rank. Tony said he had researched my past career with Odeon and been impressed with some of my managers’ assessments - presumably also getting an opinion from Freddie Bower? - and would be happy to offer me a position based in Glasgow with Pat Brader. This would have meant upheaval for Sue and I at a time when due to the untimely early death of her mother we would, as well as getting married, in all probability be assuming responsibility for taking care of her two youngest sisters, making it a practical non-starter. I thanked Mr. Ramsden and he fully understood my decision to decline but said “the door would always be open” for me.

Staying local left me with only the option of approaching Classic Cinemas which at that time had a reasonable number of sites in the immediate area. After an interview with Peter Cargill, their NE Regional Manager, I was offered an initial training period of two weeks with Cliff Harker at the triple screen unit they operated in Stockton on Tees to familiarise myself with the company’s paperwork systems and procedures. At the end of this, the only vacancy they had at the time was the Tatler Cinema Club in Newcastle but there was a probability that within a few weeks the Low Fell Triple Screens unit would become available as its current manager, Geoff Hornsby, was scheduled to go into hospital for some exploratory heart surgery which would see him off work for quite some time, after which the plan was for him to take over the Tatler which was a much quieter business level unit and only a single screen. As the proposed salary would match my former TFT one this looked like a reasonable offer and I decided to take it. Cliff and I got on well from day one and he proved a good tutor for what was very basic and very familiar Cinema box office, stock control and other administration paperwork. Cliff ran the unit along with his wife so there was a nice little family atmosphere there even though I started to pick up hints that the Regional Manager tended to be a bit of a control freak as well as being rather reluctant to spend on anything other than bare essentials.

Although as it turned out my period managing the Tatler only lasted for a few weeks, it was one of the strangest experiences of my managerial career. As the unit’s sole purpose was catering (film wise) for those (mainly males of varying social standings) hoping for salacious celluloid offerings, I can say that this proved the only cinema I would run in my Management career that I never, with one extenuating circumstances exception, ever felt any urge to sit in the auditorium and watch any of the main programming films on screen. I did initially try to pass time with the tradition managerial task of standing in the entrance foyer  greeting and interacting with customers until the lovely mature cashiers who dealt with the ticket selling, membership card checking and refreshments aspects of the customer interfacing process suggested I should disappear into my office as the sight of “a man in an evening suit in the foyer” acted as a deterrent to the embarrassed males in their business suits who were trying to slip in for a naughty movie under the pretext of, as far as their wives or significant others were concerned, “Working a little late at the office tonight dear!” Back in that office I got through quite a lot of books to pass the time between the very limited paperwork and cashing up that needed completing on a daily and weekly basis given the very low levels of business generated at this unit. The other off-kilter aspect of working in this office was that it was located just off the rear exit from the auditorium. With sound insulation being a low priority in Classic cinemas (as I had found at Stockton and would also experience at Low Fell) the soundtrack of the movie playing would carry through and I often found myself being audibly bombarded with the cries of the feigned ecstasy presumably being “enacted” on screen! At least in the old TFT boiler House the only distractions were the more normal street and traffic noises from Pilgrim Street.

The two days that “business” enjoyed a slight up tick were Wednesdays and Saturdays. The Saturday boost was generated by the programming between 11:00 AM and 4:00 PM where we reverted to the old family cartoon and featurette shows of old with a 70-minute programme repeated three times to cater for those parents wanting to leave the kids while they did a little shopping on Northumberland Street. I had come across this sort of programming growing up in Edinburgh - at the Monsignor News Theatre (later The Jacey) on Princess Street - and it had also been deployed in quite a few units in major cities where the cinema was located near a major rail or bus terminal, drawing its trade from people wanting to fill in a short time before catching these transport services.

The Wednesday demand was generated by the enhancement of celluloid entertainment with a stripper who did four turns in the course of her “shift” The Wednesday shift was the prime “employment perk” for Steve, the Chief Projectionist, and the apprentice who helped him with the follow spotlight on the “turn” as they were the ones who liaised with the “artiste” beforehand and ensured her music cassette tape was properly cued to accompany her garment divestment for whichever of the four differing routines she would be doing that day. My onerous task was having to introduce the turn and shall we say I was often less than serious and reverential in doing so … but then no-one in the audience was bothered about seeing me! I’d often inform them it was “that time on a Wednesday” and that “as we didn’t provide opera glasses, then perhaps “those of you with short vision may care to move closer to the front of the auditorium” On one infamous occasion, having spotted a lone female in the auditorium, I started with my traditional “Good afternoon Gentlemen  … oh, and Lady!” but the reaction was non-existent which made me realise the veracity of that hoary old tale about “comedians dying at the Glasgow Empire!”

Those lovely box office ladies had told me some hairy tales of these Wednesday “artistes” whereby some of my predecessors had allowed them to change in their office. That was the first change I implemented and they reverted to using the largely unfrequented Ladies Toilet provisions for their costume changes. They had also told me that one of the artistes, a married lady called Kim, was in a different class from some of the run of the mill “performers” the Agency sent. When Kim did turn up I went to the trouble of engaging her in conversation prior to her “first turn” and found she was very well grounded and open about only doing this to help pay the household bills as her hubby was off work after a back injury. In those days my dress shirt was of the then trendy “Minister’s Dog Collar” style and as she clearly shared my anarchic sense of humour with the “introductions” I had given her earlier in the day, I suggested we pull a fast one on the audience for her final performance of the day which would have Steve picking up her entrance music (without any intro by me) and targeting the spotlight on the auditorium entry point the artist would normally emerge from and that at this juncture I would pop out hidden behind Kim’s ostrich fan as a joke before introducing her formally and passing said item on to her. Kim’s response to the suggestion was to laugh heartily and say “Do what you like, love … just don’t deliver a (bleeped out) sermon to them!”

In terms of experimenting with expanding programming options I was allowed to trial three Late Night Screenings on Fridays (after close of normal programming) to see if there was any residual market for the operation I had pioneered at the Tyneside. Even with DELIVERANCE, THE EXORCIST and PSYCHO it was one that didn’t warrant continuing. Perhaps it was the “stigma” of coming to the Tatler to see such programming or just that TV was expanding into such programming at the end of its daily schedule and the VHS market was in its infancy but still starting to offer a cheap at home alternative for a home screening. Whatever the root cause there were no further experiments.

I did hint earlier that I had watched one film on the normal schedule at the TATLER so perhaps I should explain how that came about. One afternoon while making my way through the auditorium to my office the “Forthcoming Attractions” trailers were playing and I thought I recognised one of the voices of an actor in the film. The trailer was for something I vaguely remember as MARQUIS DE SADE’S PHILOSOPHIES OF THE BOUDOIR and the voice was unmistakably that of Christopher Lee. At the time a colleague on Radio Tyneside and I had discovered we shared a common area of interest in the great Horror movies and Christopher Lee in particular. This trailer had piqued both our interests so we agree to “chaperone each other” in the Tatler auditorium at one of the screenings the following week.  Shall I sum it up by saying even two devotees of the star (who in reality was only narrating and making a smallish appearance in the film) walked out after 45 minutes of its 91 minute running time. The scene that stayed with me in terms of its incredulity was one in which Lee was whipping a “damsel in distress” who had been chained up in some dim, dark, dingy dungeon for whatever spurious reason the scriptwriters had conjured up and then behind Lee some ensemble cast members of both sexes whipped off all their clothing and engaged in some communal orgy which had absolutely no connection with the movie’s main plotline that we could fathom. In later years, reading Lee’s excellent autobiography TALL, DARK AND GRUESOME I encountered a reference to some weird movie he had made for director Jesús Franca. At the time Lee was trying to cobble together funding to make his definitive version of “DRACULA” and was effectively “doing a Michael Caine” (as it would be known in later years) and just taking on film projects for the monetary contributions to his bank balance. Lee did claim he had been totally unaware of what was going on behind him as the scene was being filmed due to total concentration on the whipping he was trying to make look realistic. Porky or not, it was sad that even these paltry fiscal contributions failed to create the “masterpiece version” of Bram Stoker’s tale he would eventually star in and direct in Spain which quickly disappeared. Though, perhaps, it enjoyed a longer shelf life than MARQUIS DE SADE’S  PHILOSOPHIES OF THE BOUDOIR!

My thankfully brief tenure at the Tatler over, I relieved Geoff Hornsby (the former Chief Projectionist at the Odeon Gateshead who had moved over to Management when it closed) to undergo his medical treatment and became Manager of the triple-screened Classic Low Fell. As part of an informal “former Odeon Colleague to former Odeon Colleague” chat, Geoff gave me a heads-up of some of the “micro-management/bullying and demoralising tactics” engaged in by Cannon executives and Regional Managers, I was already all too familiar with Peter Cargill’s intense scrutiny of any Petty Cash item (anything over £1 had to be pre-cleared with him!) and his requirement for Unit Managers to fully identify every single call destination on the monthly telephone accounts to identify and eliminate any “unauthorised staff use” at Classic’s expense. What raised my eyebrows even further was Geoff’s tale of a visit by the “top brass” accompanying the Regional Manager on a Low Fell visit which had earned him a severe dressing down when one of the execs deliberately, rather than of necessity, went into a gent’s loo and found it had insufficient toilet paper in the cubicle receptacle. This was definitely a stage further up the “cheap tricks scale” than David Williams’ favourite little demoralisation ploy of reaching up and rubbing his fingers across the top of the quad frames in the Odeon Edinburgh foyer, finding some dust and then asking what we paid the cleaners for if they were so lax? Forearmed with this tactic I always had a special chat with the head cleaner when such visits were pre-announced and her team paid special attention to the “easy targets” the “visitors” would hope to trip us up over and failed! Two can play at those games.

With a good archive of recent programming and box office returns for the site available, I did a bit of research and soon noted that often when the “saucier cheap exploitative movies” were playing due a lack of mainstream new film titles - very much an easy option with Classic’s booking department as they had direct access to many of the distributors of this sort of “entertainment” - the box office takes were regularly far lower than on other weeks when the “voids” had been filled with reruns of former box office hits. It was quite normal to have the saucy stuff occupying one screen a week so I suggested to the Regional Manager that perhaps we should consider slewing the programming even further to the pure commercial re-run product, backing the argument up with the analysis I had made from the on-site data. Cargill duly forwarded it to Booking Department and they in turn responded - via him - that “it was refreshing to find a Manager who actually thought about the film line up”. The following month’s line-up duly arrived and TWO of the Three screens were filled with the cheap exploitative programming! You get no prizes for guessing how bad that months takings were! This would be Strike One in my consideration over how long I might remain working for Classic.

Another area of minimal influence accorded to managers was over the range of retail items stocked at the kiosk. All orders had to be placed through Regional Office and often my request quantities for the best selling confectionery lines had been scaled back in favour of other suppliers product that just stuck around for ages and often only moved when we ran out of the better selling lines. On one of his unit visits I raised this with him and he said we got a better mark up on the “sticking around confectionery” and that was how it would remain. Funny old way to run a business … so that was effectively Strike Two.  

The one time of the year when Classic offered any “appreciation” for their manager’s efforts was to take them all, with wives, off to a Spanish Holiday resort for a week of seminars and relaxation - usually after Easter when Cinema Business in the UK in those days hit a lull. With Sue and I having decided to get married on February 14th 1976 this sojourn away could possibly have provided a late honeymoon option. This was no doubt well known to the Regional Manager given the “jungle telegraph of spies” he appeared to have constantly patrolling his realm. It was also to be his blunt weapon of trying to bludgeon my naturally freely expressed views in challenging some of his decisions. The day he chose to employ said tactic says everything about his true nature. On December 24th I was called to a meeting with him at his base in the Apollo at Byker at which he asked me how many miles I got to the gallon with my car. He then proceeded to ask how many miles I had totted up on the three occasions when I had taken staff home after the Late Night shows at the Tatler. In the same spirit as had operated at Odeon (and indeed the Tyneside) I had usually put through “£1 for petrol used” (in those days that would be about 2 gallons) on the Petty Cash. According to Cargill economics I should only have claimed 50p each time as that equated to the actual miles used and he would consequently be giving me an “official first warning” for “claiming more than I should have”. As taxis, which Classic would have been required to provide, would have cost far more that the paltry sum I had put through Petty Cash you can imagine said discussions became quite heated. I felt even more aggrieved given that every week I would drop off the unit’s paperwork on my way home without making any claims for this - even though I would be going out of my way to do so - which saved the Company postage charges on those occasions. His parting shot as I was finally allowed to leave was “And don’t make any plans to be going to the Annual Conference this year!”

When I got back to Low Fell, my Assistant Mrs. Williams couldn’t believe what I had been put through and had a few choice epithets to direct at Mr. Scrooge. A few days later Norma Yates, who Managed the Classic Twin Cinemas at  Monkseaton as well as carrying out unit stock checks and helping out in Regional Office, took me aside on one of her visits and said she thought it could almost be coming to blows during the arguments we had been having on Christmas Eve. She also said she thought the Regional Manager was bang out of line.

As for me, this was Strike Three for Classic Cinemas as an Employer and I would definitely be getting out. Rather than being impetuous, I decided to bide my time and scout around for alternatives to enduring the Classic madness for too much longer. That salvation would come via John Wrens, the local sales manager for Lyons Maid Ice Cream, who I had got to know very well while at the Tyneside. Johnny appreciated the extra business I generated for him in transforming the previous lackadaisical sales operation into the more commercialised one I left behind at the end of my tenure. He had also noted an uptick since I took over Low Fell. Having heard though his grapevine about my Christmas Eve encounter with Ebeneezer Cargill, he asked if I might consider an option he knew about that would be coming up with the Noble Organisation later in the year - possibly about June time. It would be a brand new Twin Screen operation atop a major refurbishment of the main Bingo and Arcade money-generators planned by that Company in Morpeth. When I expressed an interest he said he would “drop a word” on my behalf with Ces Dawson who ran the cinema operations for Noble in the North East. After a very cordial interview at their South Shields offices I now knew that the current Classic nightmare would be coming to an end … although I had to keep this very much away from the ever-listening ears of Mr. Scrooge!

In the remaining time I could reflect on how cheap the Classic Cinema conversions had been. The most serious problem, as I had already encountered at Stockton, was the poor sound insulation usually to be found in the smaller auditoria that had been carved out of what had been the previous Stalls areas while the biggest screens of such units were basically the original Circle areas and so had the higher sound insulation standards of the original commissioning chains - often Odeon or ABC who didn’t skimp on money in the glory days. At Low Fell I found myself spending a lot of time monitoring sound leakage between these lower level screens and trying to achieve an acceptable balance between not hearing the other screen and not being even able to hear the sound in the screen I was monitoring. When one auditorium might be playing one of Booking Department’s cheap grunt and groan sexationally-titled tempters and the other, during holiday periods, a family entertainment you can imagine how critical this was to minimising angry customers having to be calmed down at the end of their respective shows. The biggest nightmare came when we played EARTHQUAKE. This had been originally presented in SENSURROUND and involved three key sequences where the sound levels, in properly equipped auditoria as had been fitted out by ABC at the Westgate Road Twins, provided a deep rumbling sound wave through the extra auditorium speakers installed that “physically shook the audience” to create the illusion they were actually living through the Los Angeles nightmare being experienced by the on screen action. It had been quite effective at the Twins although even they had issues as some of these sequences could be heard (and felt slightly) in their smaller upstairs screen. On two occasions when I found myself watching films in that screen I had as a consequence experienced collateral enhancement of their “action” when the SENSURROUND kicked in from the main auditorium. The first was the musical JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR where it kicked in bang on cue as a tank came rumbling over a desert dune. This you could get away with but for FLESH GORDON (a very funny, if naughty, spoof of the old Flash Gordon serials) the effect kicked off when the el-cheapo, every expense spared Rocket ship in the film took off for Planet Porno and in no credible way could have created such a noisy shudder as appeared to be happening.

In terms of projection staffing at Low Fell I had inherited two of the projectionist who lost their jobs when the Tyneside closed. They were never the most dedicated of my team and at Low Fell they proved even more of a problem. That winter proved to be a very bad flu infection one and not only was my assistant manager struck down and off for two months but also my Chief, Harry, also had to take time off for the same reason. This left me having to muddle through with virtually no time off as “Regional Office” could not find any available relief managers for me to have my normal time off. It will be no surprise that Mr. Cargill felt this extra two days of mandatory working did not merit any appreciation payment in my wage packet. As he took the same attitude with the projectionists they insisted on their time off and effectively there was myself and the apprentice projectionist John Young left to keep things running. I doubt if the two refuseniks ever found any local cinema work after eventually leaving their positions at Low Fell (of their own volition thankfully) as such attitudes of not helping out by covering when a colleague goes off sick were very much not the general attitude of projectionists at that time and the local cinema grapevine was still very much active in those days as to the quality of work provided by such itinerant projectionists who regularly moved around from cinema to cinema. As for John, I kept in touch with him over the years and was so pleased when the first multiplex opened in the Newcastle area (the AMC at the Metrocentre) and he secured a position as Booth Manager, staying at that location throughout his long career in the cinema business. He and I shared the same attitudes of trying to put on the best technical presentation we could manage for the paying audiences watching films in our respective auditoria and he was a credit to the business.

In the run up to our wedding, we were happy that Sue’s brother Richard agreed to be my Best Man which added a direct ABC link to the ever expanding Girdler/Picken Odeon cinema connections over the years. Ever the publicist, and still being professional enough despite my Christmas Eve experience with the Regional Manager, I fed a couple of stories about my upcoming nuptials to keep the Classic Low Fell on the local media horizon. The Gateshead Post liked the snippets of my previous “coincidences” with floods and other disasters striking when I was playing “appropriately titled” films like 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and speculated “I might be more nervous than would normally be expected on Valentine’s Day due to the fact that the Main Auditorium was screening EARTHQUAKE in the run up to February 14!” It was Charlie Fiske’s ELDON COLUMN piece in The Chronicle, however, that really endangered our happy celebrations. In the spirit of “cinematic licence”, he had suggested that some of my colleagues, led by Freddie Bower at the Odeon, were planning to throw snippets of cinema film instead of confetti as Sue and I emerged from the Newcastle Civic Centre Registry Office. When Richard and I turned up and introduced ourselves to the official carrying out the ceremony we were asked to step into his private office for a moment. There I was asked if I knew how much commotion had been caused the previous evening due to the Eldon piece and stating that under no circumstances whatsoever would the ceremony go ahead unless a cast iron guarantee was given that no such “explosive fire risk scattering of celluloid film would take place” anywhere near the Civic Centre. It would appear that some older clerk - with a long memory who remembered the inflammable nature of “nitrate film stock” and how it had “often caused major fires in cinemas” - passed these concerns up the chain of command and, after reaching very high levels in the Council (and presumably disturbing their quiet evening at home?), this edict had been passed down to the official Registrar. When Richard and I assured him that this had been Charlie adding “journalistic colour” to the piece, due to my cinema managerial connection, and that only confetti was ever going to be thrown, he calmed down and saw how big a mountain out of molehill this whole scenario had become … due to someone perhaps wanting to make a name for himself as “saving the Civic Centre from destruction by fire”!

The next time I encountered Charlie at a Press Screening he chortled like he’d been presented with a Journalist of the Year Trophy and over the ensuing years it was often brought up when he bragged about “The Power of the Press, Dear Boy” … and his Eldon Column in particular! The nice thing about the day was that nearly all my staff at Low Fell had turned up to throw the confetti before going back to run the cinema later in the day. The weather was also kind in providing a lovely blue sky and sunny day … even if later that day we set off on our truncated honeymoon in snow showers.

As the day approached for me to hand in my notice - the beginning of May as Noble Organisation wanted me on site at Morpeth for the month leading up to the “official opening” scheduled for June 4th, 1976 - I received a “routine site visit” from the Regional Manager. His grapevine had been working to its usual efficiency so he was aware that I had been offered a new job and had “called in” to make a counter offer. He had clearly felt it would appeal to my ego to offer me the managerial position of the four-screen Classic at Byker but boy was he wrong on all counts! His copybook had been well and truly blotted on Christmas Eve and, as always throughout my career, once I had made a decision to move on there was never any reason for me to entertain changing my mind. Such decisions had always been weighed up carefully and never made in haste. I politely declined and fortunately had no retaliatory pique to contend with while working out my notice period.

Geoff Hornsby returned to take over from me at Low Fell but he too would enjoy a short stay. Having both worked for Odeon we knew the difference between a company that respected its employees and the likes of Classic, as personified by Cargill, who exploited them. Geoff’s escape route came via a vacancy to manage the Council-operated Playhouse Whitley Bay which he was successful in securing and he thoroughly enjoyed his time there with the mix of live shows and films providing plenty of variety and challenges to keep him buzzing. Our paths would cross again during British Film Year, of which much more at the appropriate juncture, which in the North East would provide lots of diverse activities that Geoff and all the other local Managers really appreciated being a part of. The Classic Low Fell, like much of the Classic operations in the North-East and many other Independent and Circuit cinemas around the UK would succumb to the adverse economics of the mid-70’s to mid-80’s decade. Peter Cargill would end up running the Wallaw Cinema in Blyth - as a sort of front man for a “colourful financial backing character” known as Major Young … and losing most of his savings in the process prior to its inevitable closure! Given the admission figures Cargill often exchanged with me in later years (while “sounding me out for suggestions of titles that were performing well at Morpeth once it was up and running) it was no surprise that it closed. The Wallaw Blyth did, however, enjoy a further lease of life when local businessman Alan Fergusson (of the Transport Company carrying that surname) bought the site and it was converted into a triple screen operation managed by Bob Milner, one of Geoff’s assistant managers at Low Fell who actually cut his teeth on that unit before securing the Blyth operation post-Cargill. Bob wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea in terms of being a bit brusque but he fought tooth and nail to make his dream work and succeeded into the 1990’s.

 

CHAPTER SEVEN - THE COLISEUM YEARS

PART 1 May 1976 - 1985 BACKGROUND INTRO
                    
The Noble Organisation, based in South Shields, had its origins in the years of travelling fairs and slot machine arcades from which its founders made a natural progression into operating Bingo Halls and somehow along this path, possibly as part of the deal to buy a Bingo Hall, had ended up with a few cinema units in Ashington (The Wallaw and The Regal), Jarrow (The Crown) and The Regent, a unit on the seafront at Redcar. Where practical they had “added in” one of their café/amusement arcade areas, a concept they had developed over the years as the Noble brand expanded across the UK. The two driving forces were William Noble (its Chairman) and his long-time (from the early days) partner Albert Gray. Two of Noble’s sons, Michael and Phillip, were also on the executive board along with Alan Nichols who served as overall Operations Manager with Arthur Noutch (for the Bingo operations) and Cecil Dawson (for the Cinemas) reporting through him technically although The Chairman and Albert Gray were still very hands on but not in the micro-managing ways of Peter Cargill of Classic Cinemas. Their business model clearly worked as they were able in the late 1980’s to purchase and successfully develop the Brighton Pier transforming in into a profitable enterprise that became their pride and joy and in many ways served as their ultimate business triumph.

The Coliseum had been acquired by them and initially run as a Bingo Hall in the old stalls area of what had formerly been a circle and stalls cinema operation. The original Coliseum Cinema opened in 1926 and closed in 1964 when it was converted to Bingo. Noble’s less than altruistic purpose in fitting out the old circle as the Twin Screen unit was part of a plan to upgrade the bingo hall and incorporate one of their snack bar/amusement arcades at street level to take advantage of the main bus terminal, located at that time, directly opposite the Coliseum. Morpeth Council were reluctant for the “tone of the town to be lowered by an “amusement arcade” but were cajoled into changing that position when Noble’s agreed to incorporate a new Twin Screen cinema facility on the first floor former Circle area and so bring back “The Movies to Morpeth” after a gap of 12 years. It was the fact that many such units (old circle and stalls cinemas) were now being converted to profitable smaller multi-screen auditoria units by the major chains and the more entrepreneurial Independents that had encouraged them to take this leap into the unknown and provide me with the next 26 years of my Movie Management Adventure.

THE ESSENTIAL PRELIMINARIES

When I arrived on site the major stages of the upstairs conversion were reaching their “almost there” state and, being physically present as these key components of the installation proceeded, proved a big advantage in knowing how all the bits and pieces had been put together for those inevitable occasions in later years when running repairs needed to be carried out. One of my most vivid recollections of this period was one day when Ces (as he preferred to be called) was in a panic as the “two Big Bosses” were coming to see how the work was going with the contractors. As they perused the recently installed false ceiling over what would be the Cinema’s main upper foyer and kiosk area, Mr. Noble expressed a bit of dissatisfaction that this appeared to be higher than he had envisioned. Rowley, the site contractor for the renovation, produced the plans to show he had followed them accurately. The two bosses were still unhappy and Bill Noble asked if it could be lowered a bit and was given a price for doing this. This he agreed on the spot without any qualms or haggling. He was correct in his judgement as the area did look that bit more homely at the lower height

. I couldn’t help comparing this attitude with the penny-pincher I had worked for most recently! I would learn over the years that the Noble Organisation did not mind paying for quality in their units and their business success over the years tended to justify their modus operandi.

The major operational advantage of being on site was that I was around while the projection and sound equipment was being put in situ. The installation was carried out by the Newcastle branch of Westrex, a respected company that serviced and maintained many cinemas’ installations across the UK. The national head of their R & D technical side was Pat Jones and his special baby was the new Westrex 7000 projectors which he had designed from scratch to include some improvements over projection kit installed in other chains and cinemas as they twinned (or more) with single projectors for each screen as opposed to the previous norm of two projectors changing over reels every 20 minutes or so. The Coliseum would have the first pair in the UK and Pat, with his deputy Harvey Inchmore, were totally hands on with the installation and always on call for any “teething issues” we might encounter. The two major differences from the then current kit was that the film feed would be delivered from a Tower located behind the main projector and arc light unit as opposed to the platter system that had previously been the go-to format. The big benefit from my point of view was that the Tower held the entire feature film firmly within a proper large spool capable of carrying it. The other feature film on a double bill (or just the supporting programme) could now be kept on another spool held on the other side of the tower which could be rotated and laced up to run while the original film was being rewound for its next screening. This spool on tower system I felt provided more security against films falling off the platters when being spooled on or spooled off. There had already been a few horror tales of projectionists in cinemas using the platter system spending ages trying to put a feature film that had slipped off the plate back into place again … not a pleasant sight! Another modification Pat had incorporated was a more cushioned roller system at the feed-in to the gate and again at the exit to try and reduced the risks of film snaps during the film motor getting up to its operational speed on initiation. The innovation he was proudest of, however, was what he dubbed “interlock”. This was a special extra linked motor in each screen’s projector (in our case delivering the film from Cinema Two to Cinema One) that would replace the normal individual screen’s projector motors when in interlock mode and be controlled to run both projectors at exactly the same speed and so prevent piles of film spewing out while being fed in interlock mode. As film fed first through one projector, instead of exiting and being collected on the take-up spool of that projector it would feed through and follow a special path of rollers mounted at ceiling level that guided it across the length of the projection room to feed into the second cinema’s projector to screen in that auditorium and be picked up by that unit’s Tower take-up spool. This could allow the same copy of a film to play in both screens if demand warranted and so cater for more happy customers who might otherwise have been turned away. The time delay between a film playing in Screen 2 (the feed-in projector) to it making its appearance in Screen 1 (the receiving projector) was around 45 seconds. Over the years we made good use of this “extra” even though the Film Renters refused to allow any extra leeway on the film hire terms when we did so by insisting on counting the “takings” as only against one screen’s sliding scale terms! My attitude in these circumstances was always that the profit from the extra refreshment sales justified us doing it. The 7000 Projectors acquired a bad reputation with some projection suite teams as their installation numbers increased around the UK which was a shame as I found it a good bit of kit. The main complaint issue, and Pat did admit it was a design fault he had erred on, was the oil reservoir for the main projection gate mechanism being very small and you had to keep an eye on regularly topping this up. We had no issues with it at Morpeth in 26 years and I suspect the bad rep had come from units where the projection crews were not as diligent in following recommended routine maintenance and oil top-up protocol with the result that the “gate mechanism” responsible for the 24-frame per second pull down which creates the illusion of ”moving pictures” would seize up and require a costly replacement of said component.

In terms of the rest of the fit-out, I was pleased that the seating, while not new, had been renovated and recovered. While I approved of the dark red for Cinema One - always a “warm” and serviceable colour option - the orange selected for Cinema Two I felt would not have been my ideal choice remembering how quickly the bright pink and peach seat colours installed by Odeon in two of the screens for the refurbished Renfield Street Triple in Glasgow had gone shoddy once the audiences started occupying them. The Coli’s seating colours had been matched with floor carpeting in similar shades to the seats which created a double headache for upkeep in Screen Two. I hadn’t been aware that Albert Gray had chosen these colours and on one of his visits when he asked my opinion I had, typically, said that the orange would not have been my ideal selection. In typical blunt fashion he challenged me to provide a reason and asked what would have been my alternate colour suggestion. I expanded on my reasons, based on Glasgow’s experience, and suggested that chocolate brown would have provided the warm ambiance akin to red but without the same risk of showing dirt within an early time-frame of use which the orange was likely to experience. Ces, who had warned me that Mr. Gray was not one to be messed with, had beat a tactical retreat when he realised what I had said! I was quite relieved when I found myself in the full-on Gray stare and he said “I like you, you are someone who is not frightened of expressing an honest comment and backing it up with good reasons”. That may have been why I got quite a bit of leeway - virtually free reign in fact - when I suggested the range of retail items we should be stocking in the kiosk. From 1976 to our closure we always carried “quality items” and ensured we always had something priced at affordable family prices - including at 1p - to let kids spend their last penny with us rather than the corner shops! The other “approval” I received, from both Mr. Noble and his partner, was over the text of the speech that was to be given on their behalf to the opening night VIP invited audience. They gave me a general outline and I tinkered with it in a few phrases and re-submitted it for their consideration. Ces told me afterwards that they had both congratulated him afterwards on finding them a “good manager” for their new Cinema and that they had asked for me to deliver said speech to the audience on the night rather than one of them. Other than selecting this opening film - THE PARTY (a personal favourite of Mr. Noble) - they left most of the opening night’s on-site arrangements to me which meant me drawing on the best parts of all those “orders of the Day” protocols for Premieres and Charity Fundraising Shows I had worked on with Ted and Chris at Edinburgh and Brian Bint at Manchester.

Ces and I worked out our staffing levels and rotas based on what was projected to be a seven day a week “Once Nightly” operation with a mid-week Matinee on Wednesday (Morpeth’s Market Day) and Saturday and I set about placing the ads with the local Job Centre. The response, while not a deluge, allowed us to secure five usherettes and four cashiers as well as a cleaning team of three. The location of the box office selling point at the street level lobby while the kiosk was located at the Cinema level on the first floor necessitated the third cashier. I asked Sue if she could do the odd night, depending on her nursing shifts at Newcastle General where she was completing the initial stages of her Nursing career, to help me out which would enable me to have a “known honest cashier” at some stage of the nightly cash up regime I intended implementing. She now often chides me that I had “implied” this would be just for a couple of months till we got “up and running“, while the reality was that she carried on doing these “extra helping out shifts” at the Coli and her regular ones in Neuro Theatre for just over 20 years!

In terms of the other two key positions, Ces had already had an application from a circuit-trained projectionist, and I suggested on his days off, until we could recruit another qualified projectionist, that I could probably cover. Mick actually was quite diligent and cared about presentation standards so he quickly accepted my plans to cue the music while the audiences were coming into the auditoria (and at the intermissions) to the mood of the feature presentation using the selection of cassettes I had prepared to facilitate this. He would also suggest a couple of little enhancements to add to the experience of our audiences on certain films … but more of that “Coli Trademark Tweak” in due course! The other thing we tried to aim for was running to the advertised times which on once-nightly was relatively easy to achieve. Ces and I had checked out last bus services from the Bus Station opposite the Coliseum to the outlying townships and communities we considered peripheral additions to our main Morpeth target audience of local residents and agreed that we should aim for an ideal of 9:30 to 9:45PM finish as most of these “last buses” had left by 9:55 to 10:00PM. In those days car usage was not quite so prevalent which made the “bus factor” more critical in Morpeth than for main City Centres. Over the years a lot of my city centre managerial colleagues would often be a tad jealous of our early finishes even though the prime driver for the timesheet policy had been taken on a sound commercial prospects assessment to secure our own local audience.  

The advert for an ASSISTANT MANAGER position thankfully provided a choice of potential appointees with the stand-out being Margaret Brown who came across as a no-nonsense, easy to get on with staff and customers sort of person who wasn’t afraid to get stuck in and help out at the busy periods. Thankfully these started from Day One thanks to our opening film to the public being JAWS and having the canopy read-o-graph and outside poster quad frames providing a wonderful exposure to all the bus passenger traffic seven days a week. The added bonus was Market Day Wednesday which brought in hordes from the outlying areas meant most people quickly worked out what was showing that week at The Coli as it became affectionately known.

With Pat and Harvey having completed the equipment fit out well ahead of the VIP opening night, to give us a chance to snag it for any last minute tweaks we got clearance from the renter of our public scheduled films to do a full run through to a “talker type” audience (using friends and family of the recruited staff) on the two nights before the VIP opening. We didn’t go overboard or go for anything like a full house as the main purpose was to provide the recruited usherettes and sales cashiers with a chance to experience (and practice!) the actualities of providing the standards I would be demanding as well as, hopefully, generating a bit of positive word of mouth. In opening up the sales operation for these previews we generated a little revenue to start offsetting all of the Noble Organisation’s investment in the project. As well as these “talkers” there was time to fit in a trial run through using the Interlock operation, Rather than risk any of our VIP and opening night programmes, for the interlock trials we used some short films the Newcastle film depot - with permission from their distributors - had let us have with no consequences if any were damaged in the process by unanticipated snags. Pat made a point of coming up for that test run to see how “his babies” - performed under this new “linked screen film delivery system” he had conceived. They made their “parent” proud and in the end we thought one of these guinea pig test prints, BOATS A POPPIN, a short about the Cypress Gardens speedboats show in Florida would make a perfect starter to the First Night Invited Audience that would be followed by the Peter Sellers comedy THE PARTY selected by Mr. Noble.

My own little “unique touch” was to create a special cassette from an Album in my collection called PAUL FREES AND THE POSTER PEOPLE using tracks where the impressionist created the voices of many distinctive and easily identifiable Movie Stars to “sing” some familiar pop songs. These included Bela Lugosi’s The Games People Play, Humphrey Bogart’s Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head (with his distinctive sibilant s’s), Boris Karloff’s “Monster” pining with The look of Love and Peter Lorre’s unforgettable interpretation of the Beatles’ classic Hey Jude! A case of every expense spared to provide a “Hollywood Star line up” for our Opening Night guests… at zero cost. As this “audience” comprised some Film Renters as well as local councillors and media it was appreciated and remarked on favourably in terms of pre-show entertainment for such an occasion, as being “original and different”. Among the Renters contingent was Tom Nichol from Glasgow’s CIC Office who to my surprise and delight was accompanied by my old Edinburgh Playhouse friend Walter Maguire. With the family-run Playhouse Cinema having struggled in recent years, it had been sold on to the Edinburgh council and survives to this day and continues going from strength to strength as a Live Theatre venue of the ATG Group. It still retains the layout familiar to those who remembered it fondly from its Cinema glory days but has a much larger stage area thanks to the caring stewardship and vision, in the initial years after the local purchase, of my first boss Ted Way who managed it initially for the Council. Walter had been able to stay working in the business he loved when Tom recruited him as his deputy and we were able to rekindle our long friendship over the ensuing 45 years (and counting) until he retired. He served honourably as a film renter rep who understood the Independent Exhibitor scene and tried to ensure “his cinemas” got a fair crack of the product line-up during his periods with CIC, Disney and Fox. His assigned duty from me that night was to take care of Sue who, being naturally shy, would otherwise have been left on her own that night. It was the first time she had met Walter but they got on as if they had known each other all their lives.

What many who attended that opening night remember most was the ample refreshments provision laid on by Johnny Wrens of ice creams for guests, soft drinks from the Kia-Ora rep and probably best of all the generous, and near bottomless, provision of bottles of champagne laid on by The Noble Organisation. Sue, who had helped out a bit in the Kiosk rush that night, said it was eye-opening and difficult to keep up with guests popping out for two glasses and a couple of bottles to take back into the auditorium with them. Given Ces had made a point of laying aside half-a-dozen bottles to take home with him, I didn’t feel too guilty about adding a couple for ourselves. The show went without any technical hitches, to the relief of the Westrex engineers and myself, and the gales of laughter sweeping out of the auditorium proved William Noble had made a good film selection choice. After the show all the invitees were directed to the Queen’s Head Hotel on Morpeth’s High Street for a post-film buffet … and more lubrications!

The next day, the Coli would welcome its first admission paying audience for 12 years and play to full houses with JAWS (two shows daily at 4:30 and 7:20 for the first three weeks in Cinema One with a matinee on Saturdays) while the other screen boosted its own box office takings through audiences unable to get into the Spielberg movie purchasing a ticket for its double bill of THE LIKELY LADS and STEPTOE AND SON rather than going home. As our seating capacities were only 132 in each screen the hardest part with popular films was often trying to ensure every seat got filled. I kept encouraging the usherettes to be pro-active in ensuring, where possible, people didn’t leave a single seat space between their party and another by asking them to move up if they did. Even then we would still have the odd seat and with a waiting queue it was also important to keep communicating with the staff as to how many “singles” were left and seeing if anyone in the queue wanted them before declaring House Full. Over the years the staff did a really good job with this and as I was usually around assisting they could see I was prepared to play my part in assisting them with the task.

One thing we had picked up on audience reaction to JAWS during the “rehearsal previews” and the opening few nights of the public performances was that there were a couple of sequences in the film which created “instant audience scare jumps”. Mick suggested “enhancing” these shocks by turning up the volume momentarily at their initial impact moment and our Operation Box timesheet had these “times” clearly marked for the duty projectionist to ensure they were on hand to implement them and add to the audience’s “enjoyment”. The first was probably the best, a classic “sucker punch” of a victim’s chewed off shoe and leg falling through a hole in a sunken wreck being explored by the Richard Dreyfuss character that was  followed by the severed head of a “Jaws” victim”. The later scene, where Brody is tossing “chum” off the rear of the boat to try and attract the killer shark to them and it leaps out at him as he turns round, ran it a close second. I hadn’t told Ces about this and on the screening he went in to watch boy did he jump … as did the rest of the full house audience!

This “tactic” was one we would return to on occasions over the years with the end shocks of FRIDAY THE 13TH (Jason leaping out of cupboard at Jamie Lee Curtis’s character), Alan Arkin’s final leap towards Audrey Hepburn in the finale of WAIT UNTIL DARK (where the audience have been led to believe he had been killed and no longer posed a threat to the “blind Lady”) and CARRIE (the slow zoom in on the grave when suddenly a hand leaps out from the earth) being three prime examples. For the CARRIE finale I had been on duty in the box for one show and spotted a couple in the front row of our rear section of seating out of the porthole at the crucial moment. As I gave it the “oomph” of volume gain I witnessed the lady leap straight out of her seat clearing the armrest between them and landing on her male companion’s knee. Even though there were no Guinness Book of Records observers on hand, they clearly got a little Coli extra on the “scare scale” that night. While these little tricks were possible in the old-style cinema operations - at least where projectionists cared enough about stunts like this to enhance the experience of their customers - they were impossible to duplicate with the arrival of multiplexes in the late 1980’s and 90’s where often all the screens were serviced by one member of booth personnel who had enough on their plate without having to worry about “hitting their marks” with a sound boost. Showmanship had indeed moved on by that time!

In the opening months and years The Coli was in a highly advantageous position for choosing product in that there was the option of cherry-picking the best of the new releases and also of rejecting some of the dross that always comes out in favour of electing to play re-runs of recent hits and even going further back to offer Morpeth audiences a chance to catch up on some of the greats of the late 60’s and early 70’s when there had been no cinema provision in Morpeth. Thankfully I was able to persuade Ces that, with Morpeth having a classy audience profile, this was the way to go. If I had in my mind’s eye a “model” for the Coliseum’s programming philosophy it would be Derek Cameron’s Dominion in Edinburgh. That cinema always played quality entertainment releases and ensured it catered during holiday periods for the family audience. Derek was always proud that his cinema had never shown any age restricted category movies until well into the late 1970’s when he had aped some of the Circuits at this time and split into a two screen complex in the tradition circle/stalls conversion pattern. Subsequently, in early 1980 he, to use his own phrase, “found a little unused storage space to transform into a luxury 50-seater auditorium to add a third screen”! That screen was a marvel of design in maximising the seating numbers by carefully positioning the projection kit in a mini booth at the rear of the auditorium space. For lacing up and rewinding purposes the projectionist climbed into this cupboard through the removable porthole and the automation then took over to actually “run the show”. On those rare occasions when something went wrong the audience had their own bird’s eye view of the projectionist performing this manoeuvre and usually accorded him a round of applause after re-emerging and the film resuming. The opening film in Derek’s “baby” ran for over three years at 100% capacity thus totally vindicating his vision and the film renter’s faith in providing him with an exclusive Edinburgh run on GREGORY’S GIRL.

Although Ces had been wary at first, he was shrewd enough to listen to my programming suggestions - their box office figures at Morpeth justifying his faith in me - but occasionally felt the need to keep in with some of the renters of “naughty” product by adding in a Coli dating. I fully understood his position given that both the Ashington Cinemas and the Jarrow and Redcar screens did their best business with the cheap horror and thriller fare as well as some of the risqué comedies like the CONFESSIONS series of films and of course the notorious EMMANUELLE movies. In those days the cinema exhibition week started on a Sunday and finished on a Saturday which meant Ces could keep these renters happy by slipping in the odd Sunday One Night “adult” offering on school holiday weeks as, in those days in Morpeth, there was little demand for the outright family fare on that evening. One of his “classics”, almost a rival for the notorious “Games that Lovers Play” and “One on Top of the Other” double bill that really should not have played was NURSE ON THE JOB coupled with LINE UP AND LAY DOWN. The Coli’s box office return for that “pairing” was on a par with Edinburgh’s and for the same reason … incorrect programming profile. The real problem with the “Sunday start” was that my business pattern proved to be weak on the Monday and Tuesday takes with quality and family fare which made justifying a hold-over for a second week very precarious. Thankfully on those occasions when my hunch was over-ruled and the end of week business proved I had been correct, I usually secured an early re-run date as in the case of THE SLIPPER AND THE ROSE. This had minimal attendances on Monday and Tuesday but took off and played to packed houses by the weekend. On its re-run, and having generated a good “word of mouth”, it performed far better all the way through the week.

Having as a first priority generated good relations with my Morpeth press and getting them to initiate a weekly film column based on The Coli line-up (as well as occasionally running competitions with Cinema Tickets as prizes), I was able through attending Press Shows to re-establish my contacts from the Tyneside Film Theatre days with all the Newcastle press and Broadcast media people. They had me pegged as a bit “unique” in being effectively one of their “Film Critics” cabal - through my Radio Tyneside programmes and occasional contributions on Radio Newcastle and the recently launched Metro Radio commercial station - while also actually running a commercial cinema and so able to provide a slightly different insight on the movies. These Press Screenings also provided a chance to chat with my managerial colleagues in those screens and get a heads up, because of the excellent mutual trust relationship I had also developed with them, on how films were performing in town from a purely business point of view. This was helpful as, in those days, the release pattern was Odeon and ABC having first call followed by suburban Classics and Circuit units and then, last in the pecking order, local Independents getting a copy. This worked quite amicably as far as I was concerned with Morpeth being a clear 15 miles distant from Newcastle and probably my only real frustration in the first decade of operation was the pattern on Disney releases where Odeon would have the film one clear school holiday dating ahead of the Independents so they’d play it say October Half-Term, Christmas, February Mid-Term, Easter, Whit week or during the six-week summer break with us following on one “school holiday break” behind. This same lag applied on the big family movies that were from Renters servicing the ABC circuit screens. Again in those days, with there still being a few years gap before movies would be made available to TV and with Video (and indeed Video Piracy) still in its infancy there was still adequate “legs” left in the releases by the time we dated them. With The Coli turning in impressive box office figures, even given its small seat capacity, we had reasonable access to the titles we wanted and that provided a great basis for later years when I would be booking the films as well following Ces’s early retirement in 1986.

A SHORT DIVERSION

Not wanting to pre-empt future parts of this cinematic journey, I think it might prove illuminating to expand on some of the local Cinema Managers during this “early years” period of the Coli’s operation. Due to health issues Freddie Bower had retired from the Odeon/Queens combo he managed with such enthusiasm while Dougie Parkin’s own ill health issues had meant a new face appearing at the ABC Haymarket around the same time. The Odeon appointment was Peter Talbot, who had been a Regional Manager for one of Odeon’s B-Stream regional cinema groupings and decided to return to unit management as his preferred option when one of those “Company Rationalisations” took place as the impact of falling admissions and the major recession in the UK Economy were starting to take their toll. Because of this enforced step down, Peter always put an extra oomph into everything he did, feeling a need to prove himself “the best” all the time. We instantly hit it off, becoming great professional and personal friends and have remained so to this day, He will feature many times later in my narrative as I share many of our numerous joint exploits with you.

At around this same time, George Skelton took the helm at the Haymarket and quickly acquired a totally different “cult status“ among the local Press Show fraternity for his quaint eccentricities. As the Film Critics had been used to fairly sumptuous lubrication sessions after Press Shows at the Odeon and indeed, during Dougie Parkin’s days at the ABC Haymarket, a similar level of hospitality at that venue, George’s parsimony did not go down too well. For the main post-screening the only “refreshment on offer” was a cheap blend of whisky blended with whisky wine (according to my expert on such matters Charlie Fiske) which he would pour out (in small measures) to all and sundry inviting them to experience what he called “a Devil’s Kiss”. That George bore an uncanny resemblance to Robert Newton in full eye-rolling Long John Silver mode, his “invitation to imbibe” had a whole extra dimension to it. Charlie Fiske, traditionally one of the last to leave such gatherings revealed to me that, once the others had all gone, George would often invite him to share some of his “secret stash” and continue their conversation. This “stash” turned out to be the actual genuine quality whisky which he kept locked away in his office safe and which he was known to enjoy the odd glass of when fulfilling an evening Duty Manager shift! As the only tee-total member of the Press Show pack this bizarre lubrication selection didn’t bother me as George often had a bottle of lemonade available! His real ”talent”, however. was in stretching the food provided. Shall we say the man had a unique skill in being able to slice a common-sized pasty into 16 individual wafer-thin slices on a plate and inviting us to enjoy one sliver each as a “sumptuous special treat” This was all the more galling, given that Film Renters in those days provided a very generous “Allowance” to managers for entertaining the local Press after such shows. Sadly, George had different uses for it. By contrast, in Manchester Brian Bint was renowned for having the most elaborate private reception bar stock for his Press Show guests to partake of (and occasionally Duty Managers to have an odd lubricate from!) while in Edinburgh, with Chris and I both being non-imbibers, our “Entertaining Cabinet” had acquired a justified reputation for its wonderful range of malts and other top of the range spirits which Regional Manager Stuart Hall always made a point, on visits to his Scottish units, of sampling.

George was one of the “old school ABC Managers” but sadly his showmanship tactics went a bit astray on the Press Screening of THE BITCH, the raucous follow up to THE STUD both of which were based on Jackie Collins “books” and starred her sister Joan. Joan Collins had been sent by the renter to generate some local publicity through attending the Newcastle Press Screening and being interviewed. When George informed her that he had also arranged for a TV crew to come and film an insert for that evening’s Regional News programme Ms Collins went ballistic with him and told him in no uncertain terms that he should tell them not to come as she had been given no pre-notification of this in her “schedule of arrangements” for the visit. The reason it turned out was that Joan Collins fastidiously had two make-up regimes for interviews and while happy to do the face to face meetings with Press and their photographers that had been agreed, for TV she required a much more intense make-up (due to the intensity of TV lighting requirements) and had not come prepared for that. Methinks, George would have needed a proper drink to restore him after his dressing down by the real world “BITCH” he was trying desperately to placate. 

The Press’s revenge on George proved quite entertaining to observe as an innocent bystander. As we were all departing after one Press Screening, replete as usual from Mein Host’s non-sumptuous catering, we noted a large standee in the entrance foyer promoting one of the All Night Horror Shows (usually five features) that were occasionally organised by George. This was full of gruesome images typical of some of those films. Over one of the character images included in the display, Phil and Keith (Chronicle and Sunday Sun critics at the time) decided to reposition a photo of George Skelton that normally hung elsewhere in the Foyer (with the tagline “The Manager of This Theatre welcomes you”) just below the standee’s promotional heading of “Dare you spend a night with this Horror?” Apparently, and presumably again in full Robert Newton eyeball rolling mode, George summoned all the staff to his office after spotting it later in the day and gave them a dressing down demanding to know which of them had perpetrated this desecration of his display. At least with totally clear consciences they could say “Not me, Guv!” Their Boss never did find out who did it.

When George moved on he was replaced by Terry Charnock who while very knowledgeable about film was not one of those who relished the joys of cinema management. In the Haymarket’s twilight interim, when the University were only allowing ABC to rent it on short term leases, ABC had been trying to secure a replacement base and bought the twin screen unit on Westgate Road from Essoldo in 1984 rebranding it under their logo. When the Haymarket ultimately closed in 1984 Terry took over at the now ABC Twins when its long-serving Manageress Molly Scott decided the lure of the golf course and early retirement was something she had truly earned. The unit would later fall under the Cannon-Classic banner before they too ran into money problems in the cinema depression of the 1980’s and finally sold the property off for flats development in 1990.

Molly had been a well-respected member of the Newcastle Cinema Management scene and was also regarded with much affection by the local Film Critics. I had initially developed a good relationship with her over the years when working at the Tyneside, Low Fell and indeed after transferring to The Coli at Morpeth. I remembered the coverage she achieved with the Newcastle Premiere of THE SLIPPER AND THE ROSE where the Lord Mayor arrived in Cinderella’s coach which the Film’s Renter had arranged to be loaned for the occasion. She also proved a good source of Eldon Column snippets for Charlie Fiske including a graphic description of the impromptu “field hospital” she had needed to set up in her foyer during the run of THE EXORCIST to cope with the number of audience members coming over all faint when Regan is given an injection to calm her down during one of her “seizures”. That the numbers of macho males totally outstripped the rare female quota in these body counts always brought a little twinkle to her eye as she recalled it. The ESSOLDO was also a regular participant in a general national push by some renters to try and slow the fall in admissions by doing what are now referred to as “talker screenings”. A week before officially opening, tickets would be distributed via give-aways - either on radio or in print media - to a late-night screening on a Saturday evening or, for a slightly different profile audience geared to female or family tastes, on Sunday mornings. These were generally very well attended and I often popped into town for them rather than attending a Press Screening as it provided a better idea of how the film played with the people who matter … and usually pay to see a film! TAXI DRIVER, ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and, during Terry’s tenure, THE CARE BEARS MOVIE were some of the titles which benefited from the extra exposure and occasional press coverage.

The Westgate Road press shows were almost as legendary as those at the Odeon Pilgrim St. with the occasional need for a taxi to be summoned for a columnist who had over indulged. The two gamest protagonists were the Sunday Sun’s critic who regularly vied with the Chronicle’s Eldon Columnist to see who could down the most whisky. On one occasion an honourable draw was agreed to around 18:30 in the evening after a session which had started around 12:30 when the Press screening finished while on another Keith claimed his personal session had gone on until the end of the main evening programme!

If I have a favourite Molly story it had to be an incident that happened during the run of CALIGULA, which the Twins had secured an exclusive first run on for Newcastle playing separate performances with advance booking. Molly, due to staff shortages, had found herself running the advance booking section one morning before the main day’s cinema operation got underway when an elderly couple came up and the gentleman asked her for two tickets for CALLYGOOLAH (as he chose to mispronounce the film’s title) - as did so many for some reason here in the North-East! After going though the usual which seats would you like to sit in and then duly allocating them, printing them off and asking the customer for the payment amount, Molly confirmed the transaction with the traditional summarisation of: “that is two seats for CALIGULA at the specific time of performance on the requested date which will be whatever the total came to” Picking up on the way Molly had properly pronounced the film’s title, a quizzical look was exchanged between the couple as the man turned to his wife and said “See, I told you it wasn’t CALIGOOLAH” before turning back to Molly and saying “Sorry about that … it’s just that we went to see CALIGOOLAH’S HOT NIGHTS a few weeks ago at The Star Studios (**) and that was what they called it, so we presumed this was maybe a follow up to that”. Molly was, as always, her truly professional self and thanked him, saying she hoped they’d enjoy the film.

(**) Studios 1 - 4 Waterloo St, just off Westgate Road comprised four tiny capacity screens (smallest about 50 and largest around 90) that had been developed by the Leeds-based Star Circuit as their version of multi-screening. The Complex opened in  December 1973 and closed in 1983 during the worst part of the annual admissions drop being experienced by all UK cinemas in the face of economic recession, Television’s impact including the arrival of satellite TV and the rapidly expanding impact the legitimate (and pirate) burgeoning Video tape expansion was having on the business. Its manager was Wynne Peacock who had preceded Geoff Hornsby at Low Fell before I took that unit over in late 1975. Star’s programming policy was a bit like Classic in grabbing salacious titled “treats for” that specific market and second-runs for most of their screens. Occasionally they crossed over with more mainstream movies that other exhibitors had no interest in playing. Rather bizarrely my Best Man and now Brother-in-Law Richard, after his initial training at ABC Haymarket with Doug Parkin had moved to Leeds ABC where he met his future wife Pam. When that unit was threatened by the downturn Richard had found himself surplus to requirements but managed to secure a berth in the Regional Management structure for Star Cinemas. This led to a bizarre encounter when I turned up at one of Wynne’s Press Shows and found Richard on one of his visits sitting in her office. I don’t know which of the three of us was most surprised at this serendipitous connection and encounter.

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE NOBLE YEARS …

The opening months of business at Morpeth more than satisfied Mr. Noble and Mr. Gray, both of whom would often pop in for a chat if they were passing or visiting some of the Bingo halls or arcades they operated in the area. They had clearly not expected the levels of business we were doing at Morpeth and on the basis of our figures had decided to do a similar conversion on the recently closed Classic Cinema in North Shields which they had purchased. The old stalls area was converted to their core Bingo Hall operation while upstairs in the former circle area they provided two screens although this time they went for differing capacities (158 in Crown 1 and 107 in Crown 2). This difference in capacity meant extra headaches for Ces with Film Distributors always insisting their product played the larger capacity. Once again I was roped in to stage manage the Official Opening Night and Mr. Noble’s “favourite” selection this time was WHAT’S UP DOC? As the Crown Twins were not being fitted with the Interlock system this meant having to use two separate prints of the film for the opening night as again the VIP list was expansive. Not being on site in the run up to opening night I had to rely on the projectionists who had been employed for this unit. Having specifically asked them to ensure they did a full run-through to check the prints before the opening night, I had assumed they would do this correctly. Big mistake on my part! Fortunately this only affected the smaller screen which was not seating all the top VIP’s and close friends of the Noble family. While the pre-show and my “Welcome” announcement tapes had gone perfectly and both shows had progressed without any real hitches, the projectionists’ lack of professionalism was soon to fall victim to Sod’s Law. They had not run the prints all the way through … or if they had, they were not watching the screen or listening to the sound when they had carried this check out. I happened to be in the box with Pat and Harvey of Westrex when some strange sounds came from one of the monitor speakers (the one over Cinema Two’s projection area) that sounded almost “Chinese”. A quick look through the porthole revealed that the final reel had been joined in “tail out” instead of “head out” and consequently was showing on screen upside down with the soundtrack likewise playing in reverse. I am told by some of the Renter personnel seated in that screen that you could hear me expressing my displeasure to the projectionists while at the same time, with Harvey and Pat, trying to get this last reel off the spool, rewinding it to being head out and recommencing the screening at the point it had been interrupted for Cinema Two‘s audience. Fortunately there were no personal repercussions at the post-opening reception in a nearby hotel. This had been one of the features retained from Morpeth’s opening even though Ces was a bit miffed that no “bottomless champagne bottle stocks” had been provided!

While North Shields would often fare better with the product range Ces was used to dealing with for all the other Noble screens - and he’d often rib me over my low takes with horror movies, violent low budget thrillers and his occasional cheap and cheerful naughty titles compared to the business they were doing elsewhere on “The Circuit” - it was The Coli that would continue operating profitably for nearly eighteen years after these other Noble units had become unviable and closed down. The Crown initially ran to good business but on the occasions I went down to catch a show which perhaps wasn’t going to play Morpeth because we were running things on for weeks at a time, I was worried about how unruly their audiences were compared to The Coli. At the Coli, from day one, I had insisted, and been pro-active, in stopping yobbish behaviour from disrupting shows with a two-warning system where the first verbal was given by the in-auditorium staff member and if ignored was followed up by a second threat that the manager would be called. Those who decided to continue then soon found me “inviting them” to leave the premises .. with no refunds. Other yobbish verbals often earned offenders a period of being barred from the cinema for a month initially and for repeat offenders up to three months. As our audience comprised lots of regulars you quickly got to know those requiring this disciplinary treatment and eventually they learned that we meant it when we said “behave or be banned”. The staff at North Shields, or perhaps it was their audiences, were unable or unwilling to impose similar standards and it soon became apparent after the first few years that attendances were being affected and nice people were going elsewhere for their cinema entertainment. The Crown ceased operating as a cinema in July 1982 (**).

(**) That same July date marked the closure of all the other four cinemas Nobles had acquired in 1972 when they decided to dip their toes into what was at that time perceived as being a possible growth spurt for this form of entertainment. They were the Crown at Jarrow, the Wallaw and the Regal in Ashington and the Regent Cinema in Redcar. This quartet was what had provided a job vacancy for Ces as Cinema Booking Controller and it was the reasonable success in their programming that had created the mind-set as to what films to show. With Morpeth’s opening it was also a mind-set I had to overcome to ensure the success of The Coli although it had proved well suited to North Shields.

Occasionally I did the odd relief manager shift at The Wallaw when its Manager went on holiday or was off sick. As he covered The Regal as well it made more sense for my assistant Margaret Brown to become manager at this unit and be available as cover on occasions when Mr. Bishop was not at work.  At The Wallaw I upgraded the ice cream and confectionery range - despite howls of protest from the staff - and won them round when they could see the increased sales and the consequent pick-up in their monthly sales commission! This was another area where the Noble culture recognised the contributions of all its staff, however low down the feeding chain. Margaret, needless to say also implemented it at The Regal.

I don’t know how it came about, or indeed who had the brainstorm, but in April 1978 SLADE performed live on stage for one Sunday evening and in May 1978 WHITESNAKE played there. The “experiment” was not extended!

In the early years of running The Coli the general release pattern in those days had not changed much from when I first joined the business in 1968. The Circuits (with certain Film Renters allied exclusively with one of the two main cinema chains, ABC or Odeon) had first runs followed a few months later by the local Independents and lesser Chains. The advantage of being an Independent was that we could pick and choose between the renters which was the main driver in the skill of film booking, and in particular the “feel” a good manager developed for his local audience’s tastes which could make a big difference to overall profitability. It was also a period when the Renters themselves were coming up with new ploys to try and halt the decline on admissions due to more extensive TV scheduling of product (with films arriving on this medium after shorter cinema exclusivity windows than previously) and the proliferation of VHS recorders in homes. To create a “want to see” for new releases in cinemas they would often “mass book” local cinemas by Commercial Television transmission areas for the “same date release” and promote them via lots of TV-ad spots (effectively mini trailers) for these films. All right some of the early trials were of pretty low brow films but this block promotion resulted in quite acceptable returns and would gradually lead to, on occasions, quality releases being given similar launches.

From the Coliseum’s perspective this allowed us to benefit from WHEN THE NORTH WIND BLOWS, CONFESSIONS OF A WINDOW CLEANER (and its “further instalments!”), the quasi-documentary THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE (1978), more mainstream horror offerings like THE SENTINEL, David Cronenberg’s SHIVERS, THE BROOD and VIDEODROME as well as the risqué triumverate of LEMON POPSICLE, THE STUD and THE WORLD IS FULL OF MARRIED MEN in between what was our more bread and butter mainstream programming. This had included in these early years STAR WARS - A NEW HOPE. CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (in its original X Certification which then meant no-one under 16 being eligible for admission) and GREASE. All ran for several weeks and continued to push up the cinema’s weekly admission record tallies. GREASE, which we played over a holiday period on some shows in both screens using our interlock continued to hold the admissions record for many years. (SNF ran again a few years later in a re-jigged version with toned down language and some scene snipping which earned it a less restricted certificate from the BBFC and allowed younger audiences to see it.)

With the “Travolta phenomenon” firmly cemented by SNF and GREASE, I persuaded Ces to go with one of my wild hunches. Remembering that Travolta had played a very minor role in CARRIE which we had done quite well with on its initial run, I asked him to rebook it for a week when there was a gap with nothing potentially big likely to be available. On the poster outside the cinema I added a little day-glo star and an arrow with the message “PS … see who’s in  it!” to highlight his name in the cast. Result, as Coach Calhoun might have said at Rydell High, “a bumper week’s business” and a reduction in arguments from Ces when I stuck up for some titles and asked not to show others. I also hit lucky again with the original 1966 big-screen release of BATMAN starring Adam West and Burt Ward. At the Tyneside, while the TV series was enjoying reruns on ITV, I had scheduled it for a Saturday afternoon and enjoyed a capacity house. With the series enjoying a rerun once again in the Coli’s early years I played the same hunch once more … with similar results. Again the booking was soon being placed for the other Noble cinemas! It was gratifying to note Morpeth’s  success not only in its local marketplace but as well that it was drawing from outlying conurbations like Rothbury and Alnwick.

In terms of trying to judge the Coli nationally against its local peer group I would compare the annually published trade figures for National UK Cinema Admissions with their percentage variations up or down on a year by year basis with my own and was fairly satisfied that in our first ten years we had generally done the same or better in the good product years while on the down swings nationally had actually managed to drop less than that percentage trend. Obviously in terms of our local market we were doing things to their satisfaction in terms of operating standards and programming variety. One trend that was common nationally during this period was the marked slump in business in early December and between the end of the Easter school holidays and the latter part of June. In the case of the pre-Christmas slump this was traditionally when Distributors had what I referred to as a “garbage clear out” prior to opening the decent stuff just days before Santa Day. The latter part of January sometimes suffered from the post-Christmas bills needing to be paid but at least sometimes there was a reasonable chance of picking up one of the Christmas releases while it still had some box office legs once the major City Centre units had finished their runs. The post-Easter slump I tended to put down to  a combination of the school “upper years” getting down to work on their exams while parents, and other adults, were saving for their summer holiday plans. Again this “regular slump” was clearly recognised by Wardour Street as quality movies tended not to open in this window. Frustrated by this pattern, I did try over a few years to vary the film offering selections during them - going deliberately down-market with the cheap horror, action thrillers or other adult fare one year and on another trying some upmarket classy films. Neither provided clear evidence that one programming thrust was better than another and it wasn’t until many years later, when the Renters were brave enough to open quality movies in these “desert weeks”, and found they did good business, that things improved. The truism this clearly proved was that there will always be an audience for a good entertaining film but if you tried to ship out garbage they can smell it a mile off and will avoid you like the plague.

The other factor causing national cinema admissions to fall during the latter part of this initial decade of the Coli’s lifespan was the arrival of Video Home Entertainment Systems which allowed you to download movies from TV transmissions while the renters were also cashing in on this new revenue stream by more recent cinema releases being made available on VHS from local Video Rental stores - after a decent cinema release window - and then being made available to purchase outright. This latter relaxation allowed households to have their own personal copy to show again and again at home. While the renters were still securing their cut, cinema audiences bled even more as families decided it was cheaper to rent a Video for home viewing rather than fork out for a whole family’s cinema admission price and on top of that funding the refreshments’ cost. It also didn’t take long for the “Pirates” to move in and start running off bootleg copies which sometimes were sold under the counter in legitimate video stores or via local black marketeers. Another big impact on potential business followed inevitably when local working men’s clubs and some pubs started holding film nights on “big televisions” for which admission charges were sometimes as low as 50p. Needless to say the Film Renters would never see any share of this admission charge which was possibly a motivation for the practice being eventually tackled via FACT and similar industry bodies pursuing offenders who had usually been notified to them by local cinema managers! Morpeth was one of those blowing the whistle. Sadly pirate copies continue to be a serious problem now, even into the 21st Century, despite all the added protections that have been incorporated into VHS’s successor formats of DVD and Blu-Ray discs.

In terms of personnel at the Coliseum there were in the early years a few staffing issues that needed early resolution. Thankfully, as in all the units I have been involved in managing, the cleaners were not one of them. I kept the same group throughout the operational lifespan of this unit and as they were all related it meant they were always prepared to cover for each other if a family emergency or illness occurred. I always made a point of thanking them regularly, especially during the very busy holiday weeks, and, as with all my staff, remembered them at Christmas with a nice box of chocolates and a Christmas card. While my employers did not go this far, during the years when William Noble and Albert Gray were running the business (the first twelve years) I always received a Christmas chicken from them, as did the managers of all their Bingo and Amusement Arcade units.

The cashiers proved more of a headache initially - apart from my wife! - and a couple of the initial intake were not providing the courteous service standards I wanted. I had been aware of the reputation one of them had when working at the Morpeth Leisure Centre but had hoped I might be able to modify her customer interfacing attitude. It was her aggressive attitude when challenging youngsters at the box office about their ages (as they tried to get half-prices) that first triggered my unease. On kiosk shifts, her regular modus operandi after the sales intermission, was to carry out the nightly stock count cash up I insisted on by, after counting the quantities of said item, removing this line of product from the shelf and putting it into the product’s re-stocking box for that item in the cupboard below the counter. This operation was repeated by her for everything on display while telling customers who might ask for something we normally had on display that it was “not available as the stock had been counted”. This was in addition to her other party piece of pulling down the kiosk grill while doing all this “counting” and setting about washing the floor. Any customers who came out for something at this time were told in no uncertain terms that they couldn’t have it as she was “stock-checking and washing the floor”. To carry out the nightly stock check took about ten minutes and once completed any late sales money could easily be added to the float bag and processed on the next day’s stock check. Not on her shift they couldn’t! Following a complaint she had made to one of the Company Directors who regularly came to see films at the Coli about my “bullying her” over such matters, Ces and I agreed this sort of disruption was not likely to go away given her past reputation at the Leisure Centre so we terminated her contract with payment in lieu of her notice period rather than her having to “work it”. Although the other cashier of concern was nowhere near as disruptive, I was saved from initiating any action with her when she tendered her own resignation shortly after her “friend” had been dealt with. I was more fortunate with their replacements who both stayed with me for quite a few years and proved just the sort needed to make customers feel welcome but also were more than capable of controlling any rowdy elements gently and effectively if required. If there was a drawback with them it was that Mary and Margaret got on so well with my wife when she was helping out that they tended to team up and “work their tickets” with me when they had nothing better to occupy their time. They also occasionally got up to mischievous pranks - always when there were no members of the public around thankfully - targeting some of the Assistant Managers I engaged in the years after Mrs. Brown had been promoted to run the Regal at Ashington. Two favourite ploys were joke snow shower mini-explosive caps surreptitiously inserted into the Assistant’s cigarettes while another had her tea spiked with some “Dr. Windbreaker’s powder” and they would then listen out for the resulting cacophony while maintaining angelic innocent faces! The great tragedy was that both Mary and Margaret would die very young, the former in a car crash and the latter from cancer leaving their husbands rearing the young families they had.

Although I had no real worries with Mick in terms of his projection duties he only stayed for just a couple of years due to a little irregularity that was being worked by a young usherette who occasionally did a “box office shift” when one of the main cashiers was off sick or on holiday. I suspect, given her youth and inexperience, he had in all probability been the instigator of the cash scam I had stumbled across. Their mistake, and downfall, was that I occasionally helped out with the ticket check halving at the entrance door to the auditorium when we were very busy to free up an usherette to encourage people to keep moving along the rows in the auditorium and request they did not leave single seats empty on either side of their party which were always difficult to sell but remained critical in such a small capacity auditorium. I became a little suspicious when on those nights when this cashier was on duty some customers would come up with just a half ticket stub rather that the full one, claiming the girl in the box office had torn it there! A quick check comparing the alleged tickets sold per the box office return and the discreet head count I carried out of actual bodies occupying seats soon explained why Mick had often “helped out” at the ticket check when his “partner” was in the box office. He had been discretely slipping her down the half stubs to re-sell. Faced with this evidence she accepted my offer to tender her resignation with immediate effect rather than the alternative of my calling in the police. A few week’s after her departure, Mick decided to seek employment in a different cinema leaving me with little alternative other than to become effectively a Manager/Projectionist.  This dual role, for which I was given no salary increment (although allowed to claim overtime when necessary) was one I carried out quite happily for the next twenty-three years during which time I trained up “apprentices” to learn the basic skills of projection and presentation to the standards I demanded. This proved a far easier task than trying to knock all the bad habits out of “so-called” experienced projectionists who couldn’t find gainful employment with any of the remaining Circuit cinemas still operational in the North-East. These trainees often stayed for several years and with a couple of “exceptions” quickly provided quality presentation standards to our audiences. The two exceptions had their tenures truncated, the first for initiating and perpetrating an after-opening hours break-in and then trying to “fake” his theft of the limited cigarette stock stored on the premises. It didn’t take any Inspector Lestrade to work out this had been an inside job! The felon was given the same option as had the ticket-fiddling cashier. The other abject failure proved totally unreliable in often phoning in “sick” at very short notice which meant me having to sometimes dash from home on a night off to ensure the cinema could show its films that night. After a near five-month spell of his near-continuous sick notes - during which he was often spotted cavorting energetically making his way round town immediately after “limping in and nearly unable to walk” when calling in for his sick-pay wages he too decided leaving might be the right option for himself.

The final staffing component, the usherettes (as they were then quite acceptably known!) tended to be pupils from King Edward School in Morpeth looking to earn a couple of nights’ wages to spend on themselves for upcoming holidays, clothes or other socialising. They were always pleasant to customers, very happy in their work and outgoing, Thankfully they were also often available to do extra shifts during the 13 weeks of school holidays which were the weeks the Coli really made its profits to see us though the fallow doldrums so familiar in the cinema business trading pattern in those times. Over the years many of those young ladies went on to Universities - including a couple to Oxford - and I often wondered about the number of degrees in further education we nurtured over the years at The Coli. During their Uni years these staff members would often return during vacations to resume duties and consequently not need any initial training. One thing I always insisted on with Ces, who never failed to try and penny-pinch, was that their rate of pay was the full NATKE adult rate for the job and not some scaled-down pittance taking advantage of them because they were still at school.

One “innovation” I introduced very early at the Coli was quickly picked up on by Peter and his Management Team at the Odeon when they often phoned to give me a “heads up” on Press Screening dates I might like to attend. As I often noticed during the busy periods at the Coli that the phone would be ringing off the hook from customers wanting screening time information and, with not the largest of staffs, this often meant it being ignored due to prioritising dealing with actual customers in the building trying to purchase tickets for the show about to start or making their refreshment purchases from the kiosk at the intervals. This made me ponder about how many were ringing at other times when the cinema wasn’t open or the times when I was in town attending Press Shows. Being vaguely aware of a new innovation of “answering machines that not only took messages but could also deliver general info messages” I pursued costs of these with our telephone services supplier and persuaded Ces to let me try one out. The Coliseum Morpeth was the first North East Cinema to have one of these operational and once established and known to our regular customers often resulted, on occasions when I might answer the phone personally while in the Office, in the person on the other end of the line saying: Oh, I didn’t want to speak to you, I just wanted to get some screening time information about what was on this week. The initial message tape maximum play time was two minutes which meant I had to be pretty concise at times given that I often tried to include a brief synopsis as well as show start and show ending times rather than just blabbing titles. This would later change to allow a longer message time once BT introduced their more digital concept version about fifteen years later. My Coliseum Programme Info Line had only been going a few weeks when Peter took me aside at one of the Press Shows for more info about the costs of the kit and soon became the first Odeon Cinema to incorporate it. What you always had to remember was to be current and this meant being so when the programmes changed either mid-week or perhaps for Sunday night specials. Once I started taking holidays (post 1988!), I had to pre-record the message tapes and rely on my assistance staff to put the correct one in on the relevant date. Thankfully I always managed to find reliable and responsible staff for these crucial duties. The onerous task of keeping the Odeon’s info-line up to date fell on the broad shoulders of Assistant Manager David Inglis and he loved his “special time in the spotlight” as “The Voice of the Odeon Information Hotline”. I had become good friends with David during my Tyneside Days as we both shared a passion for the actual films being screened as well as an additional love of the actual business and history of Cinema. As with Peter, and nearly all the other Odeon Newcastle Management and Staff, these friendships would last throughout our working lives and long into all our retirement years .., or until these were sadly truncated by The Grim Reaper calling.

During these early years, thanks to the operating hours of the Coliseum, I was able to go and watch most of the Press Shows arranged by the Renters at the Newcastle screens and was privileged in some ways to meet some stars and directors who occasionally came up to these as part of the “promotion” with local media. The most welcoming of hosts for these occasions were always Peter Talbot at the Odeon and Molly Scott at the Essoldo Twins in Westgate Road … the unique “style” of George Skelton at the ABC Haymarket has already been well covered and will not feature in this selection of “highspots“. In 1979 Simon Ward seemed rather distant to all and sundry on his visit for ZULU DAWN but thankfully that same year also saw Frank Oz visit the Odeon to promote THE MUPPET MOVIE. As he had brought Miss Piggy with him he soon had the assembled Press Pack enthralled as to how the “characters” worked. My “personally autographed photo” from this glam gal of the silver screen remains a treasured memorabilia item. Frank explained that when doing these photo signings of the characters he has voiced, he uses a different signature for each one. In 1981 Nigel Havers was the perfect gentleman as he talked freely of the hard work on fitness all the cast members had to endure in filming CHARIOTS OF FIRE. Peter, a keen jogger and squash player at the time, had a lively exchange or two with “the Charmer”. Always willing to go the extra yard for promoting films in Newcastle, Peter accepted a suggestion from his star guest that he should enter that year’s Great North Run. Peter duly did and indeed ran it for a few years afterwards - in the process raising funds for the CTBF Charity by being sponsored - before his knees started bothering him with all the street pounding he was putting them through. The following year producer Euan Lloyd attended the Odeon Press Show for his action movie WHO DARES WINS and brought along Ingrid Pitt. Judging from her exchanges with Peter she had clearly enjoyed previous encounters with him when promoting some of her earlier movies such as COUNTESS DRACULA and THE VAMPIRE LOVERS - two Rank Organisation funded and released movies, the cult classic THE WICKER MAN or even WHERE EAGLES DARE in which she starred alongside Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood. Such promotional activities by Odeon Managers in Newcastle, especially Peter’s predecessor Freddie Bower, were well respected within the Film Distributor community in London which was why the Pilgrim Street site was often included on such promotional itineraries. That the local Press Corps were also well respected was the icing atop the cake.

The delightful Ingrid and Nigel will feature further in my adventures during the section relating to British Film Year in which I worked closely with Peter -  who had been appointed Chairman of the local Film Year Organisation Group (generally shortened  as F R O G), which led to him being dubbed Chief Frog!. In my elected position as his Vice-Chair needless to say Peter claimed this made me Deputy Frog!

The Essoldo Twins also enjoyed regular celebrity visits, again due to the high regard held for its Manager Molly Scott. Michael Palin proved very entertaining and totally at ease on his promotional visit for THE MISSIONARY in 1982 while Eric Burdon’s (of The Animals) visit to promote his “starring” movie THE COMEBACK the following year allowed Keith Dufton of The Sunday Sun to set a new “hanging around” record with him after all the rest of the scribes had long departed. The duo got along well together and Keith told me on a later occasion that he had secured some great inside scoops during the encounter which  materialised after the rest of the Press had left! Alan Parker’s visit to promote BIRDY was also one that extended - this time only until mid-afternoon! - during which time the director kept everyone entertained with tales of how some of his previous movies made their long journey to the Big Screen. Given that list included BUGSY MALONE, MIDNIGHT EXPRESS, FAME, and PINK FLOYD’S THE WALL by that point in his career, he came over as really down to earth guy and “one of the lads” as he answered whatever was put to him.

If I have an absolute favourite encounter from this early era of my cinema experiences in the North East it had to be without doubt very early on, in 1977, when  Jimmy Stewart invited me to the Press Show of SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER at the Pavilion in Westgate Road. Unknown to many of the Film reviewing pack, the cinematic genius who created those wonderful SuperDynamation movies, Ray Harryhausen, was there too and, even better, had brought along some of his creations from this his latest work and some from his earlier movies to show us how he went about creating the on-screen magic. Without exception, given we had all grown up watching films like SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD, MYSTERIOUS ISLAND, IT CAME FROM BENEATH THE SEA and JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS, we were like kids let loose in the Toyshop as he explained it all and, even more excited, when he allowed us to pick up some of the models and try moving the armatures ourselves. When you’ve had a chance to hold the Cyclops from SEVENTH VOYAGE or the many-limbed Kali from SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER in your own hands while engaging in conversation with their creator, one of the most amazing Special Effects geniuses of all time, you remember this for the rest of your life no matter who else you encounter on your cinematic journey.

Newcastle’s Press Shows during the late 1970’s and early into the 1980’s acquired a bit of Legendary status among distributors for being rather “lively” occasions. We all got on so well with each other and had varying shades of senses of humour which often resulted in films that deserved it being given what in olden days might have been referred to as “the bird”. The chief instigator was invariably Phil Penfold (The Newcastle Chronicle’s Entertainment editor) egged on by Keith Dufton (of The Sunday Sun) with Metro Radio DJ’s Paddy McDee, Steve Coleman and Dave Porter joining in with their own verbal contributions to silly scenes and dialogue. Favourite targets were cheapo “horror movies” which Distributors occasionally dared to screen for this baying pack of hecklers. They would not have been out of place at the Poole’s Synod Hall in Edinburgh in the 1960’s which had been much frequented by myself from my teenage years and Edinburgh Evening News’s Film Critic John Gibson. Contributions would be offered up as to which gormless cast member would become the monster/homicidal maniac/demented scientist’s sacrificial victim first. Even Charlie Fiske (Eldon Column) and Norman Davidson (The Journal) as well as yours truly occasionally earned approval from the rest of the assembled hacks with our offerings. The one exception was Sheldon Hall, a very earnest film student friend of Phil’s, who often saw hidden depths in certain movies. Sheldon (affectionately dubbed “Baronial” because of his surname and general good manners by Peter at the Odeon) would eventually graduate with honours and subsequently be awarded a doctorate in Film Studies and use his qualification professionally imparting his enthusiasm to many future generations of Media students on the Courses he delivered at the Universities employing him to lecture to them. His dry humour, although rarely making an intrusive appearance at Press Screenings and the later post-screening lubrications, was well worth the occasions when it did.(**)

** Should you happen to own the Blu-Ray releases of ZULU and KHARTOUM these include very interesting features and interviews conducted by Sheldon.

1982 provided a bumper crop of targets with THE DARK CRYSTAL and THE SWORD AND THE SORCEROR proving early contenders for “Turkey of the Year”. The former featured evil creatures with long beaks and monk-type cloaks who had a habit of raising their heads from their chest area and looking around while making a strange noise akin to an inquisitorial “MMMMMM????????!!!!!” This proved an invitation for imitation not only during the film but for several other Press Screenings in this fantasy genre that were spawned from its success. By the time later examples of the genre came around all inhibitions had long dissipated about disrespecting such movies and even though SWORD AND THE SORCEROR cloned its storyline a bit more from the Arthurian legends it did not escape. In its opening scene we are treated to a (low budget) bloody battle which leads to a blood-splattered survivor being brought into the Court to report on the outcome. The King looks down on the dripping cadaver and yells out in an authoritative voice the immortal line: Bring me a Leech! This was just too much of a good thing to resist and every time another body fell in the film (and there were many) the chant for the medical bloodsucker echoed round the Press Pack. The Cry continued being used at the post-screening reception for a long time afterwards to mystified looks from Peter who hadn’t seen the film and had to have the significance of the “battle cry” explained to him. Even Tony Ramsden couldn’t resist investigating the source of the raucousness coming from the normally reasonably sedate post-Press screening socialising. When it was expanded on for his benefit he said he’d have to make a point of viewing it! It was intriguing to hear from Tony at a later Press Show that the returns on this film nationally had been disappointing but for some reason the North East area had proved spectacular. Perhaps it was the raucous reviews given by the Film Correspondents in their respective media or just that its humour (unintentional or not) resonated strongly with local audiences? I received a second confirmation of this phenomenon from Walter Maguire echoing Tony’s comments. Walter had by now moved from CIC, as a result of them closing their Glasgow branch due to the falling business patterns in the UK, and was now working for the (then) recent Distribution alliance that had been formed between 20th Century Fox (who handled SWORD AND THE SORCEROR) and Disney UK. This meant I got good early booking dates on the later STAR WARS sequels and the main holiday Disney releases, all of which provided good business at Morpeth.

My acceptance as one of the “Press Show inner circle” meant they had no objections in later years when I would be doing radio reviews on BBC Radio Newcastle (as well as my programmes on Radio Tyneside) and also (post British Film Year) writing a weekly film column in some of the free sheets in Newcastle including my infamously titled “Back Row Charlie’s Flix Pick” column in The Gateshead Post. That these print columns were non-paid probably eased any worries they might have had! Attending such screenings (sometimes weeks before Noble dates were likely to be firmed up) allowed me to give feedback to Ces over titles to avoid for the Noble Circuit (albeit in some cases only specifically for Morpeth!) as well as ones to definitely schedule in all the other units. This was one area where Ces was always grateful for the input though how much this was communicated up the Noble Organisation executive structure was questionable. As the top brass, including Bill Noble and Albert Gray, often dropped in for chats with me I suspect they had previously worked out who might be the source of their Cinema Controller’s new “expertise” in programme selections. One thing I often found myself lumbered with was “talking” with the renters when Ces had a change of mind about a booking he had promised to make with them. At times it was almost a rerun of the days when Twentieth Century Fox had been trying to speak to Ted at the Odeon Edinburgh (over our staging a full-on premiere for HELLO DOLLY when they had prohibited any such activities!) and I had to keep coming up with excuses as to why he wasn’t available at that time to speak with them. In the Morpeth scenario I had to explain that Ces had inadvertently “double booked” and beg them to cancel the contract he had signed or suggest he might re-date it if a slot came up! If nothing else it allowed me to establish a relationship with the main distributors that I was more of an honest broker than Ces … a relationship that would flourish from 1986 onwards, about which more at the appropriate chronological juncture.

In terms of playing controversial films at the Coliseum, a matter that had been raised prior to our opening by Morpeth Council who had the responsibility to issue our Cinema operating licence, we came to a totally workable arrangement with their principal Licensing Officer Arthur Yellowley. If I planned screening a known “controversial” movie or indeed one that they had received local representation against us showing, we would if requested allow them a private screening before playdate. This was the sort of arrangement I had previously experienced with Newcastle’s Watch Committee when I was running the Tyneside Film Theatre.  From Arthur’s point of view, he got the Council to agree that as long as films had received a BBFC Certificate there would be no issues. When the film about the hardships of borstal life, SCUM (1979) was released many UK authorities imposed bans on the film in their area so when the renter approached Ces about playing it at Morpeth I felt it better to advise Arthur and he duly took it to the relevant Council Committee who took very little time to agree that as it had a BBFC X Certificate it could be screened. With that same year’s release of MONTY PYTHON’S LIFE OF BRIAN, it was Arthur who approached me to say that, as the local Council of Churches had raised objections to this film, the Licensing Committee felt it would need to view it. The members, about 12 of them, turned up for a special morning screening and after deliberating for a short time after viewing it informed me that they saw no reason for it not to be shown under its BBFC 14- Certificate rating. One of the Councillors on the Committee, one with a sense of humour, told me as he left that if anything he felt it was “his Civic duty to warn people that it was a load of rubbish and they’d be wasting their time watching it!” Thankfully that wasn’t the general response from the paying audiences we received during its run … possibly boosted a little by the judicious local press coverage making them aware that the Licensing Committee had requested a special screening! For once that wasn’t a story placed by me and I also felt it politic to decline to make any comment to media other than confirming that the Committee had indeed viewed the film and agreed for it to play with its BBFC rating and relevant age restrictions.

THE CHINA SYNDROME, also from 1979, saw the Councillors giving up their Sunday morning for another private preview at the Coli. The local Druridge Bay Association had been fighting a campaign for some time against this popular beauty spot just north of Morpeth being “considered” as a potential development site for a Nuclear Power Station. They asked me to arrange a private showing for their members and local Councillors to add emphasis to their campaign and the Film Distributor, aware that I had negotiated the Association would purchase admission tickets for all concerned at normal prices for said screening, were happy to go along with it. They were even more delighted with the tear-sheets of the local coverage we secured for this film’s promotion in the area and gave it a good mention in their in-house trade publication using my little suggestion to them that “occasionally an Independent Cinema can score the odd promotional point over the big boys of the Circuits”. It gave me extra bragging rights over local “Showmanship King” Peter Talbot who couldn’t resist commenting when next we met at one of his Press Shows that it was typical of “my Scottish streak” that I had gone as far as charging them for the tickets. He was even more gob-smacked when I told him I’d also got the Councillors to pay for their own refreshments and coffees! Peter, as well as being a great friend and supporter of my own efforts over the years we had known each other, was also on great working terms with another of my former sparring partners, David Elliot, who was at the time Managing the Odeon Edinburgh. Peter often went up to help David out on his big Premieres by doing the stage presentations and interviews of stars, an area David was slightly less comfortable with. Between them they couldn’t resist some “reciprocal nose rubbing in the dirt” over my CHINA SYNDROME point-scoring and threatening to get even. It took them 20 years to find the right opportunity when Edinburgh staged the UK premiere of ENTRAPMENT on June 30, 1999 attended by the two stars of the film Sir Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones while Michael Douglas, who was by then engaged to Ms Zeta-Jones, also turned up for the screening The next time our paths crossed they reminded me that I might have got a “nice story with a Michael Douglas film back in 1979” but Peter had interviewed him live on stage and also had Connery and Zeta Jones to talk with as well. I graciously conceded their superiority while suggesting it had taken them long enough to get even.

1979 was also memorable in proving that I had not lost my “disaster” touch linked to films playing at my cinemas. At the beginning of March that year we were playing a weepie, THE LAST SNOWS OF SPRING which had audiences leaving at the end of the show discretely trying to stem the flow of tears at the film’s final scene in which the little boy, suffering from an incurable medical complaint whom we have watched get worse throughout the drama, asks his mother: Please, mommy … hold my hand … before passing away in the final scene to the swell of violins on the soundtrack and the massed sniffling of ladies in the audience hastily drying their eyes before the lights came up and they started exiting the auditorium. Thanks to being heavily TV-advertisement promoted by the distributor for a widespread Tyne Tees TV area release this film had done a great week’s business. During the Saturday evening performance the Morpeth area suffered an intense snow blizzard that very quickly blocked all access and egress roads for the town. After locking up, Sue and I attempted to get through and had to return to the cinema to spend the night there. We passed the time by watching the Robert Powell version of THE 39 STEPS which had been readied for the following week’s screening and keeping warm with regular cups of coffee. Come morning we tried again to exit Morpeth aiming for the main A1 which we hoped might have been cleared but that Plan B ended abruptly as we followed the snow plough along the road and even it could not barge its way through the towering drifts blocking the road. Back at the Cinema I updated Ces on the predicament and gave him a heads up that the Sunday screening would only be for one film as the other screen’s programme was stuck at the Newcastle depot and impossible to access. He kindly said I could take Sue out for a good meal at lunchtime and put it through Petty Cash. And that is why I always remember the Coliseum’s presentation of THE LAST SNOWS OF SPRING … it proved I had not yet lifted my curse of real life choosing to imitate movies playing on my screens.

The latter part of the 1970’s into the early 1980’s saw many North East Cinemas close their doors for the last time due to the severe fall off in national admissions. The Pavilion in Westgate Road closed first in 1975 as a result of the decision by Odeon to triple the Pilgrim Street site as a more long term viable option, adding a fourth screen in 1980 on the old Stage area once graced by legends such as The Rolling Stones, Tom Jones, Diana Ross and Wizzard to name but four. Peter’s predecessor Freddie Bower famously had a run in with Mick Jagger backstage when the singer was caught relieving himself in a corridor, but was much more the Old School Gentlemen when greeting Diana Ross who had pulled up outside the Odeon in her white stretch limo and matching fur coat to get ready for her concert performance that night. I had a great view of this “arrival” from my position on Front of House at the Tyneside just across from the Odeon. The Queen’s Cinerama  theatre was run in tandem as a Multiple Unit with the Pilgrim Street site until it closed in February 1980 following the opening of the Pilgrim Street‘s fourth screen. Many may remember the wonderfully-decorated bar at the Queens with its wall-to-wall montage of famous film posters. This had been a labour of love for David Inglis, an enthusiastic member of the Management Team. As well as the Bar’s “interior décor job”, David often found himself roped in as the “go to man” for some of Freddie’s more elaborate showmanship stunts and without a doubt delivered an Oscar-worthy performance behind the bar at the Press Show of CABARET in full “Joel Gray MC” attire … including the lipstick. I kept thinking the guy dispensing the drinks looked familiar and then I realised it was David.

If you ever asked David to recall two “special days” in his long career at the Odeon they would involve Jodie Foster and Barbra Streisand. As a very young child star Jodie, accompanied by her mum, had come to Newcastle for the Press screening of FREAKY FRIDAY in 1976. The visit coincided with Newcastle’s Race Week at Gosforth Park where on that day one of the races was being sponsored by Odeon Cinemas. Included in Jodie’s itinerary was a “trip to the races” for which David had been assigned to act as a sort of additional chaperone for the duo since Peter would be tied up with the Rank Execs also attending the Race Meeting. Unable to place her own bet, being only 14, David placed Jodie’s for her on a horse she selected herself. Although it was only a 50p stake, the sheer delight on her face when her horse came in First and David later handed over her winnings was something he always cherished … as well as telling all and sundry what a really nice unspoiled child she was. His admiration of Streisand, both in terms of her singing voice and her sometimes wacky sense of humour in some of the movies she made, was sadly never rewarded with any personal encounters but when he retired there was one “special present” that all in the Press pack and Odeon staff unanimously agreed must be included and somehow we managed to pull it off. Tom Oxley, a local freelance photographer who regularly attended the Press Shows and was often engaged by the Odeon for Premiere photo-shoots, offered to create a “mock-up” head shot composite photo of Barbara and David (in Dress Suit and Bow Tie Front-of-House attire) and we had it framed. He was in tears after unwrapping it at the full-house reception Peter had laid on for him in the Odeon Management Suite which was attended by so many of the staff and colleagues David had worked with over the years.  

That “Suite”, in reality Peter’s office, saw action every year in late-December as he hosted a Christmas “drinkies and nibbles” session for the local Press and Media that was always well attended. As well as all the unit’s management team of Nicoline Dyram, Patricia Miller, Pearl Shipley and Anne Turnbull, senior staff members including Ann Curry, Sandra Hedley and Julie Limer would also be around ensuring drinks and nibbles were always encouraged to be partaken of. I considered myself honoured to always be included on the invitation list for this annual social highlight. Once the Press drifted off there was a much more relaxed atmosphere all round and on one memorable occasion, 1985, things got rather “bizarre”. The big Christmas movie that year was the Disney animated feature THE BLACK CAULDRON and Gurghi, one of the characters, proved very marketable for The House of Mouse with lots of little furry, stick-on Gurghis being supplied to the big City Centre cinemas as giveaways. A box of these had been “diverted” for the Christmas social and, once it was only Odeon Staff and special invitees present, the box emerged and was quickly used for an improv game of sticking Gurghis on whoever walked past when they weren’t looking. Given that some of these “positionings” ended up invading what would in the 21st Century be referred to as no-go Personal Space Invasion territory there was much hilarity and the socialising (and Gurghi-sticking) which was soon being enthusiastically joined into by Tony Ramsden and Greta Adamson. his PA/Secretary  They had heard all the commotion from their office along the corridor from Peter’s lair and popped along to see what they might be missing out on. And then came the moment someone, possibly a little over-lubricated by this time, suggested holding a “hairy chest contest” open to the male members present which would be judged by a blindfolded female staff member. From a line up that included David, James (one of the projection team) and Peter there was a surprising volunteer (well, dared to do it actually by his PA) in Tony Ramsden! This late runner and rider made it even more bizarre when the normally quiet and shy Anne Turnbull, who had been unaware of the participants as she was being blindfolded for her task in one of the adjoining offices, managed somehow to declare Tony the winner … after a thorough consideration of all the four chests proffered up for her tactile evaluation. Somehow, everyone thereafter saw the Regional manager in a far more human light instead of the sometimes pompous and aloof authoritarian figure he normally exuded. This 1985 Festive Party was talked about for years afterwards by those who attended but somehow, despite valiant attempts, was never topped! It should be acknowledged with equal reverence that the other “Must Christmas Party” to attend was Molly Scott’s when she was at the Essoldo Twins in Westgate Road. Although far less raucous an occasion it was none the less a nice way to get into the Christmas Spirit.

Meanwhile back in the “normal operational cinema world” at the end of the 1970’s and start of the 1980’s, the Grim Reaper of Falling Admissions in addition to bringing down the shutters on Odeon’s, ABC‘s and Classic’s in surrounding townships, the Star Studios 1-4 in Newcastle and many local Independent Cinemas meant this reduction in numbers of screens in the area also having an impact on Westrex. With fewer cinemas nationally now calling on their engineers for routine servicing and emergency call-outs for equipment breakdown they were forced to close many of their regional offices including the Newcastle one which serviced the Coli. Thankfully one of their best engineers, Ralph Wimshurst, offered to carry on taking care of Morpeth and indeed would carry on, long after officially retiring, until the Coli finally closed its doors in 2001. Ralph, who stayed in South Shields, would always come out at an emergency telephone call from me. He seldom failed to get us back on screen even if we’d had to cancel a matinee performance on our thankfully rare breakdowns in time for the evening show. Similar exemplary service was provided by another unsung hero of the cinema scene in terms of picking up our film copies from the Film Depot and after the film’s run providing an efficient return service to the main depot or even a transfer to another local cinema for them to screen. That was Gordon Richardson. His father had started NORTH EAST FILM TRANSPORT in the heyday of cinemas and on retirement passed the business on to Gordon. Based in Workington his twice weekly route serviced cinemas in the Lake District and Carlisle moving cross country to Durham and Sunderland as well as various units in the greater Newcastle conurbation and parts of Northumberland. The area used to be sourced from the depot in Newcastle but here again the drop-off in cinemas had led to this being closed and the area annexed with Scotland in being serviced from Glasgow. In all weathers, Gordon got through with that one exception being the infamous LAST SNOWS OF SPRING weekend! With both Ralph and Gordon I always ensured they were paid in cash on the day of providing the service unlike some other Independent Exhibitors who sometimes took advantage of their good natures and were often tardy in paying up. Both of these hard workers were sufficiently adept at applying the relevant pressure tactics to “improve such delays”. Nothing focussed the mind more than Gordon sitting outside a cinema refusing to drop off the latest school holiday blockbuster unless the manager/owner cleared the accrued balance owing or, in  Ralph’s case, declining to come out at all to repair their projection breakdown unless said issue was resolved and the relevant payments for previous work handed over in full!

The other big change unit managers soon had to adapt to were changes in Censorship classification (or Certification as the new buzz word became known) for films. From 1951 there had been three classifications of U, A and X. For U (Universal) all ages were admitted while for A, signifying an Adult film, any child under 11 was required to be accompanied by a Parent or Guardian. The more restrictive X Certificate meant no one under the age of 16 was allowed to be admitted. Those old enough to remember those days will possibly share the same memories I have previously detailed in terms of securing access to X Films or, alternatively where appropriate, discount prices for the lesser restrictive categories where available.  I must add in mitigation that I saw my first X-Cert film, THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS at The Playhouse, and I had asked my Mum’s permission to go as the following day would be my 16th Birthday. I had “pre-prepared” what I would say to the cashier when she challenged me (that I was actually 15 years and 364/365ths old) and look pleadingly at her in the hope of gaining access. I wasn’t even challenged!

In 1970 the now four categories became U (with no age restrictions), A (implying a more “adult” movie as a guide to parents but again with no required age restriction), the new AA Certificate which required tickets be sold only to those 14 years of age and over while the X Certificate that previously had required a minimum age of 16 to be admitted for such films was raised to an 18-years of age requirement. This new ratings system provided a new challenge for box office cashiers (and Managers) to gauge the eligibility for 14 and over and then again the 18 and over potential ticket purchasers. The former I admit always proved the more difficult as there was a whole range of quick sprouters up and also late developers. In the other category the amount of facial stubble (as opposed to soft downy facial fluff) helped with the boys but the girls, once they’d slapped on their make-up and war paint for the evening out, were all but impossible to work out with any degree of accuracy. In terms of the Coli, having a fairly loyal and regular clientele meant you soon started to recognise the “variable age” brigade who swore on everything sacred to them they were under 14 for a child ticket one week - llke many cinemas I had set this as the demarcation line for eligibility for the child price of admission - and then were totally indignant to be challenged for an 18 on their following visit. My simple solution was for those who were 100% guilty of trying to play this system to allow them into the AA and X if they appeared to qualify (or could prove same with an official document such as a Passport) but never again allow them a child ticket for a U or A. If they persisted in their “flexibility of age” tactic or even got too lippy then, again because they were so identifiable, we would impose a ban on getting in at all for a couple of weeks and should they become more stroppy that would be extended for a further period of time. It was amazing how quickly they learned even though such tactics would probably not have been possible in many other cinemas!

In 1982 these categories would undergo further revisions to U, PG, 15 and 18. The “PG” became almost the same in guidance for parents as the old A Certificate while the 15 was judged a more appropriate “demarcation line” for gauging subject matter suitable for maturing youngsters. This allowed the “X” classification, which had been given various “interpretations of meaning and subject matter” over the decades since first being introduced, to be simplified as specifying the age (18 and over) the material content of such films was deemed acceptable for by the BBFC examiners. It also meant many exhibitors readjusted their Child Concession age to Under 15 and made it slightly easier to gauge potential ticket purchasers seeking such a ticket.  There would be further confusion on the way for cinemagoers (and new problems for Cinema Staff) from 1989 when a further demarcation line would be drawn separating the PG (guidance for parents effectively) from that between the 15 and 18 restrictive categories with the introduction of a 12 Certificate or 12A Certificate requiring in the case of the former a requirement for children to have reached that age to be allowed in and in the latter the “option” for under 12’s to be admitted if “accompanied by an adult“, effectively returning to the potential scenario of the 1951 re-jig and again (in a far more high risk world) re-introducing the danger of under age children asking total strangers to “take them in to the cinema” if their parents were not prepared to do so. With the buck stopping at the unit Manager - who was required under the terms of the cinema’s licence to ensure compliance with these strictures (and in the extreme scenario could face prosecution for not doing so) - it could be fractious at times explaining such measures of refusal to irate parents who thought they could just turn up, buy the child’s ticket and then head off for their own night out.

If you were on the ball you usually had a good idea which films were likely to cause problems but the Michael Keaton starrer BATMAN THE MOVIE (1989), the first to be awarded the 12A certificate, proved extremely so. Thankfully the public eventually started to become familiar with the new classification system and there were no casualties in the management ranks. When cinema managers did occasionally get together at social gatherings in those days there would be many tales of harrowing experiences with age issues on certain films. One of my favourites came from a former colleague from my post-Tyneside working days, Norma Yates. At the Classic Twins in West Monkseaton, due to staff shortages, she had found herself acting as the box office cashier during the run of SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER on its X-Certificate (16 years of age and over) initial release in 1977. With the Bee Gees music tracks from the film’s soundtrack playing non-stop on radio and the “allure” of John Travolta, all the younger teenagers were trying to get in by brazenly “bigging up their ages”. One young girl who was turned away resolutely insisted she was old enough so Norma agreed she could buy a ticket if the girl, who she considered to be about 12 or 13 at most, came back with a passport containing a photo and evidence of her age. Thinking she’d never see the youngster again, when presented with said document, it showed the young lady to be 24 so Norma graciously apologised and explained the strictures of licensing and allowed her to buy a ticket. 

In trying to address the severe falling admission trend of the later 1970’s some lateral thinking had taken place in Wardour Street where most of the major film companies were based. Towards the end of the decade some experimentation took place with release dates for films, which since almost time immemorial as far as most UK exhibitors were concerned always started on a Sunday. By the end of 1978 this had moved to films starting their runs on Thursdays. I never quite worked out the reasoning for this particular day to be selected (and neither could Peter at the Odeon or many other managers I respected) but one thing it did allow more certainty over was that by the Monday morning you were in a far better position, based on a film’s weekend box office figures (when the bulk of the week’s takings were produced), to make a more informed decision about holding a film over for a further week than you had been when trying to make this decision on a Wednesday based on the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday takes which were always the weakest. This initial experiment had been widely commented on throughout the country and eventually the Wardour Street collective listened to exhibitors and moved the start date to Fridays from 1983. The changes also made life a little easier for film carriers and allowed duty managers a less busy night of the week on which to complete all the ancillary paperwork insisted upon by Film Renters and those other executives/area managers/accountants who always insisted on being provided with such documentation! The one small inconvenience was in meeting Press Copy deadlines for newspapers when sometimes the line up for the following Thursday/Friday couldn’t be finalised until a Tuesday if the Monday of that week was a Bank Holiday. In the great scheme of things this was only rarely an issue and could be lived with given the other clear business monitoring and projections possible based on more solid data from the weekend takes. It possibly was also responsible for the global measuring yardstick of a film’s potential success by the Distributors starting to rely and focus on “The Opening weekend take” Lest you doubt this, I have it on reliable authority from many of my Film renter contacts who often had to pick up telephonic communications from all their cinemas of the daily admissions and net take for that day and then pass them on (after collating a total figure for each of the cinemas they had on their patch) for that day to their Head Office who overnight had to fax them to the Hollywood Studio bases ultimately owning the films. On the basis of the UK total, the Europe figure, the Far East figure - and also of course the North America figure (and other global markets) - the Studio hierarchy would decide to green light some of their future production slate as they knew (with reasonable accuracy) how much revenue would be flowing in from their current films out playing in Cinemas.

The Noble Organisation’s chain had likewise been affected with all of their cinemas closed by 1982 … apart from The Coliseum. In an effort to play fair with Ces for his hard work over the years they made him the offer of managing the Coliseum and had an equally bizarre notion that I would be happy to transfer to Bingo Management! As I was aware Ces had been offered the position with a proviso that “if he didn’t like the job, he could have an early retirement severance payment instead!”, I suggested to Alan Nichol, the senior Operations Director for Noble’s many activities, that they would still need a projectionist (a job I was doubling my management role with anyway). They agreed I could carry on with that until Ces “made his mind up”. It would prove a wise decision for them - and one I am sure they would have been well aware of - in that I could continue providing the necessary “discrete supervisory guidance” to keep the Coli’s business levels at the profitable levels they had achieved and been one of the main reasons this unit had survived the cull. Given how effectively Ces stretched out the closure of the other cinemas and then having to deal with all ongoing paperwork etc.etc. it would be late 1983 before he actually took up the position.

Ces’s idea of managing a cinema - and here I suggest esteemed former colleagues partake of a stiff beverage - was to come in about four o’clock (on our normal evening only operational policy), do the banking at night and once that task was done set off for home leaving me, or one of the cashiers, to shut up shop. He also decided he wouldn’t work weekends, which again suited me as it ensured the main non-holiday weeks’ business driver would continue efficiently. On my nights off, which I was darned sure I was going to take, Ces was left to cope on his own and deal with any unhappy customer issues or technical issues. According to my staff he was soon all at sea and totally clueless. He had been fortunate in taking the position in the fallow months of November, December and January and had no idea what was about to hit him come the February Mid-Term, a school holiday period which was always one of the busiest weeks of the year and which this year would shatter all previous records. A lot of my patient waiting had been encouraged by my trusted confidante Peter Talbot at the Odeon who, once he got over the shock of what had been proposed to me, suggested hanging in and waiting for “my replacement” to realise the real skills needed to run the Coliseum operation as successfully as it had been. As with much other guidance and professional help Peter had proffered over the years since he arrived at Pilgrim Street when we had really got to know each other professionally it proved to be 100% on the money.

The film playing that week in 1985 was BACK TO THE FUTURE which had opened on our non-Holiday screening pattern the week prior to the blitz. Even then, from the business being done for the evening shows and the Wednesday and Saturday matinees, I knew Ces would not cope. The queues stretched right around the large car park area separating the Leisure Centre from the Coliseum Complex and with the cinema’s limited capacity you had to be totally pro-active in informing the queues when you were down to singles only or absolutely full. That is something true Cinema Managers thrive on. With matinees every day on the holiday week, and my two days off to be scheduled in for Wednesday and Thursday, Manager Dawson was about to get his eyes opened extremely wide in dealing with the Coli’s 100% capacity family audiences used to being professionally handled by me. It only took the one week of this for Ces to realise that a happy early retirement would prove far better for his long term health! The following week Alan Nichol asked me to come and see him at Noble’s South Shields Head Offices to offer me the Manager/Booker position that, effectively, I had been doing since 1976! I graciously accepted. I got a slight pay rise but above all had complete control of film bookings and even better, after my raising that some seat refurbishment was long overdue after over 10 years of often very full houses, he said he would allocate 10% of any profit’s the cinemas made for me to spend on refurbishments as I wished. Unfortunately, due to further changes on ownership affecting the Coli, I only enjoyed this luxury for three years but did manage in that time to get Cinema One’s seating refurbished (again in red) and Cinema Two’s now grubby and tatty orange replaced with a more serviceable dark brown fabric covering. I also managed to persuade Alan to let me have a Coca Cola post mix unit fitted to the kiosk and persuaded Johnny Wrens to provide me with a hot dog steamer. Both these range expansions of our sales operation also had a direct impact on my share of the sales commission bonus which now included the 7½% Ces had kept for himself while generously (!!!) splitting the remaining as 1.5% to Manager, 0.5% to Assistant Manager and 0.5% for sales staff. This commission only applied to ice cream and soft drinks sales (due to their higher overall profit margin) but with the post-mix and hot dog operation providing higher margins than those there were no objections to the lines being included in the sales commission incentive scheme now being implemented.

While getting the ear of the MD in that face to face meeting I outlined some programming variations I wanted to try out to see if they might add to the bottom line. My trial of Late Night Shows (again a targeted experiment of three titles) wasn’t impressive enough for me to justify continuing as probably by this time, with DVD and more TV channel options, that market was no longer as viable as it once had been. The same could be said for the specific one-off programming for Saturday Matinee family shows but in this case the lack of viability was more due to the Film Renters now having adopted a “25% against a minimum guarantee figure” terms for such shows. This “guarantee” had been creeping up steadily over recent years and now stood at £60 plus VAT. When you were price-targeting at less than normal admission prices for these shows it proved difficult to cover the costs and so they too were soon dropped. Instead, again thanks to slightly changing mentalities in Wardour Street (possibly brought on by their desperation at seeing annual admissions dropping so steeply?) they were willing to take tentative steps into allowing a degree of mixed scheduling during school holiday weeks where the “family title” would play afternoon and tea-time and a more adult feature (more often than not from the same distributor at this stage in the “experiment”) played the main evening show. That I was happy enough to accept the splitting of our sliding scale used to calculate overall film hire percentages in the ratio of these differing numbers of shows possibly helped a little but in any case with the change in “booker” for the Coli they knew I was much more flexible in putting on extra matinees and teatime shows - even on Sundays - than Ces had been.

As part of my new “position” I had to collate a Monthly Report for Alan Nichol that would be presented to the Board. Basically it was nothing more than the sort of “Business projections vs. actualities” that had been part of Odeon Management procedures. To do this effectively I asked for a breakdown of the “head office charges” levied specifically against the Cinema Operation including the electric and other utility charges. At a Press Show sometime later Peter and I got into a discussion about “electricity bills” and it was clear that some “adjustments” were being made to up my share of the utilities charge to benefit the viability of the Bingo and arcade operations as I was paying more for my electricity used than the Odeon in Pilgrim Street was and they now had four screens and operated for far longer hours than I did! I did ask about having separate metering put in but this was turned down by the powers that be. At least they were aware I knew that my “true operational profit” should have been much higher had this apportionment not been applied. The other interesting comparison to emerge from my discussion with Peter was that he only paid one Cinema Licence Fee to Newcastle City Council which covered his four screens and it was less than the charge Morpeth Council was levying on each of my two screens with their total capacity of 264 against the Odeon’s much larger total seating capacity. Once again I got short shrift - this time from Arthur Yellowley, my Licensing Contact at Morpeth Council. When I raised this with him, he stated the local precept had been set by the Council at the maximum permissible and was chargeable for each screen. Talk about odds being stacked against a local community entertainment provision!

Despite this the Coli still managed to hold its own in the hostile trading environment of these years and the freedom the Noble Directors had granted me allowed me to hone my programming skills and my tactical negotiating skills with the various Film renter contacts I dealt with to try and secure the earliest possible access to releases for Morpeth. My good relations with Peter and some other Newcastle contacts meant I could ring them up once their Monday holdover discussions had been finalised and “become aware” of titles finishing their runs. If there was a title I wanted to play, armed with this foreknowledge, I would contact my Film Renter contact for that film and suggest picking it up myself from the cinema spooling it off and play it from the next day at Morpeth which effectively gave the film an extra week’s earning potential. At the end of my run we often arranged with The Wallaw at Blyth, now being run by Bob Milner - who also had the Classic Low Fell on his previous management experience CV - for them to pick it up from me at the end of my run.  This kept us both happy and fairly close to original release dates with the arrangement sometimes working in reverse once Bob completed the triple screening of the Blyth cinema.

One of the regular negotiations I had to undertake with Film Renters was over the Coliseum’s “sliding scale” - the basis on which film takes were charged depending on how well they performed. The basis of the scale was to agree a “base figure” being set that would cover the cinema’s essential costs such as staff wages, utilities, local rates and licence fees etc. Up to this base, the film hire charge would be 25% of that net take figure (after VAT had been adjusted for) and would then rise by increments of an extra 5% for each agreed additional revenue increment amount taken by that film at the box office up to a maximum of 50% of this above base figure level. The exceptions, first introduced with JAWS , but swiftly adopted by all the other Renters for their “Blockbusters”, could see revenues above this 50% figure charged at rates ranging from 60% through to 90% of this slice. As long as the slide was reviewed regularly to take account of rising wages and utilities costs it worked from my perspective quite equitably as, like most well run cinemas, I had a good ancillary sales operation that the Film renters, despite decades of trying, had never been allowed to get their greedy little paws on! If the film brought in the customers then my sales operation would benefit, as would the all important “bottom line”. As a general rule of thumb I would negotiate with Columbia or UIP on a biannual basis for an uplift, supplying the most recent “running costs data”, and thankfully this was never refused. The new scale agreed by them would then be communicated to all the other renters - as they tended to act in tandem - and accepted as the one for all bookings at the Coliseum. In the inter-biannual year I usually adjusted any admission price rises I felt were needed to maintain our profitability. There were some horror stories bandied around by other exhibitors about being hard done by the renters over scale adjustments but all I can say is that I always played fair with them in terms of not going back on “verbal agreements to play films” and always tried to maximise the potential takes we’d be sharing and they in turn responded with equal fairness over product dates and sliding scale adjustments to reflect changes since the previous review.

Over this “First decade” of the Coli, while not being on the same status level as those Peter was able to boast at Pilgrim Street, we could count a few celebrities among our “regular customer base”. Local Tyne-Tees Weatherman Bob Johnson was a fairly regular visitor as was footballer John Barnes during his period at Newcastle United. Barnes would arrive with his own children and often with additional young friends of said brood. He would always treat them all to treats at the kiosk and, being a well known figure, was more than happy, when recognised by other young customers, to sign his autograph for them and talk about recent matches. From athletics, Steve Cram sometimes arrived but tended to be more private if recognised which was absolutely fine as all they were ever treated as by me was exactly the same as any other paying customer. Local politician Sir William Elliot (after whose family the town’s Elliot Bridge was named) turned up to see YOUNG WINSTON while Lib-Dem politician (and later Party Leader) Alan Beith could always be relied on to turn up when we played a Dolly Parton film. THE BEST LITTLE WHOREHOUSE IN TEXAS was the first “sighting” of him and stuck in the memory because at the end of the performance he asked me if we had any more of her films lined up! No prizes for him being spotted again when we screened 9 to 5 a few years later. Some of my younger (female) staff informed me that a certain popular TV duo just breaking through with BYKER GROVE sometimes attended but I can only take their word that we had indeed been patronised by Ant and Dec. Ironically this, now extremely famous, duo would feature in my career’s Grand Finale of which more at the appropriate juncture.

Another “future local dignitary” in our early years was a very charming lady who attended regularly during the school holidays with her hubby and brood of growing children. It wasn’t until many years later, once we actually started accepting cheque payments, when I was checking the signature against her guarantee card, that I realised she was now Jane Percy, Duchess of Northumberland as a result of her husband having recently inherited the Dukedom title and ownership of Alnwick Castle. To a certain group of film fans this “residence” was immortalised by being used as “Hogwarts” in the early HARRY POTTER movies, a shrewd business decision on the part of the Duke as it not only brought in immediate “location shooting revenue“ from Warner Brothers Studios who made the film series but in later years boosted visitor numbers to the Castle and its grounds thanks to visits by Potter Fans from around the world. Others may prefer visiting to appreciate Her Ladyship’s magnus opus in creating the now world-famous Alnwick Gardens on the Estate. In addition to all her other busy schedule of activities, the Duchess still makes time for the many local charities she works so diligently with and for.

If all these “personages” were prepared to travel from Alnwick and various other parts of Northumberland to the Coli, we must have been doing something right.

During the latter period up to 1984 I was saddened in some ways that William Noble and Albert Gray had decided to step away from any direct involvement in running the Noble Organisation and pass their baton over to the next generation. This duo were the only business owners throughout my tenure of the Coliseum Cinema who fully appreciated that, as this was a totally different business from their main Bingo and amusement Arcades experience, they should be “hands off” and allow the manager they had clearly trusted from the get-go to get on with making profits for them in a business model whose complexities and at times irregular business operation levels, they had little previous understanding of. In some ways this was akin to the attitude of Odeon during my “learning years” where GM’s were trusted to make business decisions for their units … as long as the bottom line justified this freedom.

The one final memory I have of Mr. Noble was an occasion when he had been visiting Morpeth and popped up to my office before sitting himself down (immaculately suited and wearing his “traditional” crocodile shoe footwear) as he had often done for a social chat and to talk generally about any films coming up. On this occasion somehow the conversation turned to holidays and he suddenly came over a bit dreamy-eyed over a holiday he had always wanted to take with his wife … to visit the Pyramids in Egypt. He had always been too busy but having made the decision to step back he said this year he had it all planned and would finally fulfil that ambition. It was the last time I saw him but I hope he fully enjoyed it before his death a few years later. That post-William era would see many changes that affected the Coli but those we will come to after taking the appropriate chronological “Intermission” to cover the amazing things that took place to celebrate British Film Year in 1985-86.

CHAPTER Eight - BRITISH FILM YEAR 1985-86

Overture and Beginnings

In the decade of the 1950’s recorded UK cinema admissions were 1,385 million at its start. With the incursion of television into the home, by 1960 this figure had dropped to 500 million and by 1970 only 193million attended. Given this general pattern of escalating decline in annual cinema admissions - with 65 million in 1983 and only 54 million the following year - there had been much serious debate involving various quarters of the Industry as to how to regenerate an interest in cinemagoing and energise potential audiences to re-engage with the Big Screen experience again rather than watching movies via VHS on the much smaller home TV screens. Behind the scenes the Film Distributors had been holding barnstorming sessions with the main Exhibitors of Odeon, Thorn-EMI (as ABC then traded) and Classic to work out a cost-effective way to reverse the downward spiral. Out of this early planning came the concept of a year-long national campaign of promotional activities in main regional cities being tied in with the best of the year’s releases aimed to raise awareness that “Cinema was the best place to watch a film”. Initial planning involved setting up Regional committees of Cinema Managers from both Circuits and Independents who would drive the local activities and promotions in their areas. In seeking out notable figureheads to become the “public face of the campaign” they probably had little difficulty in persuading Sir Richard Attenborough and David Puttnam to accept the leading roles and both proved full of enthusiasm for their “baby”.

Providing the driving force in the Tyne and Wear and Northumberland area during the early pre-planning was, as you would expect, Peter Talbot from the Odeon. He had been given a free hand and full enthusiastic support from Regional manager Tony Ramsden to enlist support from as many North-East cinema managers as possible. One of Peter’s first phone calls, not unexpectedly, was to me asking if I could pop in to the Odeon for a barn-storming session with him and Tony to work out how we could organise and recruit our North East England Committee and then work out what we might actually schedule during the year to embellish and retain impetus so that local media would not lose interest had it been confined to the single BFY Roadshow Bus week’s visit of activities being proposed as “the one highspot” by the Official British Film Year promotion organised by its National Organisation Team. Peter had been involved in some pre-BYF Launch discussions with Nicola Hervey, our “official National Events Organiser contact”, so we knew our initial sole input from the “national drive” was scheduled as being the week when the special “Film Year Bus” would roll into town and stage various film-related promotional activities (competitions, giveaways and promotional video trailers for the visiting public to look at) around this focal point. There would be two “STARS” guaranteed to be present on the opening day to get things under way to which local media would be invited.

Our initial thoughts were that a BRITISH FILM YEAR promotion that only encompassed a single week when the BFY Bus was in town - in our case some six months after the National Launch of BFY- needed to be embellished with as many other “exposures” of the BFY’s “Cinema is the Best Place to see a Film” message to retain the media, and the public’s awareness and enthusiasm for this “year long” cinema experience promotion. With typical ODEON-think our first decision was to select from the year’s scheduled releases a few major titles that we could embellish up as Regional Premieres and that those could be staged on perhaps a three-month interval at some of the larger local Cinemas which would allow opportunities to maintain such media and public interest. In addition, we looked at some of the major public events staged annually in Newcastle that it might be possible to latch onto as well as pursuing, through Peter’s many local contracts, the possibility of staging a mini-BFY Film week-style event in the City’s Eldon Square Shopping Centre as well as perhaps having the Lord Mayor carrying out an “Official Opening” for the North East BFY to coincide with the National Launch date set for March 1985.

Our initial “working schedule” for possibilities included a local Premiere of A PASSAGE TO INDIA (which was being used as the “kick off” big event in London for the National Launch) shortly after that London date of March 17th. Later in the year the latest Bond movie A VIEW TO A KILL stood out as a “must use” option while for a Grand Finale to the year we felt it worth trying to tie in with a local Premiere of A CHORUS LINE. Around these “tent pole events” we explored participating in the Lord Mayor’s Parade of Floats, creating a “Film Tent” area during the Tyneside Summer Exhibition as well as regularly generating movie themed competitions (tied to topical releases) in conjunction with local Newspapers that would offer cinema admission passes for local cinemas as prizes. Our local Press jumped at the opportunity to provide the coverage we had hoped to achieve and even provided a surprising challenge which proved one of the unexpected highlights of the year.

Needless to say Peter and I held many head to head meetings bouncing ideas around and running up large phone bills when face to face sessions weren’t possible. It was as well I had pre-discussed my participation in BFY with the Noble Organisation’s directors and had received their full support or questions may have been asked as to why the Coliseum phone bills had suddenly shot up during this period! When it came to recruiting the local committee, we were quite clear about wanting to spread participation as widely around the North East as possible and to include as many of the suburban Circuit and Independent screens as possible in its membership representation. We also extended an invitation to Fred Brookes the current Director of my old stomping ground, the Tyneside Film Theatre, who was more than happy to join in and indeed benefited with a nice Premiere of his own to tie in with a Film Festival event he was trying to organise in the autumn.

With our “vision” firming up - and passing the scrutiny of Tony Ramsden and our National Events Coordinator - we were delighted when all our invitations to attend a “setting it up” gathering were accepted. Odeon were represented by Peter for Newcastle and Brett Childes from Sunderland, Thorn-EMI were represented by Terry Charnock, who was now in charge of both the Haymarket in its closing months and the Twin screens in Westgate Road and his Thorn-EMI managerial colleague from Sunderland Norman Collier. Including the Classic suburban unit at Monkseaton meant renewing acquaintance with the formidable Norma Yates while myself, Geoff Hornsby (now Playhouse Whitley Bay), Rod Dickman (Forum Hexham) and Bob Milner (Wallaw Blyth) would boost the “independent cinemas” representation. Also attending that day was Nicola Hervey, with whom Peter and I had been in regular contact while bouncing ideas around to sound out what assists in terms of “celebrities” she might be able to persuade to make the journey North for some of these proposed extra activities. 

As the aims of BFY and our very tentative schedule were presented to the group, all expressed a willingness to assist as and when required with some of the “extra” events we were working on and also in terms of providing whatever Guest Passes (for use as newspaper and media competition prizes) might be needed. To give the Committee a formal structure the group needed to elect a Chairman and Deputy which, rather unsurprisingly, ended up with Peter being the uncontested nominee for Chairman and my good self being elected as his Deputy. It was probably at this session that the “official BFY acronym” for such committees of Film Year Regional Organising Groups was revealed by Nicola which immediately led to Peter and I being referred to as Chief FROG and Deputy FROG respectively. It was agreed that Peter and I would try and firm up some of our planned schedule in time for the National Launch on March 17th when the Press release would indicate some of the activities being worked on around the Country.

As that National Launch would be tied in to a West End Premiere of David Lean’s A PASSAGE TO INDIA this was considered a natural tent pole title for our “official  North East FROG Launch”. Being a Thorn-EMI release this would take place at this Circuit’s Westgate Road unit on Thursday April 18th where Peter and I had assumed our input would be minimal and we could concentrate on embellishing the rest of the day with other media-grabbing add-ons. How wrong can you be? Somewhere shortly after the inauguration set up of the local Committee, Peter got a call from Thorn EMI’s Regional Manager Lionel Johnston asking for a meeting with the two of us about perhaps taking on most of the actual organisation and promotion for this Premiere as they felt it might be “outside the expertise” of their manager. This led to a sort of other world scenario where an Odeon General Manager and a local Independent Cinema Manager would be promoting, at the request of a rival chain’s executives, a Premiere being staged at that major circuit’s regional key unit. For me this was a bit of a déjà vu moment almost as bizarre as Ted and I, back in our Odeon Edinburgh days, coming to the aid of 20th Century Fox’s promotions manager Tom Poulton with the staging of the World Premiere of THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE at the Caley Cinema!

Knowing that Nicola was working on some major stars possibly attending our launch day, Peter made an approach through the Lord Mayor’s Secretary to sound out the possibility of Roy Burgess, the current holder of that position, possibly attending the North East Premiere of  A PASSAGE TO INDIA as a Guest of Honour. We were delighted that not only was he more than happy to accept the invitation but also that he offered to host an Official Reception marking the local BFY Launch at the Mansion House earlier that day. Given that Civic arrivals at Premieres can sometimes run behind schedule, Peter threw me a couple of curve balls to work on in terms of them being incorporated into an ever-burgeoning “Orders of the Day” schedule. He envisioned the Lord Mayor arriving at the Westgate Road Twins in the Civic car and this coinciding with a ceremonial ribbon cutting outside the cinema at which point BFY logo balloons would be released. My learning curve into such matters ended up in a whole series of telephone calls (on Thorn-EMI’s phone bill this time!) first of all about securing a balloon company willing to print the BFY logo on such items and then tracking down a supplier of Helium gas cylinders to inflate them with on the day. The first two were possible, although a lot costlier than we had anticipated, but the real game-changer for ruling this stunt out was when the Helium supplier asked if we had secured permission from Newcastle Airport to launch the balloons? The airport’s Air Traffic Control was sympathetic to my request but made clear that the time slot could not be cast-iron guaranteed as priority would have to be given to aircraft take-offs and arrivals over “windows” for such mass balloon launches which could, depending on random wind direction, present a hazard to these priority operations.

The Cunning Plan B, to keep the audience in the auditorium entertained while awaiting the arrival of the Lord Mayor’s party proved a bit easier to pull together. As the film clearly had an Indian setting we wanted to create some of that Country’s culture and, through media contacts, managed to locate an Indian Dance Troupe who leapt at the chance to perform an in-costume dance routine on stage. I spent a lot of time in the run up to the Premiere trying to pronounce their name as I would be hosting the pre-Lord Mayor arrival part of the “Stage Presentations”. I ended up writing it down phonetically - just as they pronounced it for me - and can still, many years later, say MASHRAK KAY CHERAAG (and in this case Spelling is definitely not correct!) Our other pre-show idea was to recreate the Good Old Days in some cinemas when an organ would arise from the pit and entertain the audience. Although the rising from the pit was no longer possible, we did manage to find someone willing to perform … albeit using a modern electric organ. But more of that later!

Given these embellishments, it soon became clear we would need some technical assists and a spotlight or two. With relations between Pilgrim Street’s Odeon and the Theatre Royal always cordial we were able, as often happened for Odeon Premieres, to borrow a spare spot. Conscious of not wanting to transgress too much on Thorn-EMI areas of control, we put this proposal to Lionel Johnson who immediately made arrangements for my old sparring partner from Edinburgh days Davy Bain - now their North East and Scotland Technical Manager and Engineer - to come down for the day of the Premiere with extra microphones and sound equipment to help out as needed.

Eldon Square’s management team often worked with the Odeon on promotions so that proved an easy one to firm up. It would be the week on the Whit Holiday school break when we would set up a display area in the Centre that would include TV monitors promoting BFY and trailers for upcoming movies. The publicity departments of those releases were also more than happy to provide us with giveaway promotional items and some higher value prizes to offer as “Special Competition Prizes” for which entry would be via print outs of a special Film Quiz. Like the preparations of trailer reels these ended up in my in-tray! The Lord Mayor’s Float Parade would enable a promotion of product for the Summer Holiday and Autumn Releases with again opportunities for promotional giveaways. Thanks to Wallaw Blyth Manager Bob Milner we were able to secure the float lorry free of charge courtesy of Alan Fergusson, the boss of the national transport company that was based in the town. He had bought the Wallaw  to preserve it as an asset for the people of Blyth shortly after it had shut down - following Peter Cargill’s unsuccessful period of running it on behalf of another ownership - and leased out its operation to Bob. The only condition was that the BFY Float on the lorry should prominently display the existence and current programming of The Wallaw Cinema in Blyth. For the Tyneside Summer Exhibition I knew from my Radio Tyneside participation connections that they always had a marquee there on site so it wasn’t too difficult to secure Station Director Dave Nicholson’s agreement to BFY sharing it! As well as all the radio broadcasts they’d be doing we’d provide some prizes and giveaways to embellish his activities and I’d organise a Celebrity Quiz Challenge with a team of cinema managers taking on some of the local media film critics and radio reviewers. Not that it was needed, but an extra sweetener for Dave was inviting him to our opening Premiere of A PASSAGE TO INDIA and later events in the year with Radio Tyneside always being given access to some of the personalities who might be lured by Nicola, or indeed Peter, to come oop North to support our local efforts in BFY promotion. A similar invitation to attend other prestige premieres throughout the year would also be extended to all the managers who had agreed to join the NEFROG and help out at some of the ancillary events planned.

In due course, having already firmed up these activities, we would look to continue the momentum for the later parts of the year once we had ensured the initial three months events ran without any glitches.

We soon learned from Nicola that we were way ahead of anyone else in the number of events we were hoping to stage as most other Committees were only concentrating on the week the BFY Roadshow visited their patch. This discrepancy in planned activities possibly explained why, in her official invitation to Peter and I to attend a briefing session and Variety Club Luncheon in London on Tuesday April 2 (with overnight accommodation and travel as well as the Luncheon in the Ballroom of the Hilton International Hotel, Park Lane paid for by BFY’s launch budget provided by the Industry), she had assumed a new “official title” of President of the NE-FROG Appreciation Society!

The morning activities at that London gathering were taken up with general introductions, socialising with other FROG members and photo-poses with Sir Richard Attenborough and David Puttnam for each of the Regional Frog chairs (and Vice-Chairs) against the official BFY Logo for promotional use in our local newspapers as and when required. This was followed with a sort of round robin reveal of planned activities. In some cases Peter’s presentation may well have stirred some Committees to stretch their horizons a little further than just their official BFY Roadshow Week! It was actually nice from a personal perspective to renew acquaintance with Alan Mason (formerly DGM at Manchester when I was seconded for a summer in 1969) who was now GM at Brighton and to get an update on Brian Bint (now in America) from his local competitor with Odeon, George Cranfield whose fiefdom was Liverpool!

The graft and photo-posing completed, it was time to be fed! For someone not used to attending such events I must admit to having been just a little star-struck with the likes of Sir John Mills, his wife Mary and daughter Hayley, Jenny Agutter, Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Bryan Forbes and wife Nanette Newman, Nigel Havers, Frankie Howard, John Hurt, Ben Kingsley, Ron Moody, David Suchet, Sylvia Sims and of course Sir Richard Attenborough on the “Top Table” platform looking down on the rest of the guests. In terms of sharing tables, Peter had Richard Johnson on his so I may have trumped him with David Puttnam on mine! As usual for such functions a raffle was held (with costs of tickets being donated to the Variety Club Charity) and while typically unlucky myself I had a momentary flashback of David Inglis’ Jodie Foster “win” at the Races story as the same beaming faced excitement transformed Hayley Mills’ face when one of her tickets came up.

Nicola, possibly spurred on by our efforts, came good on her efforts to secure a strong line up for our Launch and Opening Gala Premiere. We now knew that Joanna Lumley would come to promote our launch with local Media and attend the Lord Mayor’s Reception during the day but would be returning to London before our Gala Premiere. She would be accompanied by Nigel Havers, one of the stars of A PASSAGE TO INDIA, who would be staying on to make a pre-film appearance on the stage (introduced by Peter) and would also attend the private post-film reception laid on by Thorn-EMI in the cinema’s bar area. The final member of the unofficial “NE Launch Posse” would be scriptwriter Ray Cooney who was also one of the Executive Committee organising BFY. He too would spend the whole day with us. Given this would be technically a local rather than an Official BFY event we were more than happy with Nicola’s efforts and set about fleshing out the logistics of maximising the media’s interest, confident we now had “star power” to get the ball rolling in the North East.

CURTAIN UP!

With everything falling nicely into place, Peter and I had worked out how to split ourselves and organise our three Guests so that they all felt included and that their journey had been worth their time in making it. Nicola had met and accompanied the trio on the flight up to Newcastle and fully briefed them on the itinerary we had put together. Peter would accompany the duo of Ray Connolly and Nigel Havers to the Odeon for an initial meet up and coffee while I had been given the onerous task (NOT!) of accompanying Ms Lumley, her PA  and Nicola to a hotel near the Central Station where we had arranged a room for Joanna to freshen up and change before we would accompany her to the Civic reception and join up with Peter and his two charges. There Ms Lumley would be the “face of BFY North-East‘s Launch” in a media photo shoot with Lord Mayor Roy Graham, Peter and I popping a bottle of bubbly to launch the day and year. This would be followed by meet and greets with some of the guests - including some of our NEFROG Committee members - as well as some nibbles and lubrications that had been laid on by the Lord Mayor. As it had already been agreed Nigel would be the main celebrity focus at the evening Premiere, he had absolutely no ego-issues in allowing Joanna and Ray, who were both members of the BFY National Events Committee, to feature more prominently during this reception while at the same time joining them on some of the media shots.

At an appropriate juncture, to allow some radio and TV interviews, the principals bade their farewells to the Civic dignitaries and were transported back to Pilgrim Street for these to be carried out prior to our scheduled departure time for Joanna to be driven to the Airport to catch her flight back to London. My final duty prior to this had been to thank Joanna, on behalf of those present and those red blooded males who had gathered outside the Odeon for a glimpse of her, for “Making Our Day!” and presenting her with a bouquet of flowers. I also took the opportunity to include an affectionate peck on her cheek which definitely counted as one up on Peter but, as he would be escorting her to the Airport, he’d probably nab one there!

Meantime I had to hot foot it over to the Thorn-EMI Twins in Westgate Road for a set up run-through for the evening’s Stage Presentation with Davy Bain and Freddie Norris, the unit’s Chief Projectionist. The young Indian dance troupe were all excited about performing before a full house and we had also arranged for their parents to receive an allocation of tickets for the evening show to watch them and the film. Peter and I had already seen the routine on a sneak preview rehearsal at the Odeon and with Davy and Fred having provided a boost to the front of stage curtain lighting it was only necessary for us to talk them through how they would make their entrance after my introduction and, once in their agreed start positions, commence their performance when their pre-recorded music started coming through the cinema’s sound system. At the end of this, they were instructed to exit the stage from the same side they had made their entrance which would allow me to give them due credit and whip up some applause for them. Davy was happy that the spotlight borrowed from the Theatre Royal positioned at the rear of the stalls would provide additional light and focus on their routine to embellish that being provided by the pageant lighting which would normally illuminate this area for an audience.

In terms of the organist, we had decided to position him in the traditional way of old - at an angle facing the screen to the right hand auditorium side of the raised stage frontage as there was no way, due to the layout of seating, he could have been positioned in centre front stage. The organist was more than happy with these arrangements and while he tried out a short rehearsal in situ Davy marked out the line-up for the spot to hit this little area and draw audience focus onto him during his performance. It was a perfect plan as far as Davy and I were concerned and when Peter returned from his “escort duties” he was equally relaxed that it would all run to plan. The flexibility with the Organist would allow us to cover any possible delays affecting the arrival of the Lord Mayor’s party as, once Davy or I, in communication with FOH were told the Lord Mayor’s party had arrived and were waiting our signal for them to be escorted into the auditorium by the Thorn-EMI Area Management we would signal the organist to reach a grand finale in his routine allowing me to give him an off-stage credit prior to handing over to Peter to introduce Nigel Havers prior to the start of the screening. We felt it only right, as this event was taking place in a Thorn-EMI cinema, that their Area Manager and his deputy should perform the “hosting” duty of escorting the Lord Mayor’s party to their seats. 

As the saying goes that was the plan, but as anyone involved in such events will tell you, such best laid schemes aft gang aglay in the real world where Mr Sod’s Law often chooses an inopportune moment to join the party!

Things ran like clockwork that evening and as the start time ticked round I duly welcomed the audience and introduced the dance troupe (restraining the sigh of relief on completing this with no fluffs!). As the young girls finished, the audience applauded without too much encouragement for me but I still wrapped my teeth round MASHRAK KAY CHERAAG one last time in thanking them before moving on to the next “turn” on the pre-show entertainment. After a little preamble about the “good old days” when an organist was often a part of prestige presentations in some cinemas I introduced our recreation of those times by passing over to our organist who was hit with the spotlight as I discretely exited stage right where Davy was controlling the sound systems. As I reached this “secure area”, I was conscious that the iconic and instantly recognisable opening number, THE DAM BUSTERS MARCH, had started off in its traditional DA DA DE DA DA DE DUM  speedy tempo but that the second refrain of this opening section was slowing down, becoming hesitant and then stopped completely. The reason soon became apparent as Davy and I tried to work out what the problem might be by peeping nervously round the curtain. The organist had decided to swivel round his position so that he was facing the audience and as a consequence the carefully positioned spotlight was not side-illuminating him and so allowing him to read his music - as had been factored in - but was now hitting him full front on in his sightline and blinding him. Sadly he had nowhere near the skill levels of the organist at the Manchester screening all those years ago for THE LOVE BUG and relied on the sheet music before him. While I made a joking explanation what had happened to the audience, Davy with help from Freddie repositioned him and tinkered with the spot. Thankfully this time the organist stayed where we positioned him and delivered a nice set of familiar movie themes to entertain the audience until Nigel Havers (every bit the “Charmer” in his white tuxedo) and Peter were ready to do their spot. This concluded with the film starting and progressing without any further hitches. It was nice to see Davy and Freddie enjoying a well-deserved libation afterwards in the bar. In fact it had been nice to see Freddie beaming like a kid in a toyshop at having been so involved and incorporated today in a Big Premiere with a Movie Star Guest as opposed to just being up in his projection box staring out a porthole. Peter and I, as well as the Thorn EMI Area Management team, made a point of thanking both of them for their professionalism in the staging logistics (and resolving the unanticipated glitch so efficiently) of tonight’s event.

While the packed house were enjoying A PASSAGE TO INDIA you may have wondered how the star guest passed his evening? Having watched the film a couple of times already on its promotional roll out, Nigel queried what Peter might have screening at The Odeon. On finding one of the screens was showing BEVERLEY HILLS COP he decided to pass the time there and return for the post-premiere Reception at Westgate Road. Should you perhaps have been one of the ordinary customers at the Odeon that evening watching this movie and wondering who the “posh guy in the white tuxedo” sitting watching the film was, you now have the answer!   

By the time the reception finished and we were able to get back home I think Peter and I were both rather tired but satisfied that our meticulous planning had resulted in a fairly hectic schedule of events running efficiently and garnering lots of publicity not only for this film but also upcoming BFY activities in the North East area. The Thorn EMI area management team and the staff at the Twins also appeared to have enjoyed their day too! The following morning Peter accompanied Nigel and Ray to the airport and we were now free to concentrate on our next NEFROG promotion event.

Countess Dracula COMES TO TOWN!

For the second “promotion event” Peter had persuaded the management team of Eldon Square Shopping Centre to allow us to stage a week long event in the area often used for other commercial promotions and, in December, for the Centre’s Christmas Tree and Grotto. In our discussions over what to incorporate we felt it key to be using it to promote films due for release around the staging date of just before the Whit Week holiday and up to the start of the Summer Season. To attract attention from the passing footfall in the Centre we felt some visual displays involving TV screens running continuous loops of film trailers, standee displays with posters of these upcoming attractions and various competitions with film related prizes would generate plenty of interest. There would clearly be a need for the area to be staffed during the day and for the technical equipment to be dismantled for safe storage overnight and then reassembled for operating the following morning. For the daytime staffing we were able to enlist volunteers from Odeon staff and most of the managers on the Committee while the technical equipment would be supplied by John Kyle, from BBC Newcastle who ran this type of business as a sideline. Geoff Hornsby, a former Chief Projectionist before moving to Management, was around most days and happy to do any tinkering needed with the willing volunteer help from the Pilgrim Street projectionists.

My main pre-event input was liaising with the publicity departments of the Film Distributors to try and scrounge as much giveaway material and merchandise prizes as they could spare for the week. I was also asking them to let me have copies of film trailers on VHS cassettes that I could collate onto a display reel that would run for about twenty minutes with the sequence repeated three times before the tape needed to be rewound and re-started throughout the day. We had aimed for this running time as being sufficient to hold “passers by” attention but not to clog the area for too long with the same group which would hinder further footfall past our displays. I also requested some photo-images for some of the releases to incorporate into a Movie Quiz competition giveaway leaflet that visitors could fill in and drop into our competition box. Five lucky correct entries would be drawn at the end of each day and the winners sent double guest tickets to see a film at the cinema of the preferred choice they had listed on their entry form. As we would find throughout the year, the cooperation of these publicity department heads was always forthcoming and very generous in  terms of the quantity and quality of prizes for each of the other events we staged throughout the year. I would quickly learn the levels of copyright protection demanded to use anything from Disney releases in that any stills used in these competitions, either on-site ones or the various supporting media coverage ones we were able to place, had to clearly show the ©Walt Disney Productions accreditation on any of that company’s images. Nicola would also arrange some BFY-specific display material and small giveaways as well whenever possible. In discussing potential rotas of staffing availability with our Committee members, the one issue that arose early on in the pre-planning was that most would have to be back in their cinemas for their opening times on days when they were having to do Duty Manager shifts. Thankfully these were in many cases around 5:00 PM onwards and was easily solved by Peter and I suggesting the Exhibition area “ran” only from 10:30 to 16:30 which worked perfectly for all concerned.

After some sign-off meetings with the Eldon Square Management on these proposals, including our preliminary liaisons with local media to run features and competitions tied to the event, all that remained was to sound out some of the celebrities in Peter and Nicola’s contact books to see who might be available and willing to perform the “Official Opening” of the exhibition area. One star who had regularly attended press screenings at the Odeon of films she was appearing in, and who always got on well with Peter, was Ingrid Pitt. Having met her at the WHO DARES WIN screening a couple of years previously I knew her to be lively and a very sociable person so we were all grateful that she was more than happy to come up to Newcastle again and help out. Horror movie fans will probably remember her “breakthrough” roles in THE VAMPIRE LOVERS (1970), THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD and COUNTESS DRACULA (both 1971) as well as THE WICKER MAN (1973) which became a bit of a cult movie over the years, but she also played a pivotal small role in the blockbuster war adventure WHERE EAGLES DARE which did no harm in boosting global awareness of her screen star status. Securing this last, and crucial, piece of the jigsaw meant It was now all systems go for the second of NEFROG’s local promotional extravaganzas for BFY!

Cometh the day, Peter had met Ingrid at the airport and brought her to the Odeon where she and I soon struck up a bit of amiable repartee while going through the minimal “formal” arrangements for the Opening. The three of us walked up Northumberland Street enjoying some lively banter and, arm in arm. As we went into the actual centre our timing could not have been better had it been pre-planned … which in all honesty it had not. The Centre Management had included in their display screen programming for that day, text informing the public visiting that there would be an official opening for our exhibition at 11:00 and, at the precise moment we entered the centre the display screen was beaming out “Eldon Square Welcomes Film Star Ingrid Pitt, who will opening the British Film Year Exhibition” It made her day and she still probably believes we somehow cued it ourselves despite our honesty in making clear this exact time coincidence was purely fortuitous. After a brief introduction to the crowds and media gathered around our display area, Ingrid made a short speech and declared the event open. She also took time to look around the displays and talk not only to some of our local Committee and local media but with many of the members of the public who had milled round. After some further socialising with the Centre’s Management and some promotional photo-shots for their in-house promotional magazine the three of us made our way back to the Odeon where some more fans had gathered to get her autograph and just talk with her. She was a true gem in her generosity of time with them all.

As a pre-amble to what happened next I should perhaps at this juncture open the Candid Camera on two of Peter’s slight “shortcomings”. I had discovered early on in all the meeting schedule arrangements we made that his punctuality was notoriously lacking. Consequently to save constantly having to apologise for us turning up late, I always told Peter any such meetings were for ten minutes before their actual arranged time … a ruse that worked perfectly for the rest of BFY and in the process amazed some of his normal contacts when he actually turned up at the pre-arranged time! His other “characteristic gesture” was a tendency when wanting something done at the Odeon to direct the instruction to the member of staff who was expected to carry it out accompanied/emphasised with a clicking of the fingers while delivering said instruction. It was often a case of him coming into the offices from a meeting and wanting a cup of coffee which would be conveyed by the “Monica ( or whoever was around) … Coffee” verbal instruction emphasised with a finger click. He once tried something similar on Sue when she was taking photographs for us at one of the Premieres held in the Odeon but only did it the once as he fell victim to the “glare” she had perfected for dealing with rude surgeons being discourteous to her or her staff in the Operating Theatres at the Newcastle General Regional Neuro Surgery Theatres she was in charge of. One quivering victim apparently described the experience as being on the receiving end of her eyes “SPEAKING VOLUMES”!

On this particular day, Peter and I had arrived just ahead of Ingrid and gone directly into his office. When she joined us she looked directly at Peter, clicked her fingers in his direction and authoritatively said “Talbot! …… Tea!!  Now!” I managed to refrain from laughing at what had been a deliberate ploy by Ingrid to get one back at Peter and, give him his due perhaps for something on a previous encounter. He sheepishly went off to make it himself in the adjoining area to his office which allowed me some conversation time with Ingrid. Before she left with Peter, to be dropped off at the airport for the flight back to London, she went out of her way to thank me for looking after her so well, adding in her own unique accent “Charles, Daaaarling, when they made you … they through away the mould” which I took to mean she felt she had been well looked after with utmost courtesy on the visit.  It had been a pleasant half day spending time with Countess Dracula who proved every bit as non-Prima-Donna as had Joanna Lumley earlier in the BFY.

As for the Eldon Square Exhibition it proved popular in terms of visitor numbers throughout the week and it was so nice to see local Managers like Norma Yates, Geoff Hornsby, Brett Childs and Terry Charnock having so much fun interacting with all the members of the public who came up to the display area. The Shopping Centre’s management had also been delighted with the footfall passing our area and indeed the local media coverage that week which our Celebrity Guest opening had provided for them. For Peter and I, with that event safely tucked away, it was time to fine polish our plans for the Tyneside Summer Exhibition event and the Lord Mayor’s Parade float.

THE RUSTIC DELIGHTS OF THE TOWN MOOR IN SUMMER!

Newcastle’s annual outdoor exhibition in Leazes Park had been an established feature of the city’s events calendar for many years and during the course of its week was always attended by large numbers of visitors. This made it a no-brainer to try and secure a presence there that could gain local publicity for BFY and local cinemas. Having already pre-prepared the way by planning to tie in with Radio Tyneside’s established presence at the event and arrange for provision of lots of movie promotional giveaways to embellish those Dave often acquired through his own regular contacts it all went smoothly as In some ways it was a re-run of some of the things we had used on the Eldon Square week. Radio Tyneside regularly transmitted broadcasts to local hospitals from its Tent at the Exhibition so it was easy enough to factor in some film specific quizzes with Guest Tickets to local cinemas for winners. To fill in any downtime between these “Live! Broadcasts” I updated the trailer promotion reels with the latest upcoming releases which again would play mainly as background to lure visitors via TV screens into the Tent. As well as allowing me access to these, our film renter promotion contacts were generous in their provision of T-shirts and related promotional giveaways. I managed to secure, from several nearby cinemas the temporary loan of some Display Frames to secure the quad posters in for upcoming movies and a few surplus standees from current or previous releases that again would add to the items Dave could include in his own RTN competitions and broadcasts during the week. As I was effectively Radio Tyneside’s “Barry Norman”, I was coerced into hosting a live broadcast Celebrity Film Quiz from the Tent where a team of local Film Critics took on a team of local Cinema Managers. As the question setter and presenter I was precluded from joining my Cinema Manager colleagues but everyone entered into the spirit of the occasion although on this occasion the local Media secured “bragging rights” with a victory thanks largely to the participation of Sheldon Hall on their team. As the tent was really Radio Tyneside territory, and largely staffed throughout the week by their teams of presenters and technicians, there was no real call on having Cinema Managers in attendance but they still showed face and helped out on the film stand. As a result some of them found themselves participating as “Guests” for interviews spots in some of the programmes being broadcast and even, on some occasions, found themselves answering questions on-air that were being posed by members of the public audiences in the tent when the interviewer opened questioning up to them. I didn’t get involved in any of those sessions but my colleagues told me they had found it enjoyable which meant Peter and I filing “this concept” away as a possible “extra daily event” when the “official” British Film Year event rolled into town later in  the year.

As with all our BFY local promotion events we wanted to secure a “name star” to launch the event, Given the agricultural nature of the event we considered making an exploratory approach through Nicola as to whether, given he had a farm on his own estate, Sir John Mills might consider opening not only “our modest Tent joint tenancy with RTN” but, after a suggestion from the Lord Mayor’s Secretary, enquiring if he might also consider performing the official opening of the Summer Exhibition event itself. We struck lucky on both counts which meant that in having an Oscar Winning Actor with a Knighthood as well as a long-spanning distinguished career in films to look after that day Peter and I would need to pull out some extra stops. Helped by Peter’s cornucopia of connections, he was able to “acquire” the services of the Gosforth Park Hotel’s chauffeur and Rolls Royce to pick up Sir John from Newcastle Airport and transport the two of them to the Lord Mayor’s Residence for a preliminary briefing and refreshments. As our “guest” would be arriving at the event with the Lord Mayor in the Official Car there was no immediate requirement for the Rolls to hang around until it would be needed later in the day. There were also quite a few media pose-shoots with the local Press and TV stations as the Exhibition was quite big in that period. Sir John was an old pro in such “schmoozing” and everyone was totally relaxed during the visit.  

Sadly I had to miss out on the Rolls ride and indeed the Lord Mayor’s refreshments session as I had to ensure everything was in place at the RTN/BFY tent which Sir John would be officially opening” after completing his walk around the main Summer Exhibition areas with the Lord Mayor. RTN’s director Dave Nicholson, was delighted that he too got plenty of coverage for the Station and some generous interview time with the star at our opening which was broadcast live and so “on air” before the main radio stations. I had a short time with Sir John who was interested in both the work of Radio Tyneside itself and also what our local BFY team had already arranged to date as well as for the rest of the year. Needless to say, as this would be my only interaction opportunity with him, I managed to get a photo of the two of us and at the same time admitted a tiny bit of disappointment that his daughter hadn’t accompanied him today. There was a mischievous twinkle in his eye when I enquired if she had got over her excitement at winning a Raffle Prize in the BFY launch at the Hilton International Hotel and confided “She always seems to win a prize in these things while I have to grin and bear it!”

Once Sir John was ready to leave the Exhibition in mid-afternoon to return in the promptly appearing Rolls to the Gosforth Park with Peter, I remained on site for a little while to check Dave had been happy with what he’d secured for local media coverage of our RTN transmissions throughout the week and to make arrangements for providing prizes for the competitions he’d be running on our behalf. I also checked he had adequate supplies of giveaways and mini-posters as well as being comfortable with using our Trailer reels.

Later in the day I managed to have a catch up with Peter who said how impressed Sir John had been with the way we had looked after him on the visit. He added a little “background” on something that had transpired back at the hotel when they’d been enjoying a wee cuppa in the suite the hotel had kindly laid on for the time interval Sir John had before being transported to the Airport for his flight in time to get back doon sooth! On enquiring if our guest was OK with the tea being served - never did figure out who was the lucky recipient of the finger-clicking ordering routine on this occasion! - Peter admitted to being stunned a little when asked by Sir John if it would be all right if he had it the way he liked it at home. Needless to say Peter hadn’t anticipated this involving Sir John pouring some of the contents of his cup into the saucer and then blowing on this liquid before supping it from said saucer. Presumably as this was to say the least a tad unusual, he explained his actions as “Love to cool it off a little, and at home I’d probably whip off my cap and waft it over the contents in the saucer to do this” That “scoop” about Dicky Darling’s life-long buddy, and frequent co-star throughout their careers, was something I’d use as an ice-breaker later in BFY when I found myself being the one in a hotel room with Sir Richard Attenborough! As per tradition … more at the appropriate juncture!

The end result of the week was that all parties were totally satisfied with the event and Peter and I could get on with the fine touches still outstanding for our participation with the BFY Float as part of this year’s Lord Mayor’s parade.

SWAPPING THE ROLLS FOR THE OPEN-TOP LORRY!

The key elements for the Lord Mayor’s Parade participation had already been organised in terms of securing (at our usual “nil cost”) the lorry and it was just a case of getting all the display materials and giveaways ready to be put in situ the day before. For this Peter coerced the GM at Sheffield Odeon to “second us” his publicity specialist assistant who had for the past few years managed to win their annual equivalent “Parade”. With more local “hands on assist” from Geoff Hornsby, Bob Milner and some of the technicians from the Odeon we didn’t encounter too many problems on the Friday installation and were all quite excited about taking part on the float and waving at the crowds lining the City Centre streets on the Parade route while some of the Odeon’s receptionist staff passed alongside us doling out the mini-posters and promotional giveaways generously provided by (scrounged from!) the renters of films featured on the Float. It was generally agreed that it had been “different” and even James Waugh, one of the most serious members of the Odeon projection team, was spotted with a beaming smile on his face during the journey. Sadly we didn’t win the “Best Float” but did get an honourable mention ,,, and lots more awareness of BFY and its message that “Cinemas were the best place to experience movies”,

THE HUMILIATION THAT BACKFIRED!

For once this promotional project did not come from the communal head-bashing of Peter and myself. Given the number of competitions, quizzes and promotions we had been running at our staged events and in local media, the responses from their readers/listeners must have clicked among a couple of our regular Press Show attendees. Phil Penfold, now Entertainments Editor for the CHRONICLE, and Sheldon Hall, who often stood in for Phil and other local papers in terms of film reviewing, had been trying to organise something under the BFY umbrella that would show off their knowledge and provide them with a nice series on BBC Radio Newcastle. The proposal was for a quiz to be called THE FRAME GAME which would comprise eight teams of three players in a knock out format the would see the initial line up whittle down to four teams contesting for two semi final places and then to an ultimate winning team. Phil would be the presenter and Quiz Master with the bulk of the question research being done by Sheldon and the allocated time-slot for each programme would be 30 minutes. In terms of each contest the rounds could cover subjects as diverse as film directors, stars, Awards recipients, film quotes, music and anything else the dynamic duo could conjure up from their own archives of knowledge, music collections and clips. Needless to say the prizes for the contestants would be Cinema Admission tickets with the first round eliminated teams receiving two double guest tickets for each team member to a local cinema of their choice, the quarter final eliminated teams would each receive five double guest tickets while the losing semi-finalists team members would each receive a two-month pass to go to their selected cinemas as often as they liked in that period. For the two remaining teams contesting the Grand Final, each member of the losing finalist team would get a three-month pass while the ultimate surviving Champions would each receive a One Year Pass for the Odeon in Newcastle as well as the kudos of holding the title FRAME GAME CHAMPIONS. As Peter said, anarchically, to me one day when we were worrying about all the tickets being giving away for the various NEFROG-BFY activities: “It’s just as well it is only a One Year promotion … and thank goodness Tony (and all the other Committee Members) gave us free reign in terms of doling out as many as we needed to make everything a success here in the North East.”

In our preliminary conversations with Phil and Sheldon it became obvious their “cunning little plan” had a deliberate sting in its tail that would resolve a long standing “area of heated discussion” that took place regularly after Press Show screenings at the Odeon: Who knew more about “Films”? The Press Critics who reviewed them or the Managers who showed the films in their Cinemas? As a warm-up for the main BBC Radio Newcastle FRAME GAME series of broadcast transmissions there would be an opening “Celebrity Challenge” between a team of three Cinema Managers and three local Film Critics. Phil made quite clear that the intention would be to humiliate the Managers - even though he and Sheldon would not be participating on the Critics Team. In my case Phil and Sheldon had malicious smiles on their faces saying they were so confident in one question which they had “designed specially for me” that they would tell me what it was in advance of the recording session! The “Special” was due for transmission of Christmas Eve 1985 with the full series run starting in January 1986 and thus providing us with more BFY activity media concentration for the last few months of the year long campaign. The recordings of the series were all scheduled in the post-Easter pre-summer holidays time when we had a convenient window spare from other events in our timetable.

In due course, after months of bragging and taunting from the Media pack at Press Shows it was revealed that our “opponents” would be Peter “Mad Mort” Mortimer and Norman Davidson (from The Journal) with the team being completed by Keith Dufton of The Sunday Sun. This would be a good strong team as all had good depth of knowledge about many film genres. Obviously Peter and I would be upholding the honour of the local Cinemas and we felt that our trio should be completed by Terry Charnock of ABC who I knew, from long conversations with him over the years we had known each other, had a real interest in watching films from all genres and epochs of the Movies. True to their word, the Quizmaster Generals let me hear the clip well ahead of the recording and kept ribbing me about it at every opportunity they could do so. It was very short, consisting of a rather piercing scream from a female and that was all I got. I will admit to not having a clue where to start and then one day I had a little brain flash and came up with a possible answer but kept it very much to myself as any hints I was on the right track might have made them change their plan!

Cometh the recording and after introducing his “Press colleagues Team” Phil introduced their intended victims … all right he did refer to us derisorily as “their opponents”. Round One was a team one identifying Film Studio trademark tunes or their sound effects. Both teams made easy pickings of MGM’s roaring lion and the 20th Century Fox fanfare but the deciding victory in this round for the Managers was that they identified not only the original RKO Radio Pictures beacon soundtrack but also, thanks to Terry, the David O Selznick music theme used on his early Selznick Studio releases. In Great Film Quotes both teams emerged with dignity intact and also in recognising some movie music themes. Peter proved his knowledge of some of the great movies of the 50’s and 60’s and their stars so that once again the “pre-planned humiliation” was proving a bit of a flop for the Press! In the “soundtrack snippet” round, the Managers proved a little bit defter than the Scribes and as this round was the one containing my “challenge” I decided to play up to the audience’s gasp when they heard the scream I had been “allocated” by asking Phil if this was the question he had laid a private wager with me that if I did get it correct he would give every film reviewed at our cinemas Five Stars?  After squirming out of that revenge trap from me, I offered up that the scream was the one uttered by Elsa Lancaster when she first encounters the Monster in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and in the process earning myself some contented appreciation from the audience. Sadly, the last gloat belonged to Phil and Sheldon as, according to them, the clip they used was the scream of Salome when presented with the head of John the Baptist in that film. With the final quick fire round the Managers reinforced their clear knowledge of the films they showed by stretching their victory lead even further and to be fair were given due credit by their opponents.

It had been a fun evening and it was nice to see some of our managerial colleagues had taken the time to attend the recording and cheer us on. Although I didn’t attend any of the main FRAME GAME recording sessions I did catch them on the actual transmission run and commented to Phil and Sheldon that they had created a challenging series of rounds that had provided plenty of chances for team members to shine and were not too hard when gaps in some areas of their knowledge hampered their overall scoring. Although Radio Newcastle only ran the one series, it had served its promotional purpose of heightening awareness of the whole BFY concept.

It was now time for Chief Frog and his Deputy to get back to work and organise the next attention grabbing NEFROG promotion.

THE NAME’S GRACE, MARTIN GRACE … LICENSED TO THRILL!

With the “big summer release” being the latest James Bond movie, A VIEW TO A KILL, we had planned to stage a North-East Charity Premiere at the Odeon in the same week as the London Premiere in the hope  some of the stars coming for the London event might have been available for our screening the following day. Sadly the main stars were already committed to the global roll-out screenings schedule in larger catchments than Newcastle but, via Nicola and her sterling efforts, we came up with an “understudy” who revelled in filling the void and provided us with some unique media promotion opportunities for the NE Premiere. Having served not only as Indiana Jones’ “stand in / stunt double” in that series of blockbusters,  Martin Grace also regularly stunt doubled for Roger Moore in the Bond series … including the latest one for which he had also acted as Stunt Coordinator. We were delighted when Nicola let us know he would be more than happy to assist the NEFROG with their Premiere promotion.

In typical Peter-think mode he was soon envisaging how to maximise local media coverage and had in his mind’s eye the stunt man leaping off Gray’s Monument, an iconic landmark in the centre of Newcastle just along from the Odeon. Our Star Guest and Nicola made an advance recce trip to allow Martin to look at the monument’s height and he immediately made clear that if he was being paid to perform the stunt in a movie he might have considered it but that, regrettably, it was way too high for a zero-fee risk. Instead, in walking round town Peter showed him the equally photogenic Civic Centre area, the rear side of which had a two storey high flattish roof overlooking its car park facilities areas. Martin said he’d happily leap off that for the media as many times as they needed and also was prepared to perform some close-up stunt work for the cameras involving setting some of his body parts on fire. With that rough concept agreed, Nicola arranged with Martin for all his special landing safety kit to be shipped up for the day and we started to whet the local media pack’s appetite with our plans to ensure we had coverage on both local TV channels and live feeds into local Radio from their correspondents on the day. The traditional newspaper photographer packs were already a given.

By lunchtime on the actual Premiere day everything had been set up and our Stunt Star was soon whetting the attention of media, and members of the public who had gathered in the area, with his fire skill demonstration before, after a long last check of his landing cushions, making his way to the rooftop and taking his first spectacular leap off the building … making a perfect landing in his zone in the car park. Although the media were more than happy they had captured this stunt perfectly first time round they were still delighted when Martin offered them an encore … just in case they had missed anything. With everything in the can and all their interviews with our “Deputy Bond” completed, our stuntman ensured all his kit was securely packaged up again ready to be taken back to London in Nicola’s car. We had arranged overnight hotel accommodation for Martin which allowed him to enjoy a meal and get changed into a smart suit for a Grand Arrival at The Premiere. Again members of the public had gathered outside the Odeon in reasonable numbers, lured by the day’s media exposure, to see him in person. Martin confided to us later that he normally didn’t get to attend the premieres and was over the moon at people asking for his autograph both outside the Cinema and at the reception. 

To set the mood for the film presentation I had prepared a music tape of all the Bond Themes in chronological order which we had timed to finish at the start of the stage presentation during which Peter would introduce Martin to the audience and then interview him about his role in creating the stunts featured in the film. Later after the screening at the post-Premiere reception for VIP’s in the Odeon’s Circle Foyer area our “star” was totally at ease schmoozing with the dignitaries and answering any questions they posed to him as well as happily posing with them for traditional camera photographs. In those Dark Ages mobile phones with cameras were many years in the future! In terms of décor, the team at the Odeon had transformed this circle foyer area into a homage to all the Bond movies with posters and four-sheets on the walls. The staff, well versed in such skills from all the Christmas Party receptions and other Premieres regularly staged at the Odeon, had set up all the buffet tables and drinks facilities. The much talked about (and photographed by guests) pièce de résistance was an ice sculpture featuring the 007 Gun Logo which Peter had somehow (probably using our traditional e pluribus Odeonum currency of Odeon Guest Tickets!) persuaded an artisan skilled in such creations to provide F.O.C.!

It had proved another memorable night and for my own part I ended up with an unanticipated bonus memory item. As we were getting into our evening suits I realised I had forgotten to bring a set of cufflinks for my dress shirt. Spotting my discomfort, Peter came to the rescue by offering me a pair of Odeon Gongman branded ones that had been given to Managers at one of their annual conferences. Having somehow - unsurprisingly! - managed to acquire two sets, he kindly said I could keep his spare set and now consider myself fully Odeon-Branded. I proudly wore them on many later premieres at the Odeon when Peter often invited me to assist as an “honorary member” of the management team and would continue to do so in my “second stint” with Odeon which provided the grand finale to my cinema life. As per tradition that will be elaborated on at the appropriate time!

THE PLANS THAT SADLY NEVER CAME TO FRUITION IN BFY.

Never ones to rest on laurels, Peter and I were always on the lookout for “embellishments” to add to our programme of activities. Two of those would have involved me driving the length of the country to pick up stars to give local media interviews for their upcoming movies, Stratford Johns (possibly remembered best for the ratings-winning BBC TV series Z-CARS and its follow up SOFTLY SOFTLY) was in the cast of WILD GEESE 2 which was due for release in 1986 and we had been considering a possible “advance screening” of it to raise funds for the local CTBF. Due to his burgeoning girth Mr. Johns would have required chauffeuring in a big car but as it turned out he decided against the visit. I had always been more excited at the other prospect Nicola had persuaded into coming oop North. This was Peter Cushing, one of my all time screen idols. I would gladly have driven to his home at Brighton to pick him up and have had no trouble engaging him in probably some fascinating conversation during the journeys. Again, in this case due to his failing health, it was agreed such a long journey might prove too much for him and the plan for him to attend an advance screening of BIGGLES had to be abandoned. We still fitted in a screening of this release for CTBF during the year but it was little more than a potboiler to keep the BFY activities going rather than a tent pole event even though we were able to arrange one of the stunt planes to be shipped up to decorate the foyer area of the ABC Twins, Westgate Road for this screening. It also provided plenty of press coverage for Manager Terry Charnock who had been such an active and enthusiastic participant in NEFROG activities despite his being sidelined on the opening event screening of A PASSAGE TO INDIA.

BFY’s “OFFICIAL EXHIBITION AND PROMOTIONAL EVENT WEEK COMES TO TOWN!”

This was to be the “Main Event”, organised centrally by London for BFY which would visit selected cities arriving on a Monday and departing at the end of the week. Two major stars would be made available on the First Day of each visit with staffing for the rest of the time being largely provided locally and “events” to drive visitor numbers again. As it turned out, our “visit date” was nowhere near the high quality of some of the NEFROG events that had already been staged well before this “Showstopper”. Having received feedback from some of his colleagues around the Country, Peter was determined that, as with other activities, we would show them how to do things by adding in far more daily activities than many of the other locations visited had delivered.

The display vehicle would be parked in Old Eldon Square near the War Memorial area providing a reasonable amount of open space to allow the public to gather in the area and still have good site-lines on the quizzes, interview sessions and film promotional displays and giveaways involved in some of the activities. The Official Opening would be carried out by Lord Mayor Roy Burgess who, despite all our previous calls on his services, was clearly loving every minute of the activities and the opportunity to schmooze with the attending stars and celebrities we kept amassing. In terms of the “official media launch“, we had persuaded the owners of the Tuxedo Princess, a floating nightclub “berthed” on the Tyne beneath the iconic bridges, to host a lunchtime nibbles and limited free bar lubrications for our guests which would provide a nice photo-op background for the nightclub itself, the City’s promotion team and BFY. The nightclub benefited financially when the media pack continued indulging themselves - presumably from “extra allowances” their editors had allowed them as a one-off? - after the “free hospitality” ended.

The two “stars” provided by BFY turned out to be Robert Powell (recently seen on the Big Screen in the latest version of THE THIRTY NINE STEPS) and Lesley Ash probably then known more for her TV work. a bit part in QUADROPHENIA and, way back in her childhood (aged 4), being the little girl in the Fairy Liquid ads who asks: Mummy, why are your hands so soft? Having been privileged to host Joanna Lumley, Nigel Havers, Ray Cooney, Ingrid Pitt, Sir John Mills and having James Bond’s (and Indiana Jones‘) stunt double throwing himself off the roof of the Civic Centre - none of whom were anything other than totally enthusiastic for the activities we had planned during their visits - it proved a bit of a knock back to find ourselves dealing with two “BFY Major Stars” for the “official BFY Promotion Week” whose egos were far greater than their CV’s of achievements to date. Everything seemed to be “not to their satisfaction” or “a burden to them” and they were soon proving experts at putting people’s noses out of joint effortlessly. They duly smiled for the cameras and shook hands with the Lord Mayor at the Opening Ceremony but there was none of the schmoozing achieved so effortlessly by our aforementioned previous star visitors. At the pre-luncheon briefing back at the Odeon, Robert Powell enquired rather disdainfully about how “guests (i.e. himself and Ms Ash) were getting to the Tuxedo Princess from the Cinema?” as he understood it was on the other side of the Tyne. I explained that taxis were being laid on for everybody but, having reached my limit in terms of his attitude, couldn’t resist adding that “he was free to walk across the water to it if he preferred”. He flashed his eyes at me, wagged a finger and rasped out “You are allowed one … and that is it!”, obviously picking up on both my feelings on his bickering and my cheeky allusion to his most famous TV role as JESUS OF NAZARETH.  And that is how my own CV includes telling “Jesus” he could walk across the Tyne!

To be fair, at the media reception they both “played their part” with the Press and later in the day did a reasonable Question and Answer session with the public at the BFY Roadshow Caravan in Eldon Square. Sadly, at other times, they made it obvious they’d be happy to get back to “London” as soon as possible. Thankfully once the Q & A concluded it was time for Nicola to escort them to make their journeys back home and for Peter and I to compare notes on how we had found our “brief encounters” with them. You might already have come to a similar conclusion as we had and, not being shy bairns, we conveyed our feedback to our BFY coordinator!

As for the rest of the week, we again created our own familiar promotional routine involving video trailers and prize competitions to fill in periods when we hadn’t arranged audience attention grabbers such as our daily Q & A sessions with local cinema managers and some of the local media who were happy to participate alongside them. This gave a chance for our local Press to interact with some of the hard working colleagues whose cinemas they may not have been too familiar with. It also proved, as it had during the Eldon Square, a rewarding experience for those Managers who participated. Thanks to the Odeon’s roster of local celebrities who often attended Premieres we were able to coerce enough of them to participate in some Q & A sessions on their careers with the audience/public which were chaired by one of our regular Press pack who all did a good job in holding the attention if there happened to be a lull in questions from the Public. Thanks as well to our contacts at the Theatre Royal - and Phil Penfold’s powers of persuasion - we even managed to get some of the actors appearing at the Theatre Royal that week to participate in one of these sessions with Phil leading the event. This actually proved a great dress rehearsal for him when the following year he managed to persuade Charlton Heston, who was at the time appearing in A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS (the grand re-opening production of the Theatre Royal after a major refurbishment), to participate in a “Lunchtime Conversation” about his long and distinguished film career and theatre work. This was staged in the Tyneside Film Theatre’s main auditorium as a special thank you to its then Director, Fred Brookes, who had been an enthusiastic participant in NEFROG activities and had even organised a special Film Festival to generate attention to BFY during one of our slack periods of activities.

*****    SAVING THE BEST FOR LAST!   *****

Way back in the days of pre-BFY planning, when Peter and I had looked at the release schedule, there was one fortuitous date that had suited us perfectly as a potential Grand Finale. Sir Richard Attenborough’s A CHORUS LINE was due for release in February 1986 and, even better, was an Odeon release. Sir Richard had been an active supporter of a local charity in the North-East for many years - one that Peter had helped previously by staging Premieres benefiting it financially - and we felt this would be an ideal finale to our year and might prove even more prestigious if the director could somehow fit attending it into his hectic schedule of commitments. Needless to say he readily agreed but did point out that it could be tight for him to attend should his anticipated shooting schedule for CRY FREEDOM hit any delays. That project, one dear to his heart, was due to be filming on location in South Africa in the early months of 1986 but he was fairly confident he could work something out. Given the complications of his transport schedule to make this event we wouldn’t be off tenterhooks until he actually arrived at the Odeon on the day for a “meet the media” session we had arranged for just after lunch on the day of the Premiere (the Press having just had a screening of his film). This allowed me to fulfil my traditional “extra task” on these occasions of having a second set of eyes scrutinising the Premiere copy of the film to ensure there were no issues needing corrected.

About ten minutes before this “meet and greet” Sir Richard arrived for a quick briefing in the office with Peter and I as to what to expect. He informed us (and apologised for the fact) he might appear a little tired as a result of jet-lag having flown in overnight from South Africa and then catching the connecting flight to Newcastle from where Peter had picked him up and escorted him to the Odeon … sadly not in the Rolls this time! After a quick coffee we took him into Odeon One where all the Press, Radio and TV reps had been corralled and were waiting patiently. Tired he may have been but you would not be able to tell as the minute he entered the area his eyes lit up, his smile beamed and he was full of his well-known bonhomie answering all questions in his uniquely enthusiastic way. The media loved him and were delighted that he was so generous with the time he was allocating them. An extra photo shot, an extra question in a radio or TV spot interview, another question from the print media about his current South African project and future plans … nothing was off limits or too much trouble. The one who was perhaps conscious of the time window being eaten up in our pre-planned “Orders of the Day” was yours truly whose next task after the media meet was to get Sir Richard to a suite laid on for him at a nearby hotel just along from the Odeon to allow him to relax for an hour and enjoy a cuppa while at the same time getting changed into his Evening Suit for his “Official Civic Centre Welcome” by Lord Mayor Roy Burgess. This was our next time-determined item.

With just the two of us in the suite, Sir Richard’s energy levels flagged at times for which he profusely apologised to me but engaging him in conversation and providing a welcome cuppa perked him up a little and he was always interested, informative and amusing. I did ask him, while preparing the tea he requested, if he took his cuppa in the traditional manner which caused a little raised eyebrow of curiosity at the question until I explained his long time great friend Sir John Mills had been with us earlier in the BYF activities opening the Tyneside Summer Exhibition. “Dickie” immediately cottoned on and beamed as he said “Don’t tell me Johnny was slurping out of the saucer again?” adding that he himself was more than happy to drink it out of the cup with the saucer fulfilling its traditional role! It was a slightly different bizarre image to Peter’s “off duty Johnny” at the Gosforth Park that I experienced involving Sir Richard in dress suit trousers with the braces draped loosely over his vest while seated on a chair and enjoying the cuppa while chatting merrily. It didn’t take long for him to don the formal Dress Shirt, bow tie and jacket in good time for us to go down to the taxi which had arrived exactly on the requested schedule to allow us adequate time to get to the Civic Centre where I would introduce Sir Richard to the Lord Mayor and then discretely excuse myself to get back to the Odeon and get into my own tuxedo ready for “Doors Opening” for the Premiere and to check that the tape of songs from great British Musicals I had prepared for the premiere was providing the pre-show auditorium entertainment.

On our way to the Civic Centre, my charge had asked me the name of the Lord Mayor and if I knew anything about his background or interests. Having chatted with Mayor Burgess a few times during the BFY year events I knew his working background pre-politics had been in the railway industry at which Sir Richard’s eyes lit up. As we stepped out of the taxi and were greeted at the Civic Centre, there was another of those transformations in Sir Richard as he re-energised himself again and, after being introduced formally to the Lord Mayor, was soon glad-handing him and sharing stories of the old steam loco days and railway line routings as though they were a couple of platform train-spotters. The duo would no doubt continue such conversation as they rode together in the Civic Limo to the Odeon where Peter would officially greet both of them. After escorting the Lord Mayor’s party to their seats, Peter dashed backstage to escort Sir Richard onto the stage and invite him to introduce the film for the audience.

Once the film was underway it was time for our Celebrity Guest to be taken out for dinner at a nearby restaurant. To ensure Sir Richard would have an erudite host, and to give Peter and I a slight respite, we had given a lot of thought as to which member of the Press Corps might be best suited as a dinner companion. We had decided on, and approached, David Isaacs the Arts Editor for THE JOURNAL, as we knew his wide range of interests spread beyond film to embrace theatre, ballet and classical music. The two got on famously with both Sir Richard and David telling us afterwards how much they had enjoyed the meal and the sharing of interests conversations. David also confided, a couple of weeks later at a Press Show, that he appreciated us setting this up as he had secured a few great pieces for publication out of it … to say nothing of their great meal as opposed to a post-Press Show Odeon buffet! One more tick of pre-planning paying off with interest in our BFY campaign.

At the end of the Premiere a few VIP guests - who usually formed a core of celebrity attendees always willing to add glamour to Odeon Premieres over the period of Peter’s tenure as Manager - had been invited up to the Management Suite for drinks and nibbles and a chance to meet Sir Richard. Once again the “Dickie Darling” magic was soon sprinkling itself generously around the room as he worked it like the total pro he is. Everyone left totally enchanted and in some cases with photo images to remember the evening by. As for myself I had managed to get a copy of the soundtrack album for A CHORUS LINE signed by him and he insisted on dedicating it to me personally with thanks for all the hard work put in over BFY. It was a wonderful memento of our BFY climax event.

During these latter stages of BFY activities, we had often found ourselves interacting with not only journalists but also with their editors. Peter, always trying to increase film coverage by local press sources, at one Premiere corralled the editors of two of the weekly free-sheet newspapers serving Newcastle and Gateshead trying to cajole them into including a local CINEMA - WHAT’S ON column. They were both “interested” as long as there was no cost involved so, in the spirit of BFI and communal promotion, Peter had no qualms about nominating me for the job! As I was already supplying copy to my two local papers, the Morpeth Herald and the Northumberland Gazette, as well as regular Cinema reviews on Radio Newcastle in addition to my output on Radio Tyneside the task was not too onerous. In terms of The Gateshead Post they wanted mini-reviews of as many films playing in their circulation area as possible - about three lines on each - while The Courier wanted a more comprehensive style of review for only the new releases opening that week. The Gateshead Post column proved quite fun as I got my own “header”, and so was born BACK ROW CHARLIE’S FLICK PICKS. My co-film critics for the Thomson Group enjoyed extracting the Michael from me when that byline header hit the presses. In fairness they had always been supportive of my “dual roles” of film critic and cinema manager and counted me as one of their own as well as a good source of background info into the actual business aspects and operational workings of the Cinema business.

My two favourite “experiences” during this post-BFY era involved my review of one of the STAR TREK series and another occasion when I had been travelling home after a press screening and happened to be tuned in to Metro Radio when Dave Porter was in full flow with the regular local cinema round up on his afternoon show. In the case of the former, in which Normal Davidson (of The Journal) in all genuineness congratulated me on my wicked turn of phrase suggesting the film was “the Crew of the Starship Enterprise’s latest adventure baldly going where no man had gone before”. The typesetter’s error had put an “a” where I had correctly put an “o” in the iconic phrase that opened each TV episode of the series. This added a whole new, if accurate, description to the now much older Kirk, Bones, Scotty and co. As for the genial Dave Porter, who I got on with very well, the “reviews” he was reading out were actually my BACK ROW snippets …word for word. When I ribbed him about “breach of copyright” he pleaded innocent in that his producer had decided these “mini-reviews” were perfect for the spot in his programme. That was when we settled for him co-presenting my End of Year Film Review show on Radio Tyneside as full and final payment for such use!

BRITISH FILM YEAR 1985-86

The Postlude

The immediate aftermath of all the National promotion of the cinema experience by the various teams of FROG’s was that the public’s awareness and indeed interest in renewing acquaintance with the Magic of a Night at the Cinema was quantifiable. Annual cinema attendance figures in 1985 were 72 million rising to 75.5 m for 1986, 78.5m in 1987 and 84m in 1988. These were helped by a strong product line that created a want to see again with the public. So on that criteria, job well and truly accomplished with full credit to the vision of Sir Richard Attenborough and David Puttnam for getting the ball rolling in the first place as a means of reversing the then recent steady decline in cinema attendances.

On a more local front, the National Committee - having judged the activities generated by the various Regional FROGs - put the Newcastle team forward for inclusion as potential honourees in the Commercial Film and Television section of the British Film Institute awards to be announced on September 23, 1986. We won and Peter received the trophy from Hayley Mills in London at the Ceremony. Needless to say I was gutted not to have a chance to accompany him and meet my screen idol from my teen years! In all the speeches and press coverage given during and following the Ceremony Peter always gave me a specific name check which appeared in any articles and coverage as well as paying fulsome tribute to all the other members of the NE FROG. As recognition of this Tony Ramsden authorised the costs for a special reception to be arranged at the Odeon for all the Committee members and Press to come and celebrate. The trophy (with a photo of Peter and I meeting Sir Richard and David Puttnam at the Launch of BFY above the shelf it stood on) held pride of place in Peter’s office until the Odeon closed its doors in 2002.

During the course of all the BFY planning meetings and activities my relationship with Tony Ramsden became much more relaxed and he even insisted I start calling him Tony instead of the respectful “Mr. Ramsden” I had always used previously. This had been a hark back to my initial training days with Rank when such formal addresses were de rigeur … and indeed Area Managers were very much aloof and formal. Tony certainly filled that image perfectly in the many years he was based in the Pilgrim Street Odeon and this persona was very much one that also cowed the media pack at the post-Press Show screening receptions whenever he “popped along” from his office at the end of the Odeon Management corridor to investigate what all the noise and babble was about, The only member of the Press Pack who really got on and was relaxed with Tony was Charlie Fiske who compiled the daily Eldon Column in the Newcastle Evening Chronicle. The two would often share War reminiscences, a situation that had started on one memorable occasion when Charlie, being his usual sociable self, asked Tony if he had enjoyed the recent holiday he had just returned from. For his courtesy, the erstwhile scribe then spent the next hour listening to the various battle sites and military graveyards Tony had taken in on the trip! Needless to say on such occasions, the rest of us would amuse ourselves in separate collective discussion huddles more directly concerned with the movies we had been watching!

It was in the immediate aftermath of the BFY success story that one of the big box office releases was TOP GUN. As was the norm still in those days, this was an ABC release and not an Odeon one. Tony had little time for the then manager at the Westgate Road Twins - an opinion he adopted when ABC’s Area Management had asked Peter and I to organise the local premiere of A PASSAGE TO INDIA - and, while desperate to see the film, refused to do so at this venue. Surprisingly he asked Peter to approach me to see if I might allow him and wife Sheila to come and see it at the Coliseum which I readily agreed to once I had overcome my initial shock. I made sure a couple of seats were blocked off for them and made sure they got to them when they arrived. Typically I was also “duty projectionist” as well as Manager that night and I still remember being so nervous that something might go wrong. Thankfully it was a perfect show and afterwards I invited them up to my office to enjoy a drink from the bottle of Gin I had procured for them to cater for their (pre-researched!) preferred alcoholic beverage. Tony was very complimentary about the film presentation, general décor and cleaning standards of the public and auditorium areas of the building and said, had this unit been part of the old Odeon B Stream Cinema Chain, he’d have made sure he allocated a budget to give it the freshen up some areas were starting to need. It was one of the most bizarre experiences I had enjoyed at the Coli over the years and one which actually helped cement the excellent new relationship I had developed with this formidable presence during BFY.

In terms of the Coliseum’s access to films, thanks to the BFY promotions in the area, the increased business levels at the Coli started to draw the attention of the Film Distributors and I was starting to be offered titles much nearer to release date on some major releases. One of those “transformation releases” that helped immensely came thanks to my (professional) life long friend Walter Maguire who I had first got to know back in my initial forays into the business at the Odeon in Edinburgh. When a retrenchment of Film Distributors’ local offices started to escalate in the late 1970’s, CIC had combined their Scotland and Northern England territories with the Manchester Office run by Mike Rowley which would have left Walter jobless but for his family’s long time business relationship with Monty Mendelson who had run Disney’s UK releasing set up for many, many years. Monty always remembered the Maguire family favourably due to the patriarch of the family, another Walter, having secured the exclusive first run of Disney’s SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS for The Playhouse on its original release. This did so much business that Walter Sr. offered the renter an extra percentage of the take over and above the percentage that had been agreed between them. Monty, one of the hardest-nosed business men in Wardour Street was blown away by the gesture and when, in the early 80’s Disney combined with 20th Century Fox as a distribution amalgam, they were looking for a Scottish and Northern England representative, George King (Monty’s equally hard-nosed deputy and overall operations supervisor) persuaded Walter to continue in the business working for what became UKFD handling the release of Disney and 20th Century Fox product.

And then, lest you think this diversion irrelevant, came a wonderful piece of happenstance good timing. George King was trying to maximise the number of prints being productively used on their planned early summer 1986 mass release of CROCODILE DUNDEE in the traditional UK dead season from late April, after Easter. At this time in the release schedules the quality of movies available to book was usually so dire that it was known by exhibitors as “Wardour Street’s garbage clear out season” aimed at readying space for the big uptick (in business levels and quality of films on offer) that normally came with the start of the summer vacations. UKFD were mocked by the Wardour Street collective for what they perceived as throwing away a “Crown Jewel” of their schedule in this “rubbish season” but George had faith that the Paul Hogan film was strong enough to flourish in such a limited competition period with basically the field to itself. Unusually, but thanks to Walter’s intercession on both our behalves, Bob Milner at the Wallaw Blyth Cinemas and myself were allocated on-date release prints as long as we played twice nightly with matinees on Saturday and Sunday. These evening shows must be at 18:00 and 21:00 with no argument and the terms likewise were non-negotiable at 50/50 up to the sliding scale max threshold with 90% of all takings over that figure during the mandatory four week contracted run for the film. I was totally happy with the terms knowing the efficient sales operation we had at Morpeth would benefit from the hoped for business levels and provide a nice top up to that part of our revenue stream which the Film renters couldn’t access. Many exhibitors, however, refused to play it on UKFD’s terms and found themselves in the weeks that followed scrabbling to secure a copy and being unable to do so until at least week five of the release. My initial worry had been the mandatory 21:00 start time for the second evening performance as this would mean a finishing time well after the Coli’s traditional 21:45 to 22:00 target finish which we had adopted and operated successfully since opening. The capacity audiences on this 9PM performance proved that times had changed since 1976 when we set this parameter of timetabling and meant that in later years we were able to be more adventurous in programming different types of films where Distributors were willing to go along with us. On some weeks instead of just offering two titles, in the course of a school holiday week, I normally doubled that to four separate movies and on one memorable week, we managed to play eight films in the same 7-day period. Rental terms negotiations on the individual films played (of which more later) proved “interesting” and at time “fractious”!

CROCODILE DUNDEE was well into the sixth week of its eventual 13-week initial run at the Coli before we had any seats available to purchase at any screenings … and that included the first few weeks when I had deployed the Interlock system to show the same copy in both screens at the same time. Typically, hard-nosed George would not give me any extra uplift on my sliding scale for playing the ONE copy in both my screens but, in not arguing the point too strongly, when it came to the end of the initial four-week mandatory run, he was more than happy enough to let me carry on playing my allocated copy while Bob at Blyth lost his to another exhibitor leaving the local field exclusively to the Coli for the rest of the run. Walter told me George had expressed amazement at the figures I was doing given my total capacity of 264 (132 in each screen). It also meant by the time we reached Week 10 and were due to start with a Disney animated feature release for the holiday weeks, with pressure on copies of DUNDEE starting to ease, UKFD were happy to expand their new found flexibility (again thank you to the American invasion for this long overdue shake-up of Film Distributor attitudes!) and allow me to play the Disney title on the holiday weeks with two matinees and an early evening show followed by the Paul Hogan blockbuster at 9:00 PM … albeit with a guaranteed 50% split on the CROC’s take terms! And so in the fullness of time this “brave experiment release” from UKFD became the longest running film ever to pay the Coliseum during its 1976-2000 glory days and also helped change the collective attitude of Wardour Street Distributors to believing that it was the quality of a film and not any “time of year special factors” that influenced movie going numbers and in some ways made for good film availability without the traditional “garbage clear outs” restrictions that had previously been imposed post-Easter and pre-Christmas. It was one of the truisms of the business that where one Distributor led with an innovative new approach, the rest of the flock would meekly follow on and equally true that the more successful cinemas were those, circuit or Independent, who understood their local audience market and were able to maximise the new flexibility in screening times now being adopted.

CHAPTER 9 - THE AMERICANS ARRIVE

Having noted the attendance increases post-BFY in the UK it was only a matter of time before the big American Cinema chains, like the coveting Martians in Orson Welles celebrated Halloween WAR OF THE WORLDS Radio Broadcast, started planning their invasion of the British market. The Point at Milton Keynes was AMC’s initial exploratory incursion in 1985 and proved an instant hit to the extent that plans for further multi-screen constructs adjoining shopping centres on the outskirts of many major cities were soon being implemented. The logic of these locations was that there would be ample car parking space available for the new targeted core market (in America this had been families with their own transport) they hoped to attract. Aware of this impending threat to the Odeon business model, Tony Ramsden was sent, prior to the main invasion, on a three-week jaunt through various parts of the States to cast his professional eye on their way of operating in terms of programming and retail consumables which, given the ever greedier film rental terms being demanded by the Distributors, was where cinemas were now becoming more reliant for their operational profits. It was fascinating to chat with him on his return with his raised eyebrow comments about the “aroma” in the large foyer areas from the retail franchising of hot popcorn (buttered and salted), hot dogs and the equally odorous nachos with cheese sauce and Jalapeño peppers. As for the portion sizes (and their prices) he reckoned their profit margins must be through any previous ceiling considered acceptable to UK audiences. He was impressed with the flexibility in terms of programming offered by the number of screens and the willingness of the distributors in the States (who in many cases also owned some cinemas or were allied over product release patterns as with the long established UK system in the days of the Odeon and ABC Cinema chain days) to allow some flexibility in screens with family films using the larger capacity screens on matinees during holiday times with the more adult programming taking over for the evening screening times thus enabling maximising of potential audience numbers for each film. A similar flexibility was implemented with the staff employed all being trained to work in all areas of retail, ticket selling and between performance cleaning which meant a more efficient use potential for a smaller number of physical staff. Tony also felt the rather excessive “Have a nice day” mentality so prevalent in Customer Service in the States would not go down too well with Odeon audiences more accustomed to UK standards of polite and helpful courtesy and the prioritising of excellence in presentation standards of the films being shown with curtains and variable masking as opposed to the total wall-to-wall screens in the Stateside units. As for shovelling out their bucket loads of what Gurghi (from the Disney animated movie THE BLACK CAULDRON) might have referred to as “munchings, poppings and slurpings with a few scrunchings on the side”, it would be an intriguing culture war to observe from the viewpoint of an Independent Cinema Manager … at least for the rest of the current century!

The first invasion of North East screen territory was planned by AMC Cinemas (America Multiscreen Cinemas) to be incorporated in the Gateshead Metro Centre Shopping mall being developed by local business entrepreneur John Hall along the lines of the great American Shopping Mall phenomenon that was already quite familiar to Brits who had been fortunate enough to take holidays in the great US of A. The Company had advertised for a General Manager who, along with other potential candidates for other future AMC sites planned for the UK, would spend three months in various multiplexes over there to be trained (BRAINWASHED ACTUALLY) into their way of doing things which needless to say were considered by the Americans as the “best and only way to run the cinema business”. Intriguingly, talking to various colleagues around the UK who had “applied” - and been politely rejected - appeared to reinforce the theory Peter and I had already come to that they had no interest in employing experienced UK managers with proven track records primarily because they could well challenge some of the “superior knowledge of running cinemas” being expounded by these AMC Executives. Nationally in the UK the two AMC figureheads were Charles (Chuck) Wesocki and Millard Ochs both of whom had long and distinguished careers in several Stateside Cinema chains with Ochs being the more hands-on day-to-day operational mastermind and Chuck holding the wider Global Conquest brief.

Phil Penfold, in his capacity as Entertainments Editor for the Evening Chronicle, had many meetings with this dynamic duo in the months leading up to their official launch and his impressions were eagerly interrogated at Post-Press Show socialising by fellow hacks and of course interested parties like Tony Ramsden, Peter and myself. As one of the “recognised” media correspondents I was legitimately invited to the full-on main launch announcement session at which we all listened intently to their special carefully planned presentation about how they would change the concept of cinemagoing in the UK … and needless to say the Northeast! All assembled dutifully sampled the salted and buttered popcorn staples as well as the nachos and cheese sauce with chilli that would drive their new taste sensations transformation of the previous UK staple of the hot dog with mustard in terms of retail. The presentation also bigged-up their intended range of portion sizes which would be sure to appeal to the UK audiences they expected to attract … and needless to say (though not openly admitted by them) be providing gigantic mark-ups on profitability levels for their retail operations. We were also treated, as Phil had pre-warned us, to their carefully contrived technique of “getting us on their side by proving their human fallibility” through “making a mistake” while using the slide presentation incorrectly before needless to say continuing thereafter without any departures from their carefully rehearsed “script” The spirit of P T Barnum was clearly well embedded in the modus operandi to be expected from these new invasion forces.

In the run up to official opening of the 12-screen complex (scheduled for October 16. 1987) they planned running several previously released box office blockbuster movies at a nominal admission charge to let potential audiences “experience” their operation and sample their foody goodies. This technique was one adopted by all the various mutliplexes that mushroomed across the UK since it served as a cheap come-on, provided a “live” training” experience for all the new staff and a chance for the “Booth Personnel” - in UK parlance that would be “Projectionists”! - to familiarise themselves with the film presentation equipment. Unlike Management recruitment, AMC were happy enough to poach technical staff from established local cinemas which actually worked out very well for John Young, one of my former staff at the Classic Triple Screens in Low Fell.

The GM appointed initially to run the AMC Metrocentre was Gerry McKenna who was quite an easy guy to get on with once you filtered out his “brainwashing”. I invited him on to my Radio Tyneside Movie programme on which we devoted the full hour to the AMC opening, their plans and programme philosophy. He, and his bosses, were more than happy with the coverage given and I particularly enjoyed getting Gerry to explain the nickname he had acquired in the run up weeks to the opening. When things kept going wrong and everyone was tearing their hair out, the new GM was right there in the thick of it all restoring a calm and smooth operation to the chaos so it was only right that “Send for Captain Chaos to sort it out” became the battle cry and the moniker stuck. Let’s face it, to Odeon-trained managers this was only “crisis management” with a catchy Stateside twist and a skill they were already well versed in.

The one little extra piece of Americana organised for their pre-opening “getting to know us” promotion campaign was to stage a Drive-In movie presentation in the Car Park area of the Metro Centre a couple of nights before opening where they did a deal with a local radio station to transmit the film’s soundtrack on one of their frequencies which would be picked up by the viewers in their cars. I was unable to experience this due to working at my own screens that night but Peter and BBC Radio Newcastle Executive John Bird and their wives did. The car had been well provisioned by Peter with wine and nibbles to enjoy the film with and, apart from having to keep the windscreen wipers running occasionally - good old UK weather staging its own protest at American invasions of UK Cinema’s home turf? - it was a fun experience. For the Multiscreen’s official opening on October 16th, Sue and I joined the quartet to see how the Americans would stage it. To say we were unimpressed with the lack of basic razzmatazz and local celebrity guests would be an understatement and was certainly a damp squib compared to our recent activities during British Film Year. Even for low-key Odeon Premieres Peter would regularly rustle up far more than just a token ribbon cutter (actually it was a strip of film) and a few words to those assembled in the foyer. Our party decided to leave even before the film had started, preferring to enjoy a lively social evening at John Bird’s home which included a very competitive game of Scrabble, decent lubrications and nibbles as well as some very convivial conversation and comments on the lack of pizzazz served up by AMC.

In terms of the new relationship with film distributors for all other cinema operators in the area it became clear from Day One that AMC were using the clout of their vast American network with the distributors to secure AMC-exclusive releases on many blockbuster movies starting with THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK. This, and other titles, only played AMC for many weeks and led to a lot of hassle from local exhibitors to Warner Bros Distributors over this policy. It took quite some time for this system to be sidelined. Odeon Cinemas denied access to these releases refusing to play any such “restricted” titles from any Distributors using this tactic in any of their screens was one of the “pressures” that eventually restored the sense of normality to the general release availability. Fox’s release of BRAVEHEART was another title at this time which caused fallings out with distributors and exhibitors in this early period. As was always the case in UK Exhibition, there was always a “work around” and cinemas with good contacts, and respect in Wardour Street, eventually found it and the arguments calmed down.

As an Independent, along with many of my fellow exhibitors, we were impacted by the novelty value of the slick American operation and their ability to play just about every available film on its release date due to the number of screens they had. Local exhibitors, including Morpeth, noticed drop offs in their “regulars” and a trend for the younger age groups to more willingly adopt the glitz and novelty of the American operations. The bottom line for that age demographic quite probably was that your girlfriend was more likely to be impressed if you took her to the toot, whistle, plunk and boom of the Multiplex more so than the humble chumminess of the Coli … or even Newcastle‘s iconic Pilgrim Street Odeon. In the fullness of time, although it took several years, this novelty started to wear off and audience numbers returned in the better run cinemas. Many of the local audience returnees commented they had found the Plexes “soul-less” and playing film volumes too loud while the popcorn and other smells from their high-profit (and very expensive) retail concession items made for an unpleasant niff in the foyers that often pervaded the screens as well. This trend was very much evidenced across the UK as the battle of cultures eventually stabilised with UK exhibitors picking out the areas where they could compete - price, quality and personal courtesy service - and a greater awareness of their own audience profile in the films they programmed.

One of the ways the Circuits fought back was in introducing “Bargain price” admission days - which helped in restoring the more price conscious cinemagoer audiences - and also by ensuring the customer interaction services were more UK-traditional than the impersonal and automated “have a nice day” response so prevalent in the States and with these invaders from across the Pond. In the case of Peter’s Newcastle Odeon screen he also continued specifically targeting Newcastle’s student population with a healthy discount on Tuesdays which consequently had added more attendance numbers on one of the traditional low business days of the week on the then current playing pattern of Sunday to Saturday.

Since access to product as close to release date as possible was, and always had been, key to retaining the loyal local customers as far as the Coli was concerned I had already developed a good relationship with Film Distributors that we always settled film hire bills as quickly as possible and, if those actually signing the cheques proved in any way tardy, my various contacts in the Renters’ account departments always knew to give me a call at home and I would jostle up the responsible parties. It was amazing how the threat of not being supplied with films worked on those who didn’t understand how the Cinema Business operated - especially if it didn‘t have a film to put on its screens!

One of the major changes that was further expanded on with the arrival of the Americans was the tinkering around with the opening day of the week for releasing new films in UK cinema operations. Traditionally this had always been a Sunday start with a Saturday night finish in the UK for a seven day run while the Stateside pattern had long favoured opening on Fridays and finishing Thursdays. Given the film’s potential could be better assessed from the three busiest days for cinemagoing over the weekend it was a pattern that was soon adopted/imposed on the UK exhibition scene - and one I personally welcomed. Although they had tinkered tentatively with a Thursday opening they soon settled for the now traditional Friday one. Since the “opening weekend” had become a globally monitored figure for Distributors and indeed laterally the media covering film releases these changes always made sense. Cinemagoers in the UK now often find the big blockbusters opening as early as the start of the previous week being billed as “Previews” with the takings on these days being added to that of the first official screenings on the “official release date” to support those often quoted “Biggest Opening Weekend ever!” claims splattered across media promotional ads and TV spots for these films. To date the Advertising Standards or indeed the OFT have never queried such clearly inaccurate assertions but who cares? Certainly not the Film Distributors! In the States the same tactic had usually been implemented over their traditional Bank Holiday weekends to set ever higher “Record Opening Weekend takes” for Memorial Day Weekend, Thanksgiving Day Weekend and the many other public holidays they adopt there.

The success of the AMC operation at the Metro Centre was soon leading to a local proliferation of Plexes as other operators sought out sites to build their own multi-screen units. Warner’s Film Distributors trialled a nine-screen multiplex at the Manors site in Newcastle which opened on December 12, 1989 with a premiere, attended by Kylie Minogue, of their big Christmas release THE DELINQUENTS.(***). This unit’s location was less than half-a-mile from the Odeon in Pilgrim Street which proved a challenge for Peter as, with the best will in the world, the Grand Old Lady with her four screens and none of the latest toots whistles plunks and booms was always at a disadvantage to the Warner’s Plex with its ample parking and close proximity to the Northumbria University campus area. It says a lot that for 12 years, until Odeon caught up with its own Twelve Screen new build Plex on the site of the old Mayfair Ballroom, it continued to battle through profitably. The serious mistake the Warner’s GM made was, on its opening night, phoning Peter to ask him when he’d be closing now that the Manors Plex was up and running! His well-deserved come-uppance will be chronicled at the appropriate time in these tales of the culture clash between old UK Traditional Cinema and the self-perceived razzmatazz of the American version that waged across the UK in the ensuing decades. Another name to enter the Plex battlefield, other than the US sourced ones, was Virgin supremo Richard Branson deciding to try his branding on several new-build Plexes. One of his earliest was at Boldon which effectively targeted its audience as the Sunderland catchment area which included Jarrow and  Washington as well as North and South Shields, Its success meant that the Odeon and ABC battleships in Sunderland became endangered species and succumbed within a few years of Boldon opening and so joining the decimation of all but a few Independent exhibitors and the last surviving Cannon-Classic units. The Boldon Multiplex opened as a 12-screen unit on October 10, 1997 with a Gala Screening of Disney’s HERCULES. The Branson concept struggled to establish itself nationally and its units were quickly snapped up by Cineworld with the Boldon Cineworld continuing to operate to the present day despite that company’s world-wide fiscal issues in later years at the start of the 21st Century.

(***  THE DELINQUENTS was eventually  made available to other cinemas and played the Coli over the 1989 Christmas period. We had been playing it for a couple of weeks without any complaints whatsoever when, at the end of one evening performance, one of the regulars in a group of King Edward’s School pupils in Morpeth who often attended screenings at the Coli, came up and politely enquired if the reels were in the correct continuity order? After explaining his concern I decided to look into it. On watching the film through, there were indeed scenes early on in which the Minogue character was clearly pregnant but had not yet engaged in any sexual congress on screen with any other of her “group”. This was what had confused the pupil, and his companions, deciding them to raise it with me. The sexual activity certainly appeared to take place much later in the print we were screening which initially made me suspect the projectionist making up the print had not checked each reel’s leader before joining the individual reels together for our screening. As I trusted his diligence over such matters, having trained him personally and emphasised this need to be vigilant in such matters - due to some cinemas spooling off their films in a hurry and putting each reel into an incorrect tin! - we examined the leaders. These were cut off during the making up sequence, placed carefully in the correct tin ready to be reaffixed on spooling off each reel at the end of the run and said spooled off reels placed in the proper tin ready for onward transit of our print to the next cinema screening it. As an extra “security check” during this operation it ws normal to also leave one frame attached to the head leader for matching up with the image on the reel being spooled off. In this case each individual reel matched up with the number - and frame image scene printed - on its leader. Using Sherlock Holmes’ logic - that whatever remained, however improbable, must be the truth - the only conclusion was that our print of THE DELINQUENTS somehow had these reel numbers printed incorrectly. During our check viewing we had identified the incorrect placement of the reels in terms of continuity of the storyline and were able to restore the true chronology intended by the film’s director. We also ensured we put a clear note in each affected tin warning the projectionist at the next cinema using our print to make them aware of this issue and prevent them receiving a similar complaint.  

The surprising thing, possibly a reflection on the quality of this movie, was that during these first two weeks before the King Edward’s pupils pointed it out to me, not ONE customer had spotted this. Was it really so common in Morpeth at that time to assume such “immaculate conceptions” were de riguer in teen movies?

During the immediate aftermath of BFY and this Multiplex arrival period, Peter continued to run Pilgrim Street in the traditional British way and often included the old-school promotional razzmatazz we had espoused during the recent BFY. I always felt honoured that, any time there was a big Premiere due to be staged at Newcastle’s Odeon, I always got a call from Peter asking me if I fancied helping out on the Management team on those occasions. The answer was always a resounding yes siree. Even all the staff and Peter’s support management team regarded me and treated me as they had always done since I came to the area in 1971 … as one of the team.

A MINOR DIVERTISEMENT.

The other aspect of this friendship between us that had strengthened during the immediate post-BFY year was that my wife Sue and I would often be invited to dine with Peter and his family and they likewise would enjoy our reciprocated hospitality. It was on one of those evenings that the topic of conversation turned to holidays which that year Peter, Margaret and daughter Anne-Marie had planned as a three-week exploration of America. Since getting married in 1976 Sue and I had never, due to work commitments, ever taken a holiday but had often talked about a possible trip to the USA. Peter, out of the blue - often his way! - asked if we fancied joining them. The next few weeks were a blur of activity as Peter liaised with the Travel Company he had booked with for a bigger hire car, extra seats on the flights and the necessary additional room accommodation for the now enlarged party. Not having passports also meant a rush application to meet the departure deadline and both Sue and I having to get permission to take the necessary three week absences from the Newcastle General Neuro Theatre where she worked and also for me from the Coli.

Things slotted in perfectly and that three weeks saw us take in New York and Niagara Falls on the East Coast before heading across to California for a drive, in a  sumptuous Lincoln Town Car through Yosemite, Zion, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley and thence to Disneyland and Universal Studios where we were given special VIP Guest admission status thanks to contacts we had made with the UK’s film publicists at Disney and Universal as an appreciation for our BFY efforts. Along the way we also managed to fit in visits to some American Plexes taking in their modus operandi first hand enjoying some freebie film viewing as Peter “introduced himself to the Unit’s manager and flashed his Odeon business cards!” Our trip concluded in the City by the Bay which proved an eye-opening experience for all of us in so many ways. Peter loved driving so much he was quickly dubbed “Parker”

This "First ever vacation" would prove the start of a whole series of alternate journals covering subsequent holidays which saw Sue and I visit New Zealand and spend varying amounts of time in all of the 50 American States in the course of the following twenty years. These journeys included among other highlights exploring (in a submarine) a couple of reefs in Hawaii as well as flying over an active volcano cauldron in a small aircraft, Whale watching in Nova Scotia and Alaska. In this state close encounters with Grizzly bears on a couple of occasions would probably be rated the best of our animal encounters while experiencing the various quaintness quirks of the human residents in the different States always proved interesting. Our homeward treks often involved a stopover in New York to take in a Broadway Show or two and on one occasion enjoying a weather perfect day atop the World Trade Centre where we were actually able to stand on the open roof area. This memory became even more deeply entrenched as we watched the TV coverage of the 9:11 atrocity that toppled this iconic part of the Manhattan Skyline.

If we had to choose two “absolutely the top experiences” it would be dining at Sardi’s in New York and the several visits we made over the years to “The Biggest Christmas Store in the World” in the quaint community of Frankenmuth. On one occasion this included a lovely interaction with founder Wally Bronner who could often be found wandering around keeping an eye on things. He was actually quite chuffed when in the course of our conversation, in answer to his “And where are you folks from?” we said we had just  “popped in” to enjoy all the displays and get some Christmas items on our way back from Alaska before continuing to New York and thence back home. But enough of the digressions.

CHAPTER 10 

SURVIVING THE 1990’S - a.k.a. Regular Ownership Changes!

EPISODE ONE

While some cinemas clung on in the face of the Multiplex invasion hit on their business levels many folded and disappeared forever. Thankfully the Coli managed to hold on though it did have to contend with several changes of ownership. The back end of the 1980’s, as well as affecting cinema business levels, had also impacted on the numbers attending Bingo Halls. The Noble Organisation’s acquisition of the Brighton Pier and undertaking a major revamping of it had meant having to trim some of its lower profit generating units. With the passing of William Noble, the business had transferred to sons Michael and Phillip and they (with the expanded new executive layer) were more interested in the bigger profits from the amusement arcades and the prospects of vast returns from the Brighton Pier project. This led to a rationalisation and disposal programme involving putting some of their units up for sale to other operators wishing to acquire them. It was typical of the Noble philosophy of founder William that Michael and Philip organised an appreciation gesture for those loyal managers and staff who had been with the Company for ten years. A weeks pay for each year of service was way above what most Leisure companies would even consider matching and there was a more enduring memento of a small carriage clock for managers with the same service.

At this time Granada (a former national cinema chain) and many of its own Bingo operations had been acquired by Bass Breweries. As part of that new conglomerate’s own expansion into hospitality and leisure, specifically on the Bingo front, they acquired the Noble Organisation’s Ashington, Bedlington and Morpeth units. It was ironic that the week prior to this news breaking - as always the units themselves were the last to be informed of the impending change! - Granada had disposed of all its remaining cinema units as part of its own internal rationalisation and exit from that branch of entertainment. So from owning and operating a chain of cinemas, instead of achieving their desired net zero they “inherited” the Coliseum Cinemas as part of that acquisition in late 1988 and, with it, yours truly. I did make a tentative offer to the MD to rent the cinema part but that came to nothing. It wasn’t that they weren’t interested, just that, in the event they later sold the bingo and arcade operation on to another operator - after running it for a period to assess its viability (in their terms of targeted profitability to reach such a threshold) - it would be easier to put it back on the market without having the encumbrance of a “sitting tenant” … even one paying a rent and share of the communal operating costs of the premises.

Having enjoyed the freedom for such a long period of effectively running my own business with light monitoring and supervision by Noble executives, I had to quickly adapt to and adopt the reporting systems in place for Bass. Effectively I still ran everything on the cinema front and enjoyed occasional visits from my “area Manager” Alan Walsh who basically left me to it as he could see it was a specialist niche and I clearly knew it better than he did. Consequently I continued to enjoy full film booking autonomy and stock range ordering with invoices, after being checked for accuracy by me - especially on the complicated (to them) sliding scale film hire invoicing aspects - being signed off and passed on to Head Office accounts department for settlement. Given their laxness sometimes in paying the cinema distributors I, yet again, often received calls from my contacts in the Film Renters’ accounts department personnel asking for an assist in geeing them up. As usual the “threat” of having film supply cut off proved an effective “lubricant”! On the kiosk sales front, while allowed my previous freedoms in terms of range, the one battle I lost (actually without any fight on my part) was that, having persuaded Noble’s to install Coca Cola post-mix dispensers, I was now forced to switch to Britvic (Pepsi Cola etc.) as that was part of Bass. While the post-mix syrup supplied provided a better mark up, as a footnote of interest, this change was directly responsible for my overall pence per person (PPP) spend on soft drinks dropping by 20%! Like myself, the Coli audience preferred the taste of Coke to the over sweet one of Pepsi.

As often happened with “big circuit type operators”, Area Managers were regularly changed around which meant I lost Alan to a duopoly of his replacement Paul and a female deputy Area Manager. In this interim, Bass had acquired some more Bingo operations in Scotland and a couple of those included “orphan” cinema components. As their sales spend per person, and indeed their box office returns, paled compared to mine, I was invited to give the “area meeting” of the combined Northeast and Scotland Cinema Group under their control a seminar on adapting their range of products on sale to achieve a higher PPP spend and also some suggestions on being more flexible with their programming … especially during the 13 weeks of school holidays in a year. Thankfully I wasn’t assigned to implement the changes or take over their film booking!

Having not had to deal with a regular visiting “Company Auditor”, other than at the end of the Financial year, since my days with Odeon and Classic, I ended up in one of the most bizarre relationships with the Bass auditor assigned to the area. His name was Ted Webber and from the get-go he and I got on like a house on fire. At this time Bass were experimenting with a new “computer type” portable auditing machine called HUNTER which the visiting auditors could use to quickly check the accuracy of the bingo units’ stock and resulting sales cash generated. This was based on inputting delivery notes invoices since the previous audit (or in our case the stock levels at the time of the takeover) and then inputting the physical stock count at the time of their visit. After also inputting the banked sales for the interim period between the visits, the device would quickly work out (and print off) the unit’s shortage/overage factor. The reason Ted and I got on so well was that, after only two visits, he found this was the only unit that gave him a result that agreed to the penny with the HUNTER programme’s prediction as all my stock deliveries were in order and properly documented on my in house system and so could easily be cross-checked against his computer readout in the event of any queries or end result variance. There were two mutual benefits to this. Ted knew visiting my unit would take up very little “unanticipated time”, known between us as “due to idiots not inputting the invoices properly or just misplacing them”, which meant he could fit me in on a Friday morning and be finished by lunchtime at the latest enabling him to bunk off early to spend time with his family. As a result he often gave me a call the day before one of his designated visits to check I would be available. The one occasion, much later in our harmonious relationship, where we hit a problem was a day when I was going to see a Press Show in Newcastle that morning. When he told me he had hoped to get away sharpish that day I suggested I’d leave the stock room keys in my drawer as well as my stock count (taken at the end of the previous day’s trading) along with all the relevant delivery documents he would need. The cleaners would allow him into my office to access said keys and this would then allow him to spot check any item on the stock count list I had left him with a physical count in the stock room. Should there be a problem we could sort it out speedily when I got back to Morpeth. I duly arrived to find Ted enjoying a cuppa the cleaners had made for him and telling me everything was OK and he had been finished half an hour before my arrival but thought he’d just hang around to assure me everything was, as per usual, absolutely tickety boo. Now don’t all get jealous if your auditor relationship was less harmonious than mine!

One of my ongoing battles during this era was with the Film Distributors in terms of trying to secure earlier access to product for the Coli. Having worked hard at cultivating my Warner’s contact, Greg Martin, over a few years and with that Distributor, in the latest “change partners studio merger”, having acquired the Disney releases schedule away from its previous alliance with Fox, I was always thinking of new approaches to try and persuade him to let me have a trial with a Disney animated feature “on date” release even if it was using one of the “previously used in America prints” that, thanks to our chats, I knew were on the books as only having a £300 cost base to recoup as opposed to the £1,000 booked recoup price of special import new prints used by the Circuits and larger capacity screens. Eventually my persistence paid off and I secured day and date release on BEAUTY AND THE BEAST which Sue and I had caught on one of our North America holidays a couple of years previously. In those days the then global release patterns were staggered by territories over a few years and the UK was consequently behind the USA. I went all out to justify my confidence, and Greg’s faith in me, by using the Coli’s interlock system (which had proved so successful with JAWS when we opened and been used subsequently with biggies like GREASE and CROCODILE DUNDEE) for the matinee performances and also didn‘t quibble that all the combined takes in using this would all be set against the Coli’s single screen sliding scale agreed collectively in Wardour Street. Let’s face it with the business being taken at the box office my sales income was also setting new records and those profits were something that went 100% to the Coli’s bottom line!

From that date onwards I was always allocated an on-date release print for Disney features and, in later years as Wardour Street collectively became more flexible in allowing shared screen time during holiday periods with an adult film in the main evening slot, was able to play more titles per week that the previous limit of “one film per screen playing all performances” mentality of the pre-Multiplex era thinking. In later years it became even more flexible with Disney agreeing, once the main four week mandatory booking had been completed, to their animated features playing on at weekends only for matinee performances with a pro-rata apportionment of the sliding scale being applied to those takings. Again it allowed the flexibility to maximise the audience potential for my humble twin-screen operation. There would also be a nice “appreciation gesture” a few years later from Greg’s boss. I had asked Greg to see if there was any way I could pre-book and pre-pay a visit to the Warner Brothers Studios in Hollywood for an upcoming holiday Sue and I were taking that year as my pre-trip research had indicated these allocations were very limited and usually difficult to acquire as this was a “working studio” as opposed to the “Theme Park” variants run by Disney and Universal in LA. He approached Mike Boyce, who had been the one to OK my access to on-date releases with BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Mike sorted out a date for a visit during that trip … VIP and at no cost. It was a real memory builder for a film nut like me to spend time looking through the many studio archive records of communications between the old Studio Bosses and some of their more temperamental and demanding stars as well as the costume displays and other preserved treasures. All right it was not Disney or Universal in terms of razzmatazz but still memorable. 

One other intriguing factoid I picked up on during the Studio Tour was the tradition that all the food for the feral cats who prowled the grounds and active sets being used would be paid for by the studio’s highest paid star. At that time, and presumably for many years later, that person was Clint Eastwood. Somehow I don’t think he would have stooped to wandering the lot with a tin of Whiskas in one hand and his ever reliable Magnum in the other challenging the felines with : Do you feel lucky, Mog?

The ownership period of the Coli by Granada sadly came to an end after three years. As with the cinema business, Bingo operators too had been feeling hardships and having to make cutbacks and sales, The Coli bingo unit was never one to bring in the returns a company like Granada needed so it, and a few others, were put on the market and our ownership transferred to a smaller company called Cascade. Having spotted the tell-tale signs of “strangers with clip boards” arriving to “look round the premises” for “insurance purposes” or “fire inspections” such smoke screens were familiar to the Bingo manageress Anne and myself having experienced similar unannounced visitors prior with the Noble rationalisation. Consequently it was no real surprise to receive a summons to Nottingham (Bass Head Office) for a “special group meeting“. At that, the then MD produced information packages for each unit and handed them out to the managers involved giving them information about their new ownership arrangements. The only surprised look that the MD had was when he picked one up for the “Cinema operation” at Morpeth. He clearly had no idea Bass still operated a cinema and had to ask if this was correct! Nice to be appreciated. Anyway, nothing to do but carry on under the new owners and keep the Coli going.

EPISODE TWO

Not unexpectedly, under Cascade’s ownership I was asked to continue doing everything related to the Cinema operation. Thankfully I did have a sympathetic ear in my new Area Manager Graham Gittings as he had spent several years running cinemas in his earlier career. Cascade’s operation levels were very much like Classic in my early career and as per usual it wasn’t long before my Film Renter accounts department contacts were calling me for help in “persuading” Cascade’s finance director to settle the film hire bills more promptly. The traditional threat from me loosened the mental block in Cascade’s Finance Director’s thinking. As they relied on the Coli’s cinema revenue to have a fund to “massage” the accounts for the Bingo (especially as usual by over-allocating energy and running costs against the Cinema rather than their Bingo) everything resolved itself. Thankfully box office returns held up reasonably well due to the earlier access I continued to enjoy with film releases and again during this period I was fortunate to have such a good friendship with Peter at the Odeon who was always a willing sounding board and wise counsel giver. In many ways it also helped that the mutual bond we had built over the past quarter of a century meant I continued to enjoy being invited as a “Guest Duty Manager” on the many big premieres occasionally still staged at Pilgrim Street.

Sadly during the Bass ownership era, Tony Ramsden had died following a car accident in which his wife had been driving the car. At his funeral I renewed acquaintance with two former Odeon GM’s whose paths had regularly crossed with mine over the years. While it was no surprise to see Dave Elliot again (now in change of my old alma mater at Clerk Street in Edinburgh), it was Pat Brader’s warm greeting of recognition and respect that made me realise and value the true bond that Odeon colleagues have for each other and that I was now considered to be really “one of them”. The show of friendship was all the more appreciated as Glasgow’s supremo, who interviewed me way back in 1968 for employment with Odeon, and I had undergone a few “differences of opinion” and arguments over the years. Since that reunion, our paths would cross regularly and I saw a whole different side to Pat. As Peter said, on one occasion when we compared notes. “Pat has mellowed in his later years”!

Tony’s replacement was Ian McDonald who had been seconded from running other divisions in Rank’s portfolio (Bingo and Nightclubs) which meant he had to be shown the ropes in terms of cinema operation by Peter. Ian, a proud Scot, could be a bit harsh to deal with at times but over his tenure during this period I was always made welcome, a relationship that would strengthen in the final phase of my career which, in my usual “forthcoming attractions mode”, we shall come to in due course.

It was fairly obvious Cascade were struggling to establish themselves as even a middle-ranking player in the Bingo business. Having to report takings daily was never a good situation and it was no real surprise when I turned up one day in 1997 and found Graham and his sidekick Ian (the general dogsbody assistant cum auditor for the circuit) in my office wanting a chat. The business being generated by some of the recent Bingo acquisitions was not proving sufficient and they were having to unload some to other operators or close them down. The Coli needless to say was included but Graham had come with a proposal that they would be willing to sell the entire building to me for £80K. He also offered to teach me all he knew about running a bingo operation so that its operation (and staffing) could continue as well. My initial thoughts were “maybe” but I knew that the state of the roof would require extensive work and was never happy about the risk of including the bingo operation. After some serious consultations with Peter (about possibly going into partnership and converting the bingo area to more screens?) and chats with the bank manager at the branch which the Coli had always used, the risks I considered too high to take on but I had an alternate idea I wanted to pursue.

For as long as I had been managing the Coli there had been constant local campaigns to the local Council to provide an “Arts Venue” so I felt it worth a shot and approached my Cinema Licensing contact Arthur Yellowley to see if he’d put “buying it” to the Council Meeting for consideration as such an acquisition could easily provide the “Arts venue” within the Bingo area. Their response, due to the economic cut backs being imposed on Council spending at that time, was to reject the idea so I rolled the dice one last time by starting a “Save the Coli” campaign with plenty of coverage being provided by editor Terry Hackett at the Morpeth Herald. Like Peter, Terry had been a constant throughout my years managing the cinema. The campaign response from the public was very encouraging but the Council remained impassive. Thankfully a couple of local businessmen, Peter Kelly and Les Sage, who over the years had acquired (and sold) a lot of business properties in the town expressed an interest. After a few discussions, and a trip to Edinburgh with them for a chat with Derek Cameron at the Dominion in Edinburgh about how he had turned his large single screen into an effective and profitable triple screen operation, they appeared to increase their interest in acquiring the site as long as they got it for the same price Cascade had offered it to me. They did and so the Coli in some ways returned to its 1926 origins as a truly local owned operation.

The new owners promised to spend money carrying out repairs to the roof, upgrading the seating and installing Dolby sound … albeit only initially reseating one screen and upgrading the sound system in that one. They also initially kept the Amusement Arcade and Bingo operation going but that was only until they secured permission for the changes of use for those parts of the building to enable them to initiate what would, in a very short space of time, change the whole future prospects for the continuation of the current profitable cinema operation. 

Stage One of their master plan involved ceasing both the Bingo and the Amusement Arcade café area and making all the staff employed in those units redundant. For the former Bingo Area they offered it on the rental market as “retail space” and one member of the duo’s workforce was able to satisfy a long term ambition of opening a “gentleman’s clothing” emporium in that space. For the Amusement Arcade the idea was to add yet another evening drinking venue to Morpeth’s already well served alcohol consumption premises tally with this one having a twist through being named “MOVIES” and decorated with vintage film posters and props. The aim was to act as a sort of unofficial mini-nightclub magnet for the younger set with disco-type music being played by the manager, Peter’s son Paul. Once it got up and running it became a constant noise problem with my cinema audiences trying to enjoy the movies upstairs while the overloud raucous music and DJ activities leaked through into the auditoria. Ne’er a night went by without me having to phone down and ask them to turn the volume down as they were drowning out the film. The new owners did try installing extra sound insulation but this didn’t help eliminate the issue totally and eventually it was agreed MOVIES would not play its music above a certain level until the cinema programmes, which usually ended around 9:45pm, finished. This teen-magnet operation proved popular on weekend nights although its use of bouncers - needed to control entry to the licensed capacity numbers and customers’ at times unruly behaviour - rather went against the safe image the Coli’s cinema operation had always enjoyed in the Town.

Despite all these handicaps I was still able to secure decent film product and attendances, crucially during the school holiday periods, held up strongly because of this. As I was now acting as an unpaid “account clerk” as well as everything else I knew the cinema operation continued to make a profit despite the falsehoods being spread around town by the new owners.

After a year and a half of this format, Stage Two of the new owners plan started to emerge. They intended applying for planning permission from Morpeth Council to knock the two cinemas into one large space that would accommodate a nightclub dance floor in the front seating areas of the former twin screens with a bigger screen at the front of this former space. The cinema would be required to “share” this for film presentations but now have a reduced, effectively single screen, capacity of only 65 seats which would comprise nightclub table-type seating on a platform level overlooking the dance floor section with a full width bar located at the back of this section just below the former projection suite’s portholes. The “nightclub” would only operate on Fridays and Saturdays meaning film screenings would have to finish by 9:15PM on those nights. They also hoped to use “the facility” during the day for “catered functions” in the run up to the upcoming Millennium 2000 Celebrations. This appeared to have been the prime driver from the start in their vision of making big profits with this “nightclub” operation thanks to the bargain price they had paid for the Coli site.

The “improvements” (a.k.a. a total desecration of a local facility) would involve a period of closure to carry out the work. My first inkle that something was amok had not been the traditional warning sign of “people with clipboards carrying out dubious fire or insurance risk assessments”. From looking out the projection room portholes one afternoon while I was making up the films I spotted the owners in conflab with a whole group of Councillors. These were being cajoled into ultimately approving the modifications. I received no forewarning or courtesy indication of what they were discussing and only some days later got a summons to a “chat meeting” when they outlined their vision. They magnanimously reassured me by “hoping that I would continue running the cinema operation” as they valued it as an asset in the town and also hoped that in addition to preparing the cinema’s trial accounts ledger that I would do all the payroll paperwork (including the annual staff tax pro-forma’s) for both the reduced staff numbers when it reopened and the nightclub staff for submission to HMRI … after they had been checked by their “official accountant”. I made quite clear that day and date release on films under their new “Stage Two vision” would be a non-starter and expressed doubts that audiences used to the high standards the Coli had always aimed for in terms of presentation would also impact on viability. The one assurance I was given “personally by Peter Kelly” was that anytime I wanted, should their “exciting concept” not prove me wrong, I could have my full redundancy package as an alternative to staying in their employ..

After some consultations with Peter he suggested I bide my time and go with the flow given the fallback of the redundancy package was a given. On the opening night of the “new concept” I managed to wangle an invite for Peter to attend and, after taking one look at the new layout, he totally agreed with my estimations that this was going to be a non-starter as far as viability of the cinema component in the master-plan was concerned. My forewarnings played out as feared with renters only agreeing to allocate me a booking date on rubbish product “day and date” with its video release and also insisting that each booking carried a minimum fixed fee rental guarantee should the box office not even reach the lowest level of the sliding scale. From the heady days of weekly admissions of over 4000+ during holiday weeks it was a struggle most weeks to scrape above 100. Having got past the “Millennium” big event the new owners had hoped to cash in on, the shutters eventually fell when they decided to cease cinema operations the week before the six-week summer school holiday period that would formerly have been a mainstay of the business! After a struggle I finally got my “redundancy package” - albeit the basic legal minimum they were required to pay and a rather pathetic china mug, which must have set them back all of 50p, with “You‘re the Best“ printed on it!!!.

During this darkest period of my professional life I very much appreciated Peter’s support and he would have a further pivotal part to play in the final chapters of my “Cinema Life”.

But before that I would be amiss if I did not reveal some unusual encouragement that kept me going during the “Stage Two” interim period of the Coli’s demise. This came from one of the staff I had been allocated (i.e. told to employ”) when we reopened. Pauline Kyle may indeed have been positioned to act as a spy for the new owners, having worked previously with Dorothy, the “family friend administrator” they also employed but, despite my preconceptions, she actually turned out to be more on my side than theirs. Pauline, a matronly lady, was a fascinating person to converse with and she would often regale me with the exciting life she had experienced in South Africa before being widowed and returning to the UK. It soon became apparent that she appeared to have a similar “gift” to the one Mrs. Mitchell had demonstrated with her “astral planing” at the start of my career at the Odeon in Edinburgh and could “sense” future changes in people’s lives. According to Dorothy, Pauline was well known around Morpeth as a private mystic consultant but very selective in who she gave readings to. I have, through several experiences previously chronicled on this journey, always kept a reasonably open mind to such “psychic pronouncements” and provided details sufficient to allow you to formulate your own opinions on their validity. Pauline appeared very much like Nell in that suddenly during a conversation she would come out with a “vision of what she was seeing for my future”. 

Her first comment came shortly after the “Stage Two” Coli conversion when she told me she sensed I was less than happy with the new arrangements but, while these may have felt insurmountable at present, there were “people looking out for me in the Spirit World and sending reassurances via her”. Apparently my main “Spirit Guide” was some sort of boatman who communicated my situation to her as akin to the image Pauline could see, of me “being stuck in the Saragossa Sea and unable to progress but that things would change in time and I needed to show patience”. On another occasion Pauline assured me others were also there looking out for me in this Spirit World, describing one in such vivid demeanour and clothing detail (the uniform she wore as the hospital domestic worker she was employed as at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary) that it could only have been my favourite Aunt Meg who always spoiled me as a child whenever she visited. I must stress that, as with other “communications” routed to me by Pauline, there had been no previous conversations mentioning this long-deceased relative (or any of the other persons involved) to guide this imaging. On another occasion Pauline claimed to be seeing me among crowds of people in a cinema and I was wearing my dress suit. I challenged this as perhaps being a “past experience involving my early days with Odeon when such attire was de rigueur for Premieres” but she assured me it was a “future projection” and that she could see me in a spanking new building with blue carpeting and a big glass fronted space. On a much later occasion, a few weeks before the closure of the Coli, my mystic suddenly came out with a “message” from my spirit guide, who this time appeared to be making progress with moving his boat through the Sargasso Sea which “he” had previously been moribund in. He was assuring me I would soon be moving on from my present impasse. There was another person present in this vision also assuring Pauline that I would soon be in a much happier place. This “woman” she described  as “sitting at a desk, immaculately coiffured and wearing a smart black evening dress with a beautiful necklace of pearls”. Pauline, despite not knowing any of my long past employment history, had just described a perfect image of Mrs. Mitchell at one of our Premieres in Edinburgh relaxing once the film was on screen and we had time to wind down. As I had never talked about those days they could not have been known to my seer if she didn’t have the “gift” she appeared to be demonstrating. When Pauline added that this “elegant lady” asked her to tell me that she had found my experiences with a Jacuzzi very amusing, any doubts or suspicions of falsity dissipated. That incident, untold to either Nell (who was sadly long gone from this life when it had taken place) or Pauline, did actually happen in my life on a holiday in Las Vegas and was clearly being deployed somehow in this Twilight Zone as a special verification of the main message being “transmitted” to me though Pauline. The predicted change did come but I shall save that for a little later in my narrative when yet again I provide evidence that such paranormal communications, often dismissed a quackery, may indeed be a heads up of future reality.

AN INTRIGUING CHANGE OF DIRECTION!

In amongst this somewhat turbulent period at the Coli itself there had been one other addition added to my sphere of media activity. This, like so many enjoyable diversions, had come completely out of the blue. During BFY one of the more active committee members had been Brett Childs who I had known for quite a few years since he took over managing the Odeon in Sunderland on the retirement of its previous long serving General Manager. Like Peter and myself he not only enjoyed working in the business but also loved watching films too. In the carnage of closures that followed the arrival of the Multiplexes on Tyneside in the late 1980’s and into the 1990’s, Sunderland’s Odeon joined the list of casualties but fortunately Brett secured the position of Film Booker, and later manager, of the “small twin screen cinema operation” that was established with Sunderland Council’s support within the live theatre operation of the Empire Theatre to continue a film provision in the city following the closure of both the Odeon and the ABC units. Sue and I often attended live theatre, music concerts and pop shows at this Theatre venue and would often spend time chatting with Brett when those visits coincided with one of his Duty Manager shifts for the complex. On one occasion he very kindly managed to secure a signed photo of Dionne Warwick for Sue which had been personally dedicated to her. Alongside the one Dave Elliot secured of Paul McCartney, at a show at the Odeon Edinburgh, these mementos are still treasured.

One day I received a letter from the Sunderland Empire which on opening proved to be totally different in content to the anticipated one of a circular promoting an upcoming show. The communication was to enquire if I might be interested in becoming a Regional Panellist for the UK Theatre Awards nomination process. This voluntary commitment would allow me to request two tickets to attend shows primarily in participating theatres in the North East catchment area for which I would only be required to pay my own transport costs to and from the venue. There was a proviso that if I wanted to travel further away to other parts of the UK then I would be free to do so but again no travel expenses would be paid. The brief was to only choose shows I would have intended going to see anyway (presumably so that no preconceptions or prejudices would influence my assessments?) and then to rate certain specific categories on a scale of 1 to 10 including Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor or Actress, Best Original play, Best Adapted Play, Best Musical (original), best Musical (revival), Best Direction and the usual technical categories.

I was more than happy to be considered for this “One Year Appointment” and, as requested, submitted a review of a production of KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS we had seen at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre on one of our recent holidays as an indication of my (presumed) critical skills. This clearly proved acceptable as they kept re-appointing me for over 10 years until I decided, having by then, retired, to cease fulfilling this commitment. During my tenure as a panellist our journeys took us, as Sue often accompanied me when the show appealed to her, to local theatres (Newcastle Theatre Royal, Northern Stage, Sunderland Empire, Durham) and the main Edinburgh Theatres with occasional forays to Manchester, Bradford, Liverpool and even Bristol. Many of these were slotted round travel breaks Sue and I would already be taking and had decided to fit the productions in on those trips. I probably got more out of this perk than Sue who often declined to see some of the more avant guard and classic dramas I would take in (Shakespeare, Ibsen, Stoppard, Dickens to name but four). But she enjoyed the many musicals and comedy productions (as long as it wasn’t a farce) we visited.

I often got a bit of ribbing from my long-time Radio Tyneside sparring partner Lyndsey Williams about now being a Theatre Critic (and judge) as well as previous incarnations of newspaper and radio movie critic. One of the funniest was him enquiring if on my visits to theatres the cast were advised that “the TMA man was in the audience tonight” and was disappointed that no-one had ever considered inducements for favourable marking! In my tenure I only ever accorded two ratings of 9 (one to Sir Ian McKellen who I saw in WAITING FOR GODOT alongside Sir Patrick Stewart) and the other to Sharon D Clarke in the trial run of GHOST THE MUSICAL in Manchester for a knockout performance as psychic Oda Mae Brown - the Whoopi Goldberg role in the original film that inspired the musical. My reasoning was that 9 would be the highest rating I would consider because if I saw a “10” there would be no point in going back to a theatre as I would have just seen perfection. In fairness I was fortunate to see many worthy of an “8” rating and took satisfaction for spotting early career performances by Michelle Dockery (as Eliza Dolittle in a straight version of PYGMALION at Darlington and in UNCLE VANYA at Northern Stage).

Mentioning Whoopi gives me a chance for another, hopefully, interesting diversion. During our frequent stopovers in New York on returning from our American vacations Sue and I regularly took in a couple of Broadway shows. One of those was a revival of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM in which she was playing the normally male role of Pseudolis the slave which Zero Mostel had created many years earlier on stage and recreated in the film version. Somehow we had secured front rows seats in the stalls which provided almost regular eye contact with the star giving her own take on the role. In one scene where Pseudolis was “auctioning off” some of the female slaves she pulled one aside and turned to me asking if I would be interested in purchasing “this one"?. I took up on her cue and reached into my wallet to produce my American Express card enquiring if this was accepted? She beamed as she responded with “That’ll do nicely, Thank you”  And that was how I came to “act” with Whoopi on Broadway and could add it to my CV of intriguing encounters with the stars.

On another occasion, as we were making our way back up Broadway to our hotel’s location, a film crew was setting up their equipment to film some night scenes. As they were doing so a car pulled alongside and the driver rolled down his window as he recognised some of the crew and yelled out “Hey, ya bums, I thought ya was gonna’ call me?” While I had no interaction with said driver I immediately recognised him as Danny Aiello, one of Woody Allan’s regular cast in his films. While continuing my walk up Broadway I was still distracted with the Aiello altercation still in full flow and was about to walk into a coffee shop to pick up a couple of drinks to take back to the hotel. As a result, I almost bumped into a lady emerging from said shop! I had inadvertently almost crashed into a cast member who was clearly part of a “shot rehearsal” they were mapping out involving her and this shop. As I grovelled an apology I was held spellbound by her very familiar face but at the same time was totally confused. The star was none other than Andie MacDowell and I found myself mere inches from making face to face physical contact with her! The confusion was due to her, for this part, wearing green eye-colour contact lenses instead of her natural piercing blues. She was so charming in accepting my apology for disrupting the scene. 

Going to New York occasionally means you have to keep your eyes open as you never know who you might find yourself crossing paths with!

CHAPTER 11  

FINAL CURTAINS SOMETIMES FAIL TO DROP PERMANENTLY!   ...   (or CINEMA MANAGERS SOMETIMES DON’T JUST FADE AWAY!)

So there I was in the summer months of 2000, for once having a chance to watch lots of Test Cricket from my armchair as a result of my enforced early retirement, when the phone rings. A familiar voice, Peter Talbot, asks if I am over the trauma of the Coli closure and bored with just watching cricket? He indicated that a vacancy had arisen at the Odeon for an Assistant Manager and wondered if I might consider coming “out of retirement” (actually it was more along the lines that “it was time for me to get up off my butt and get on with enjoying working in cinemas again”). He said there were two drawbacks … the first being having to work with him as GM, and the second that I would have to go right back to the beginning in terms of salary and undergo the current induction training which would involve completing training work books that would be signed off by Joanne Kelly, the HR manager for the area, and my GM. Needless to say I replied that the second would be no problem but wasn’t sure about the first! He knew I’d make a joke of that one before he had even made the stipulation. The big carrot, apart from returning to the Company I had started out with in cinema management way back in 1968, was that - as we were both aware from our long association in working together - the  four-screen Pilgrim Street site was due to be replaced by a brand new purpose-built state-of-the-art 12-Screen Multiplex scheduled to open at the back end of 2002. This would be called Odeon at The Gate as it formed the key component of a new leisure development that would incorporate a range of eateries, themed bars and a Casino. Apart from the cinema operation all the other tenants were owned and managed by separate parent companies.

 The decision was a no-brainer and I was engaged to start work in the last quarter of 2001. Peter also confided in me that he would not be moving over to the new site as he had finally sorted out the Company Pension argument he had been having with Odeon for several years now. They finally agreed to settle it in his favour and once the new site was up and running he would tidy up anything needing to be scrapped or shredded from the Pilgrim Site and then become a man of retired leisure. This timetable would still give us nearly a year together to plan, carry out and implement a gradual change to the Pilgrim Street site’s pricing regime. Since the arrival of the Multiplexes this had been geared to undercutting their admission prices to steal as much of their market share as we could despite being handicapped by our four screens ratio to their double-digit screen numbers allowing them to offer a wider range of films at any time. Within the next year we would have to nudge these up aggressively so that when regulars came to the new site, admission charges for The Gate would be on par with the existing Plexes at Gateshead Metro Centre and the nearby Warner’s nine-screen operation at Manors.

Alongside this I had to master the TIMS computerised ticket system used at the Odeon and pick up the stock control, wages and timesheet sign off protocols. Thankfully, the advantage of knowing most of the staff, meant the box office staff and cashing up assistants were more than happy to “hold my hand and guide me through it all”  I also became the latest recruit for “Pat from the Cupboard” and “Tuft” to take under their wings. Pat Miller had been a long serving member of the Management Team and after retiring was often “brought out of retirement” to help guide support management recruits through to their “sign off” assessment by Peter and HR … a bit like the “Keyholder Test” I had to pass way back in 1968 which was done by Ted Way at the Odeon Edinburgh. Peter often joked that Mrs. Miller was kept in a storage cupboard in the labyrinth of the Pilgrim Street site and “released” whenever a newbie AM was recruited. The two AM’s already in situ were David Hiles and Jane Kells, both of whom were graduates of Pat’s Cupboard. They were very easy to get on with and so patient while guiding me through the joys of the email system and other computerised aspects of the modern cinema … a big step up from the basic “Old Odeon model” of manual entry ledgers I had adopted at the Coli. The duo were in charge of giving me the third degree (verbally) over questions they knew Joanne Kelly was likely to be asking when she carried out her rating of my Work Book assessment. Joanne was also easy to get on with as, being Scottish, she understood my sense of humour. The one problem she did have was making out my hand written entries in said work book. Peter often described my notes to him, at various stages of BFY, as akin to Egyptian Hieroglyphics while Joanne, during my assessment, said my scrawls were like those of her grandfather. She started often referring to me as “Pops” which was eagerly taken up by David and Jane as well as tending to stick with me for the many years we worked together. After signing off my workbooks she very kindly commented that some of my answers had been totally unexpected and that as a result she had learned some new tricks to managing staff and customer issues!

Tuft, or Anne Turnbull - to give her full name - had been at the Pilgrim Street for as long as I had been in Newcastle and was, a bit like Sadie Swann at Clerk Street, one of those people who quietly got on with their assigned duties. In Anne’s case, as with Sadie, this would be the weekly stock control delivery entries and physical stock count cross check against revenues banked to determine the weekly SDF (Sales Difference Factor … a key monitoring protocol to flag up big discrepancies for further investigation). She would also prepare the monthly payroll paperwork for submission to Head Office and ensure all the required personnel paperwork was up to date for any “surprise” audit visits. These key components, as well as raising the appropriate purchase orders for more general goods items, were key to running the business efficiently and having a specific member of staff who was reliable and knew what they were doing was a vital cog in the unit operation. Tuft was well respected by all the management team and totally reliable. She was also patient in keeping me right in terms of what went where.

It wasn’t long before I was working more closely with Peter on the timesheet preparation and liaising with our booking controller over how we would be allocating the screens to maximise the number of performances. Initially this was with Joanne (Jo) Kirby and we got on pretty well given that she was fully aware I had been booking films for way more years than she had been out of baby-grows. The ice was really broken when Peter, knowing Sue and I were off to London for a couple of days to take in a couple of shows, suggested we take Jo out for lunch. That gave me a chance, when we picked her up at Booking Department in Leicester Square, to meet some of the other bookers who, over the years, I would also be dealing with. Odeon always tended to swap cinema allocations for the bookers around on a regular basis. Needless to say Karen Lui and some of the others were a little envious as this lunch on expenses for Joe was not a normal scenario but then the way Peter and I worked together was always “unorthodox” too … but effective. The one booker very few people got on with was Brian Corless, who could be a little pernickety and snide at times. Never being shy about giving as good as I got, we actually ended up getting on like best mates as he quickly realised I knew a lot about dealing with Film Renters and also had, over the years, engaged in similar battles to those Brian often experienced. It meant, from experience, I sympathised when they were being obstructive and difficult and he was being frustrated. This “difficulty” had initially surprised me having assumed that, with Odeon’s booking clout, it would be easy going. Our conversations on Mondays clearly were often overheard by some of Brian’s colleagues in Booking Department and on the occasions when I spoke with them - due to Brian being unavailable or on holiday - they often asked what my secret was as nobody else had the rapport I had achieved with him. Brian often remarked to them how he enjoyed our “exchanges” and claimed my time-sheet proposals were among the best which made his job easy in terms of dealing with Newcastle and so leaving more time for other units who needed more of his “hands on” intervention and guidance. This, apparently, was clearly a first for this self-confessed curmudgeon of the department.

Once our Booker had given the sign-off to our timesheet, the next stage was programming all the performances into the ticketing system master computer. This always involved getting one of the box office cashiers to check the new week’s entries on one of their terminals once I had input the data and for them to flag up any errors needing correction. I quickly acquired a fan base among the cashiers as they said I was the only member of the management team whose entries they found the least number of errors with and, as the weeks went on, usually needed no corrections at all. Once this was all checked, the communication of programme and screening times to our various media contacts and free distribution services like local Radio Stations and Teletext was the final part of this “Monday Key Task”

The ticketing systems master computer was also the input source that required carefully crosschecking and adjusting whenever we changed the pricing policy as these would impact at Box Office level when the cashiers input the number of tickets a customer was purchasing to calculate the total payment needed. In the year from the end of 2000 to October 2001 Peter and I held regular conclaves to decide when and how to nudge the prices up, making an adjustment on adult prices on some occasions and the child and concession prices on others to achieve the minimum differential noticeable to customers from the Pilgrim Street site attending the new Gate site when it opened in November 2001. This operation/exercise was carried out probably five times and was achieved, thankfully, without too much adverse reaction from customers.

Many of the spreadsheets I was charged with updating on a weekly basis, especially the one comparing our weekly box office on films with those of opposition cinemas in our catchment area, had been created by James, the employee I had replaced when he decided to take up a better promotional prospects offer from a computerised wages systems company in the area where he would be working on their new systems development. That company, SAGE, was already established but would go on to become a global leader in this provision. I was fortunate to spend a few weeks with him and all the monitoring spreads he had “tailored” for Peter and to tap into his methodology. There was now very much a business culture in cinema chains of measuring and monitoring their success against opposition units on a weekly basis which was all very well in some respects but often created false impressions given that it ignored the old tenet which I had already learned from years in the business that no two cinemas were ever totally alike in their potential audience profiles and, while good managers could indeed use such data to filter film choices, it also depended on them being prepared to battle with Booking Department and they in turn to listen to the arguments. This was a deeply entrenched modus operandi for me that had been embedded by Ted at the Odeon in Edinburgh and one I had pursued energetically - to the annoyance of many bookers - over my career.

As well as my personal re-energising through being back in the Big League of cinema management again, this was also an exciting period in terms of cinema releases with the start of the HARRY POTTER series, the LORD OF THE RINGS franchise, the continuing STAR WARS saga and as always the perennial Bond or latest Disney release to look forward to. Nothing beats the buzz of a full house and in the case of the current four-screen format of the Pilgrim Street site which had a 1000+ capacity in its Screen One it was a satisfying sight to behold. The busiest admission numbers day tended to be our Bargain Price Day. This had originally started out as a Tuesday (being traditionally one of the quietest business nights) as part of Peter’s ploy to counter the arrival of the Multiplexes and had certainly impacted on the Tuesday business at our nearby Warner’s Nine-Screen unit on that day of the week. In a perverse way, their smaller screen capacities often helped our weekend business with very popular titles as their “overflow” who couldn’t get in there would walk to Pilgrim Street and enjoy some good old fashioned UK Cinema customer service! With the change of start day for cinema releases to a Thursday we changed our Bargain Price Day to that as a ploy to get the numbers in who would talk about the “new” movies to friends who hopefully might consider making a trip to see them on Friday, Saturday or Sunday and so boost our own potential weekend takes.

Another niche market the Pilgrim Street site had carved out for itself over the years was the annual influx of Fresher students to Newcastle University and the Polytechnic (now Northumbria University) each late September. David and Jane (not long out of University themselves) spent several of their “shifts” during Fresher’s Week doling out promotional giveaways (courtesy of the Film Renters) of upcoming releases and also invites to some special screenings of recent releases and occasional sneak previews of soon to be released films that the Distributors were prepared to make available to us for such occasions if they felt they would appeal to this target audience. These “sneaks” were usually held on a Sunday morning and were well attended, From the Odeon point of view it was a way of stealing a march on the Plexes by associating the convenience of the Pilgrim Street’s central location (close to Halls of Residence and the then main student bed sit conurbation of Jesmond) as the place to watch films and at reasonable prices … especially with the Tuesday students’ day bargain price.

One of the programming components that gradually fell my way was the “Seniors Screenings” the Pilgrim Street site had pioneered several years previously. The idea had been put to Peter by our senior Team Leader Ann Curry who had, like many other staff members been there as long as I had been working in the North East … and in many cases before Peter took over from Freddie Bower. Ann’s concept was to play films that would appeal to those of more mature tastes than the majority of general cinema releases catering to the younger age groups. The screenings on Wednesday mornings starting at 10:30 allowed them to enjoy a cuppa and a biscuit prior to the start of the screening with that item included in the rock-bottom admission price. Entry was confined to seniors to prevent the screenings being disrupted by the occasional rowdy behaviour standards now starting to become more prevalent with younger audiences. Bookings had been compiled by Head Office with the concept gradually being rolled out across the circuit where managers felt they might be viable. When I arrived Jane and David were the ones who often proposed the titles to Booking Department and came up with the idea of doing a “monthly listing” with a brief blurb about the upcoming movies. My first observation to Peter was to challenge why so many “horror” and “violent action” movies were being included as they usually produced the lowest admission numbers. Not unexpectedly he passed the programming brief on to me and my monthly listings giveaway became an “in demand item” each month by the increasing numbers starting to attend the more appealing to their tastes films now being programmed. It wasn’t possible every month to have an ideal selection but I vetted out some of the clearly lesser popular genres wherever possible and, a sure indication that I was doing something right, Booking Department (as they had with the Late Night Show programming Ted and I introduced at Edinburgh all those decades ago) started programming my selections across the circuit! Sadly no percentage commission to me but that had never been a motivator. It was a fun audience to interact with and Ann or I would often say a few words before a screening started giving details of what might be coming up and asking for any comments on the recent selections that had been screened … which they were never shy about airing!

One of the “new Odeon” operational aspects I had to become accustomed to was the HR protocol requiring staff to be “appraised” on an annual basis. This involved them completing a pro-forma document HR had created in which they rated their own performance in specified skills areas of their job. Their allocated Line Manager would then engage in individual face-to-face conversations with their assigned group of staff, discussing where they might disagree with the staff member’s own rating before eventually agreeing on an overall “score” as well as perhaps suggesting areas, and help on offer from Team Leaders and Section Heads, to help them achieve any improvements felt necessary. The strange aspect of this process was that staff in these assigned groups were each invited to submit an appraisal of their assigned manager in what was designed to create a 360º interaction. It occasionally proved enlightening! Also as part of the process, the Line Manager could assign a specific project to individuals in their group to help mentor some less experienced staff in the skills needed for sections such as box office or kiosk operations they had not yet worked in. This process had been designed to help units achieve a multi-skilled staff who could turn their hand to any section of the customer facing operation. Thankfully over the years I did this my “groups” (who I sometimes referred to as Charlie’s Angels) were happy having me as their line manager and you couldn’t ask for more than that.

In terms of the management team itself there was a more detailed “appraisal document” which had to be supported by “evidence” of tasks you had performed to improve the operation or profitability of the business in any specific ways. This was initially reviewed by the GM and HR but when it became tied in with performance based wage rise scales, the Area Manager would also become involved to sign off on the GM’s ratings in case of any potential favouritism being shown in the marking. As if!

There was one area of “New Odeon”, however, that seriously ruffled my feathers because it was nowhere near as professional and supportive of unit management when compared to the service provided in the good old days. Marketing Department, in my previous Odeon life, had always been available to assist with material, suggestions and promotional material as they worked in close conjunction with the Promotions Departments of the Film Renters to come up with competitions and prizes for submission to local papers, radio stations etc. to help promote interest in upcoming films. Compare and contrast the wonderful support provided at Odeon Edinburgh for the launch of OHMSS with the local team now being expected to come up with everything themselves and then submit a summary (and evidence in terms of clippings and other press coverage) of how they had promoted the films while the Marketing team just sat in their London office, gathered it all in and submitted it up the line as though it was all their own work! 

This mentality had developed out of Marketing department’s “Big Idea” of BRAND CHAMPIONS whereby each area’s cinemas had to prepare a summary of their work and quantify the costs of the various promotions they had secured which had been saved by their promotional activities and also how these had impacted on the business achieved by the films targeted in respect of changes to our local market share. No real guidelines were given by the “genii” who had “thought up” the process so everyone just fudged something up and linked it with the clippings and coverage they had achieved! David and Jane had splitting headaches each month as they tried to get all this evidence together. Peter wisely sidelined me from this although I was encouraged to offer up promotional tactics from the “Good Old Days” to steer them. I was more than happy to participate in that. What really convinced me that Marketing had lost the plot was the one suggestion they came up with most often - almost a default modus operandi - that involved a giveaway ticket type operation, usually linked to family holiday releases. This was usually some sort of variant on the number of free child tickets that would be given with the purchase of one adult ticket … their argument being that this largesse would boost the retail spend per person and so the profits. What it did cause was stress to the cashiers at the box office when adults would demand unlimited amounts of child tickets for only one adult ticket being purchased as the generally understood ratio of perhaps two child tickets maximum had not been clearly communicated in the promotional posters and handouts. These needless to say had been created and supplied by Marketing Department. For devilment I decided to delve into some recent holiday period family film admission ratios for the Pilgrim Street site and the relevant spend per person data when such a promotion had not been operating and compare it with the current Marketing Dept. created version for a similar period. Not only did my analysis show that the overall box office income ratio had dropped drastically (when including all the free tickets as well as the ones where child tickets only had been paid for due to parents not going in with them) but that the sales spend per person had not gone up by any percentage needed to compensate for this loss of box office income. Needless to say my analysis never got past being read by Peter and our Area Manager at the time, Both did, however, admit privately that my findings concurred with their fears over the effectiveness of such schemes. As the Managing Director at the time considered Marketing personnel were the “star performers” of the Odeon business model, my in depth analysis was never passed up the line!

I will admit Marketing Dept. were quite good at arranging what became generally known as “talker preview screenings” in advance of film opening dates, the intention being that these audiences would go away and tell all their friends about the film. This used to be widely deployed and called “word of mouth”. It was also considered to be more effective as those spreading the news, early customers in the film’s run, had actually paid for their tickets! These “new style talkers” were usually done in conjunction with either our Local Press or Radio Stations but more frequently through a national paper where a coupon needed to be clipped out and exchanged in advance to secure two free tickets for the film it applied to. We always used one of the smaller screens as clearly the fiscal inducement to Odeon from the papers (effectively a hire fee for the theatre being used) was fairly small. Again it was very noticeable that not too many of these invitees troubled our kiosk staff much on the way in, or out, so there was not even a bottom line booster for our retail sales operation. Peter and I often wondered if the business model had changed from the days when “putting paying bums on seats” was our prime directive to one of “how many free seats can we give away and get very little back in return”. Anyone could fill a cinema by not charging admission but it would never really go far in terms of making a contribution to the overheads or wage bill.

In terms of “management” meetings, the unit ones would be chaired by Peter and held on a (possibly too) regular basis. They also tended to go on a bit too long as The Boss loved holding court and going over everything, including task allocations, more times than was really necessary. As a result we would all be sitting at times counting out the quarter-hour chimes on the Northern Goldsmith’s clock across from the Odeon and wondering if the meeting would end before the Four O’clock chimes to allow those doing the 10 -4 shift to get off on time for once. Sadly this was a rare occurrence! The other meetings often held at Pilgrim Street were the Regional ones chaired by the Area Manager, whose office was along the corridor from Peter’s. This was now Ken Crielman following the tragic death of Tony Ramsden. The arrangement meant I often had a chance to enjoy a chat with David Elliot and Pat Brader as well as getting to know some of the other GM’s. On occasions I would attend as Peter’s stand-in when he was off on holiday. 

In terms of the main purpose of the Odeon Pilgrim Street, the site had maintained a genuine level of support from customers wanting British traditionalism as opposed to American faux-glam and razzamatazz. Peter and his team’s hard work over the 3½ decades since he took over from Freddie Bower had ensured the Grand Old Lady had remained viable despite these upstart new kids on the block. His UK-style showmanship standards were maintained during this difficult transition period of UK cinema going with, whenever possible, major releases being given Odeon style premieres akin to those we had staged during BFY. In many cases these were in aid of local charities as well as regular ones in aid of the CTBF. Local celebrities and sportspeople always made themselves available to attend such events and local media were only too happy to provide ample coverage of these Local premieres. The NOTTING HILL premiere may not have had any of its own stars in attendance but Jamie Bell, fresh from his stunning debut role as BILLY ELLIOT, provided a bit of genuine star quality and was well backed up by local TV personalities and many of the then very successful Newcastle United football team attending There was a different dynamic for me now that I was officially part of the Odeon Team and the almost telepathic communication process that had developed between Peter and I during BFY meant we both knew what needed to be done without a lot of time being wasted fully firming up the fine detail on arrangements. Also having the large numbers of long-serving staff was a big bonus as they were all too familiar with the way we melded together with no clashing egos. 

Although not given an actual premiere per se, David and Jane did a nice job in adding colour to the opening night of PEARL HARBOUR with an “honour guard” of naval cadets lining the staircase leading from the foyer to Screen One to add a little old school Showmanship as it used to be called! They also earned nods of approval for A KNIGHT’S TALE by persuading the ladies of the Court of Lumley Castle (which at that time hosted Mediaeval Banquets at which the Ladies serenaded guests and doubled as servers of the banquet’s various courses) to come in costume to welcome the audience. There was no food for them to serve at the Odeon but they looked splendid in their costumes as they lined the grand staircase leading from the Foyer up to Cinema One. As the audience made their way up the stairs the Ladies serenaded them with a continuous medley. It took me back to the 1970 Clerk Street Odeon premiere of CROMWELL at which the Ladies of Dalhousie Castle performed a similar service.

One of the more bizarre premieres we staged was for a low-budget horror movie called DOG SOLDIERS which was due to be screened in Cinema Four. This auditorium had been created from the old stage area that The Stones, Wizzard, Tom Jones, Diana Ross and others had performed on in the era prior to Arenas, with their much larger capacities, being built. The screen was accessed via a long corridor and our brainstorm was to transform this into a spooky corridor with spray cobwebs, dimmed lighting (set up by James Waugh, one of our technicians) and a specially prepared audio tape played on a continuous loop adding its own unique atmosphere to get guests into the mood as they strolled down it. Said tape, needless to say a Picken special, included Boris Karloff posing the question “Vampires, Werewolves, Ghosts and Ghouls … Can such things be?” followed by some screams (courtesy of Universal Studios’ The Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy), a storm with a few thunder claps for good measure and a finale featuring a werewolf howl. These were all courtesy of a treasured vinyl LP in my collection An Evening with Boris Karloff and Friends. We had tried to get a tape of the Werewolf howl actually used in DOG SOLDIERS but Neil Marshall (the director, writer and editor of the film), who would be attending the screening along with several of the stars, regretted being unable to provide it “due to copyright issues”.  Can’t win them all! The big let down on this premiere was that the stars attending were rather boisterous while Peter was trying to interview the director in front of the seated audience and earned themselves no merit points from us for their lack of professionalism that night.

A technical innovation being trialled in this lattermost period of the Pilgrim Street site’s journey was special screenings with subtitles for the hard of hearing. With actual digital technology still a few years distant this service involved the film renters having an occasional movie screening copy printed with subtitles on its visual image. These prints were allocated to certain screens for screening on a specified day and that print would then be shipped on to another screen for another date. It was all a bit unsatisfactory as it restricted hearing impaired access to such screenings to only the one day. While appreciated by those who benefited from this service it was rather annoying when these, clearly advertised as being subtitled screenings, were also attended by other members of the public some of whom would then make a point of asking staff to have the subtitles turned off. Such complaints were needless to say dealt with politely but at times a bit of tactful self-restraint was required especially when they also tried to secure a free double guest ticket for their “viewing experience being spoiled by said subtitling”

THE TRANSITION PHASE AND THE NEW BOSS

By the middle part of 2001 the appointment had been made of the GM who would take over the new multiplex at The Gate as Peter would be retiring after the closure of the Pilgrim Site. Once he had ensured the new storage arrangements for required Odeon documents that would normally have been kept on site (transferred to Head office by secured carrier) and the safe destruction/disposal of any non-necessary records he could now become a man of retired leisure. The new GM, Duncan Scott, was currently GM at Hull’s mini-multiplex. He had asked Peter to forward him any business levels data we had on site to allow him to get a “feel” for the audiences before he came up later in the year. Needless to say a lot of these spreadsheets were readily available as they had been an integral of Peter’s internal monitoring documentation over many years and ones I had first been introduced to and maintained throughout my own management style in the various units and companies I had been employed by. At this stage I only had a transitory relationship with the new GM as my main focus with Peter was ensuring Pilgrim Street continued to thrive and be the thorn in the opposition’s side it had always been. In one exchange with me, Duncan did remark how thorough the information supplied had been and that he hoped our relationship, when we did start to work together, would be a mutually beneficial one with him sharing the intricasies of Multi-Plex programming and operational differences with me and him hoping to pick my brains in areas where my wider range of different cinema operating companies’ thinking would be wider than his “Odeon exclusive” base. To be honest at this point I had my doubts that this was little more than a bit of soft-soaping but, once The Gate got into its full swing, we eventually arrived at a harmonious and very productive (in terms of unit profitability) arrangement even if occasionally we did differ over how we would achieve the end game strategy we were aiming to deploy for the new unit. As is by now traditional in these tomes, more on that at the appropriate junction!

From my own personal development prior to the new site opening, one of the top priorities was a need to become familiar with the CATS ticketing system that would be installed at The Gate. Thankfully the Odeon in York was already running this and fortuitously, due to a staff illness at management level, there had been a need for “Relief” assistance to allow the GM to have her days off. Peter and Barbara (the GM at York) arranged for me to do that two day relief and also, to justify the use of a hired car, that I would bring back a stock of York’s old TIMS tickets to be used up at the Pilgrim Street site. My only concern was that this hired car, due to “ground rules” laid out by Peter Ford (the then Head of Insurance Risk Assessment and Licensing for Odeon), would not be covered for any damage to the actual vehicle caused by the driver (i.e. ME!) and that any such repair bills incurred would be charged against the Pilgrim Street site’s bottom line! Needless to say I drove extra carefully and endured the discomfort of spending a rather sleepless night at the hotel I had been booked into for the overnight stop necessitated with the two-day cover being provided. This was not due to fears over my driving but that the car park at the hotel was “street parking only” and that particular evening the city experienced a night of street rioting which could be heard in close proximity to said hotel. Thankfully the next day the hired car remained intact and undamaged!

As for my training, Barbara had arranged for her box office team to take me under their wing. They were superb and I was soon fairly comfortable with the box office customer interfacing protocols which in reality were not too different from those at Pilgrim Street except for the computer input entries now being linked with the CATS system via the box office keyboards and, in turn, linked with the main daily box office  reporting system and daily cash reconciliation unit (for Head Office) located in Barbara’s management office. This rather roomy space was where David Williams (my first Area Manager at Edinburgh) had based his office and where David Elliot and Nick Eggington had both served periods as part of their own Management Skills Development training working with him prior to taking up their own first Unit Manager postings. I somehow felt it was like a circle-completing connection that had woven through all our careers and which was now reconnecting again after so many years.

In terms of getting geared up for the new site, while at the same time having to run the Odeon Pilgrim Street as normal, the anticipated upscale in staff numbers had to be factored in with first of all assistant management numbers being increased. To ease the strain on the new GM, Barney Todd - a fully experienced Multiplex unit “senior assistant” - was transferred from Dunfermline and seconded to work with Duncan on the aspects directly related to The Gate site while Peter and I concentrated on the Pilgrim Street operation. The new site would be allocated an extra three AM’s initially as well as David, Jane and myself who would transfer across by the opening. Somehow word had got round the local grapevine that these positions were in the offing and two of the support management team at Warner’s Multiplex operation at Manors decided to abandon ship and apply to join Odeon. Craig Fletcher and Andy Walsh became the newest to graduate from the “Auntie Pat school of Odeonisation” with some extra finessing from my own input to their training refinements. Needless to say they passed Joanne’s keyholder scrutiny with flying colours.

As part of the final run up to the operational switch from Pilgrim Street to The Gate, there were a lot of visits from Head Office personnel to check on progress and as transfer day grew closer it was all the support team, other than Peter and I, who tended to spend more time at the new site supervising the intake of deliveries and other operational commodities. Once the retail units were in situ they also had to fit in training for the expanded services that would be incorporated into the new site including its Haagen-Dazs Café, Licensed Bar and needless to say the American Plex-style freshly popped corn units as well as the nachos with cheese sauce and jalapeño peppers prep areas while also finding space to fit in some new-sized hot dog units prepared via heated rollers, as opposed to the old-style steamer units. The infamous pick ‘n mix area and the number of self-serve (and assisted) post-mix serving units made for a retail area that occupied more than a third of the foyer area on one side while the box office area occupied the opposite side.

What created a bigger headache was the recruitment of the 70+ staff numbers who would be needed to ensure enough were available to rota our proposed seven day week operating hours of 10:00 AM to 02:00 AM the following day … effectively 16 operational hours each day. Thankfully with the buzz starting to build we were inundated with applicants who were initially whittled down by the support management team and the senior staff members from Pilgrim Street who would transfer across as Team Leaders for various aspects of the new operation and undertake a lot of the hands-on training of the successful applicants and mentor them during their settling-in period. Given the anticipated operational hours for the new site there was also a need for an additional member of the projection team to be recruited which meant that Steve Lothian, instead of being made redundant after years of loyal service at the Westgate Road Twins under its various ownerships, was able to fill that void and be “Odeonised” to join Neil Thomson, James Waugh and Alan O’Hara.

As for the Grand old Lady of Pilgrim Street and its long-serving GM there was only one way to go out … in a blaze of good old fashioned razzmatazz with a Premiere. All right we weren’t able to secure Screen One for this but the special “Advance Charity screening” of the latest James Bond movie (DIE ANOTHER DAY) in aid of the CTBF more than served the required purpose with a full house of the usual “local celebs, media personalities and sportsmen” joining those members of the public lucky enough to secure a ticket. No prizes on offer for who prepared the pre-film and presentation musical homage to 007 over the years and who, off stage (well back of the auditorium aided and abetted by a radio mike linked to the cinema’s PA actually!) gave Peter a suitable build up and introduction before he thanked everyone for their support over the years and hoped they’d enjoy experiencing the new state of the art site when it opened in a few days for the General Public. He also introduced his successor.

As was the norm for such Plex-openings, for a few days before the official opening and public access, we organised some screenings of recent classic box office hits for which tickets were made available (free of charge) through our University Fresher’s’ Fair contacts and via promos with all the local Press and Radio media who were more than happy to join in our pre-opening hype and help generate the “want to see” just what the new site had on offer. Such screenings also gave the new inexperienced staff a chance to work with real people and those on retail to become familiar with the range of products on offer and how to serve them. Having the retail up and running also had the little extra advantage that those attending these operational fine-tuning try-outs were paying for any consumable goods purchased which generated a nice little kitty to be banked against sales revenue on the Opening Night! Once a Scot, always a Scot … as Peter had once commented when I told him about charging Morpeth Councillors for a special screening of THE CHINA SYNDROME.

Our media sources, as the transfer of operations day approached, were also extremely generous in their coverage of past events the Pilgrim Street Odeon had staged over the years with camera teams touring the Grand Old Lady and interviewing Peter, and some of the long-serving staff, about their own past highlights and memories. In terms of the new site they were equally generous and more than curious about some of the new technical innovations being incorporated. For those TV crew tours and interviews it was a great opportunity for Duncan to be introduced and expand on things like the audio-descriptive commentary facility now fitted in all screens for those with visual impairments which could be picked up via a headset - collectable from the box office - or by a switch on their own hearing aids if they already had those. For those with extreme loss of hearing and so requiring subtitles, the new projection kit included linkages to a DVD unit that would link in sync with the projected image on certain titles and project these subtitles onto the auditorium screens. In the initial pioneering stages, as there was only one of these units available, we decided it was easiest to go for a set day in one screen on which all performances would be presented in subtitled format though eventually this would be expanded to try and provide more options.

The other part of the new projection room fit-out that somehow impressed the media cameramen was the ability to link one copy of a film through two screens and present it all but simultaneously. This “interlock” facility was something I was very familiar with as the Coli had it in operation (when needed) way back in 1976, To be fair it would be used more frequently at The Gate than it had been at Morpeth but it was still an impressive sight to behold when in operation.

A special Pilgrim Street staff farewell party was arranged to say a final thank you for all their contributions. It was held in the Royal Lounge foyer area at the end of the evening’s operation a couple of days before the actual closing day. This, not unexpectedly, turned into a rather boozy do where the high spot included teams of staff, management and projectionist personnel all mingled up to try and outdo the question-setter (not me for once) with their James Bond knowledge. My team came second by one point having been caught out over the actor who played M’s successor - following Bernard Lee giving up the role due to ill health - who Bond now reported to for the first time in THE SPY WHO LOVED ME. That party was an enjoyable and light-hearted occasion but on the actual last night, November 22, 2002, before going dark for the last time, a further little get together for staff was arranged for everyone to say their goodbyes. It was amazing how nearly all of them, including the long-serving and former staff members who still kept in touch, couldn’t resist popping into Screen One for a final look round and to shed a few tears at tales and memories of happy times shared collectively at this unit. The site opened on September 7, 1931 (as The Paramount) and had proudly served the North East for 71 glorious years. 

CHAPTER 12

THE NEW BEGINNING - November 28, 2002

It was a case of all hands on deck for the Grand Opening Day. This would prove a very long one for most of the Management team, projectionists and all the staff on duty. Staff had been allocated their tasks with the experienced Team Leaders from Pilgrim Street guiding them and resolving any glitches they spotted. The Unit’s Management team had been allocated their various duties as part of the “Orders of the Day Briefing” and the timetable to be adhered to throughout the day was as rigid as any live event could possibly be … in other words we would all be flying by the seat of our pants depending on what unanticipated crisis/glitch appeared and needed to be dealt with! This was the sort of buzz all true cinema managers thrive on. Adding to the resources that day would be a gaggle of Unit Managers “seconded” to provide experience and backup to the unit’s own support management team. Many were good mates of Duncan who had worked with them in his own career and in the case of one, the Unit Manager who had inducted him into his early training with Odeon! That happened to be someone also well known to me … Nick Eggington. It was nice to catch up with him again and also nice to have Dave Elliot, now GM of both of Glasgow’s multi-screen units, around too … especially as he had agreed to loan us the VIP Odeon-blue branded carpet invited celebrity guests would walk to enter the Gate Complex. There they would be greeted by Duncan, Barney and the motley supporting crew of Odeon hierarchy with their arrivals captured by TV cameras and the media pack. While we had no major film stars in attendance there was a little bit of faux-007 sparkle as a “Sean Connery” and “Richard Kiel” look-alike had been engaged to mingle with the arrivals in the upstairs entrance foyer. That night only two screens were being used for the VIP opening with Jackie Chan’s action thriller THE TUXEDO being presented in Screen One, the biggest screen, while in one of the other smaller capacity screens, to cater for those more interested in football (I kid you not!) a special big screen link had been installed to show a major football match in which England were participating that night. That was where a lot of the executives and some of the shipped-in managers made a bee-line to as well as some other invited guests who had been made aware of this “option”

With The Gate backing onto Stowell Street, Newcastle’s “official Chinatown” area, and with the Jackie Chan connection of the opening film there had been a lot of input from that community’s leaders who had arranged to have a Chinese Dragon dance team included in the official opening ceremony as a “Good Luck”  gesture. This had provided plenty of photo-ops for the media. This group had included Paparazzi Sue, as my better half had become affectionately known given her many years performing the “official unit photographer role” at Odeon Pilgrim Street premieres following the retirement of Tom Oxley. Tom made his money as a freelance photographer and never tired of reminded anyone who would listen about his “walk on role” as an extra in GET CARTER! Subject to her work schedule in the NHS, Sue regularly covered Premieres and Charity Shows at The Gate during the years I worked there.

On the opening, we were not sure how some of the guests seated in the front rows of the two auditoria being used felt as the dance proceeded with the dragon being “fed” green vegetables (cabbage and lettuce) and then proceeding to “regurgitate” and “spit” this out on anyone within its line of fire. Thankfully, they took it in good spirit as, again, it was considered a good luck blessing. In terms of the more traditional format for an “opening”, Peter introduced Duncan and also the “Celeb” who would cut the “ribbon of film”. Newcastle United player Peter Beardsley, one of regular attendees at Charity premieres and a good mate of Peter, relished his moment in the spotlight with the same ceremony repeated in both the screens being used that evening. Those tasks performed, some of the seconded-in GM’s retired to enjoy lubricants provided in Duncan’s office where he happily expounded on the guidance he had been given by the Chinese Community reps on how to achieve the best Feng Shu harmony through their suggested strategic arrangement of his General Manager’s office furnishings. He was totally chuffed to be given a token golden statue of a stag (a good luck totem) from them to occupy a properly positioned place of honour on his desk.  

From my own point of view I was delighted that my daughter and her fiancé had been able to come down from Edinburgh and enjoy the night … especially when “Daddy” got ensnared by “Jaws”! While they went in to watch THE TUXEDO I had to ensure that all the normal operational aspects of the rest of the cinema screens functioned smoothly. It had been nice to catch up with many old friends and also to exchange a few words with the (now) Chief Booker for Odeon who actually remembered me from my far distant past of the 1968-71 spell at the Odeon Edinburgh when he too had been starting out with the Company as one of then Chief Booker George Pinches’ Booking Princes. Like Brian Corliss with my Pilgrim Street Seniors Show “programming”, he had been only too happy to “pick up” the Late Night show title suggestions we did so well with at Clerk Street and block book them throughout other Odeon screens trialling this Late Night screening opportunity.

The other indelible image I have of the new site was that it had blue carpeting throughout the foyer and corridors as well as a blue décor on seating in all the auditoria. On the opening night I was once again in Evening Suit and almost wished Pauline Kyle had been on the guest list given her “prediction” during my dark period at the Coli in the final years of its operation. Thankfully she was one of many of my former Morpeth customers who made a visit to the new operation when it got up and running and the beam on her face when I first met her again on one of our Wednesday Senior Shows was as bright as mine on our opening night … especially when she saw the carpet colour! I was back in the big time and, as Duncan often remarked during our years together, loving every minute of it and, once again, living the dream.

That dream actually took a little while to transform from the original chaos we had to overcome getting familiar to the step change in business levels at The Gate from, in my case the Coli’s 40-50K annual ads, as well as the Pilgrim Street site’s regular 40-50K per week! The idea had been that Jan Dwyer from Head Office would spend time with us and demonstrate the collection of data from the computerised systems in  place for both box office and retail in mocked up sessions and be with us on the proper full-on opening night for the real world cash reconciliation and banking proceedures. The idea was also that Barney would be part of the “training crew”. Instead Duncan adopted his own unique methodology, leaving David, Jane, Craig, Andy and I to put it all together on our own while he, Barney and Jan went off to spend the evening in a local restaurant. This was quickly dubbed by us as the pushing us in at the deep end after being fitted up with cement overshoes and seeing who surfaced at the end of the “experience” training protocol! It was hard going initially but eventually we worked it all out and I produced a detailed step by step guide to “cashing up” which was hung up on the Treasury Office wall for a quick easy access reference when things didn’t quite balance … as they often failed to do for almost the first month. Thankfully, when we did experience serious glitches in the balancing (sometimes variances up or down several thousands of pounds) and couldn’t resolve them, Jan had given me her home phone number and made clear she didn’t mind being called at 1AM or even 2AM, often the time that the day’s cash balance reconciliations were being finalised. By using her computer link-in to check out possible sources of the misbalance she seldom failed to identify and correct the errors. It was hard for all of the management team in these opening weeks but once the nightly cash-up reconciled within more acceptable variances, and on at times the rare near penny perfect balances, we not only became less stressed about the dreaded end of night tot-up but also stopped having sleepless nights over the day’s problems.

In their own way the senior team leaders who had come across to this new site had their own steep learning curves to deal with as staff numbers were nearly three times those they had dealt with at the Pilgrim Street site and most of them were new recruits. Although not often at the fore of activities, Anne Turnbull was as diligent in terms of wages, stock checking, ordering and all the other bits of paperwork needing to be recorded and stored. Successfiul units I had worked in, be they Edinburgh, Manchester or Newcastle, always seemed to have an “Anne” who could be relied on to keep everything in its place and properly recorded. I was more than happy to offer any “second opinion” on any orders she felt needed placing and also assist her with the monthly staff wage input required to the new systems. In some ways this was just the working arrangement we had at Pilgrim Street and the one which Peter had asked me to try and continue with her at The Gate.

One of the must do’s was checking (and reconciling) the retail stock and transactions once a week. Given the quantities and sub-groups needing to be monitored this was initially done over two days with some of the many groups being done each day. I found Sunday was the best day to make major inroads into this task as, up to mid-afternoon, business levels were less intense making for more accurate item counts. Over time I also proposed that, rather than individually taking off all the connectors on the multitude of post mix stock units connected to the various dispensers prior to weighing the remaining syrup stock in each, that it would be easier and less time consuming to take an initial “hit” by leaving them attached and then just weigh the in-use boxes still connected which would then give a base weight comparator that would be unchanged week on week. Sunday being one of my regular days meant I was able, with Anne, to get through most of the big groups by early afternoon and provide less variances in the stock to till sales figures once all the data was input into the main stock control programme. The ideal, which I trialled a few years later, was actually to try and do the whole thing at the close of business on a midweek evening which would then not be impacted in any way by stock being sold while counts were being undertaken. Anne and I managed to work it into a two-hour window from 11PM to 1AM on a Wednesday and the SDF’s during that period were far smaller and more consistent than the older system which again made everyone feel a lot less stressed.

The other “modification” I finally got approval for was the monthly wages input data. This was so convoluted, with the cut off date being in the middle of the month, that wages were effectively being paid “two weeks in advance and two weeks in arrears” at the end of each month. Factor in holiday pay and sick pay adjustments and it almost became a degree subject in complexity for its own sake and one guaranteed to cause chaos if you were distracted during calculating and entering the data into the computer programme. I kept arguing for a change to the end of month for the input cut off date, with any joiners that month being paid pro-rata for their first month. This would make it easier to explain to staff who felt they had been short-changed. Eventually my persistence won the battle and a system everyone could follow was implemented. It even brought a big smile of relief to Anne’s face!

One key operational aspect we became all too familiar with in the opening weeks and months was the Fire Drill and Emergency Evacuation protocols. Previously this would have been confined to a single unit but now, with The Gate effectively part of a “leisure complex” including bars and restaurant franchises not under our control, there had to be an overall Fire Drill proceedure under the control of The Gate’s own serurity monitoring staff. The regularity of restaurant kitchens setting off their smoke detectors as their staff became used to their own internal systems impacted on our operations as one unit’s system effectively triggered a total complex evacuation until it was given an all clear by attending Fire Officers. The linkage of the Odeon system to the Gate’s meant they could trigger the automatic shutdown of all the projection units and effectively each screen’s programme would stop and houselights would come up and the automated in-cinema audio evacuation request would be transmitted into each auditorium and the common corridors linking the twelve screens. Staff quickly became experts at guiding customers out of the Complex and organising them outside on the street (at a safe refuge) where Team leaders and Management on duty would try to resolve any customer issues and, after an all clear, guide them back into their respective screens where the films could resume. Our technicians (projectionists) were great at trying to get shows back on the schedule as best they could and we would often skip the ads and trailers sections of the later programmes which enabled us to catch up 25 minutes on each performance and usually get back on time by the end of the day. Needless to say, true to Odeon’s tradition, many comps to future presentations were issued to the more “demanding” complainers affected by such interrupted screenings. As the screens in these early weeks were regularly playing to high percentage occcupancy the operation was quite regularly tested but even then it was pushed to the limit’s a couple of days before our first Christmas.

Normally there would be at least two Managers on duty assisted by Team Leaders and the full complement of staff. In the run up to Christmas, Duncan and Barney had arranged to go home to Devon and Scotland respectively over the period and the rest of the management team were all carving up as much time off as they could wangle leaving me for one crucial night holding the fort solo. That night, three before the 25th, would normally have been expected to be fairly quiet but with a line up of the new Harry Potter movie, the latest instalment of THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy and the Bond Movie DIE ANOTHER DAY, which had opened in the final days of the Pilgrim Street site, still packing them in at the 5:00pm to 8:00pm screenings all twelve screens were at, or very near, capacity. At just after 7:00PM regular transgressor Nando’s triggered the fire alarm system and we had to evacuate all screens as did all the other bars and eateries in The Gate. Adding to the complication was audience arrivals for the next shows who had already purchased or wanted to purchase their tickets for these performances. As I knew Duncan was driving down to Exeter at the time, I updated him on his mobile and we agreed a strategy of trying to refund if possible, issue comps if necessary and also get back onto some semblance of an acceptable operation as soon as possible. With customers shouting at any staff member they could spot I delegated the Team leaders on duty and the cash controllers to assist box office staff with the refunds and re-ticketing as best they could before referring things my way for any major awkward customers. Everyone on duty that night went way above the call of duty and while the fall out went on for a month afterwards I was so proud of the way they responded to my directions, most of which were being made up on the hoof but drawing on all my many years of crisis management.

The vivid memories I smile at when remembering that night were the phone conversation with Duncan while we were trying to work in tandem on dealing with this nightmare before Christmas scenario that neither of us had imagined happening. Having to contend with his cat Reuben, nestled on the back seat of his car as he was driving South, yowling constantly made it difficult for each of us to hear what we were saying. Another was dealing with a rather well-spoken lady who claimed that her visit to the performance she had booked for had necessitated her having her hair done, her nails manicured, employing a babysitter for the evening and hiring a limo to bring her to the cinema … all of which she expected (and demanded) I reimburse her for. Needless to say she was politely provided with a refund of her actual ticket price and a goodwill comp for a future film of her choice. Given I had others queuing up to be dealt with I also suggested if she was dissatisfied with my offer to write in to Ian MacDonald, the Regional Manager who was based at The Gate.

Now all this had been bad enough but when, on Boxing Day, Nando’s decided to treat us all to an encore I was so glad that most of the staff who had been on duty during the previous incident were once again working with me and so needed little additional instruction as we had previously implemented what proved to be a well-oiled operation. It quickly became common for staff to refer to such protocols as “Operation Charlie” among themselves and a small group of them later formed a joke delegation to me requesting that they not be rotaed on the same shifts as me! In reality for most of my period at The Gate most of the staff actually preferred working with me as they were always treated with courtesy and good humour and knew when any issues arose in which they encountered bolshy customers that I would be front and centre supporting them. On one occasion I was forced to deal with a student-age male who had really upset a female cashier by using foul-mouthed language at her while she was trying to serve him. She had left her post in a state of tearful agitation to report it to me. When I came out to challenge him, after he admitted the offence I gave him the option of apologising to her or being escorted out of The Gate complex by the security guards. Once he had done so, I calmed things down by pointing out that staff were doing a difficult job at times when it was very busy and always tried to be polite so any “issues” should be made to them in the same manner. After accepting his admonition we shook hands and he was able to enjoy the film he had come to see. My kudos among staff apparently rose substantially when the in-house grapevine spread of my supportive action on behalf of the cashier.

With both these Festive “Operation Charlie’s”, as well as making sure I posted a nice thank you message of appreciation for the Staff Room notice board to all the staff who had been on duty, I also had to submit one of our usual “Incident reports” for Ian McDonald so that he would be in the loop should some of the many anticipated “letters of complaint” come directly to him or indeed Head Office. Once he returned to his office after his own Festive break in the New Year one of the first things he did was come along the corridor to congratulate me for “using all my years of experience in Cinema Management” in dealing with what, in less experience hands, might have resulted in much more brouhaha of a fallout. He also very kindly suggested I take my good lady wife out for a nice meal at her favourite restaurant and let him have the bill to put through his accounting as she had probably not seen a lot of me on those two incident evenings by the time I got home.

 Although Ian had a reputation for being a real stickler at times in terms of operational standards in his units this was but one of the many occasions when I was privileged to see the “inner Ian” … a proper “Old School” gentleman. Sue and I had got to know him before I returned to Odeon “properly” from the regular Premieres he also attended at Pilgrim Street. He took over the Area when The Gate opened and would often pop along for chats with Duncan and I when he was trying to pick our brains on new ideas we were experimenting with to see if they could be introduced across his other sites and indeed across the circuit.  Although Ian had worked for Rank for many years it had been in spheres such as Nightclubs away from Odeon Cinemas. When those activities were rationalised he transferred to Cinemas and spent a few months with Peter Talbot getting a crash course in the business from one of the old pros! As such he shared the same “Old School” attitudes as Peter and myself making it easy to talk openly with him and help contribute on any rare occasions when he might want an honest and experienced second opinion.

One of the top priorities once we got into the New Year and various Head Office personnel returned to their desks was to resolve the question of the Emergency Fire Evacuation shutdown and audio announcement being triggered whenever an individual unit’s system was set off and immediately triggered The Gate’s master control. This had made the two incidents I experienced so much harder to manage. After detailed consultations with Adam Johnson of Gate Management we got permission to fit a three minute time delay into our system before it triggered the cinema area’s auto shutdown protocol. This would allow Gate security to check out the situation in the source unit causing the “fire alert” signal being received in Gate Control. If it was a false alarm - which we would confirm with them by use of a site-specific identifier code word communication via the Gate site radio the duty manager always carried as well as the own Odeon internal staff radio communicator - we would stay off-line until they had managed to deal with the localised issue and radioed us the relevant and again site specific “all clear” code communication. Our staff would be placed on alert during this process by our own Odeon specific code words and only go into the full evacuation protocol should the “alert” indeed prove to be a genuine emergency. This worked perfectly on the many opportunities presented by said units on later occasions but also meant our own protocol was always ready if needed for genuine emergencies. All Duty Managers and staff were regularly reminded of the need to respond correctly and accurately depending on the code words being communicated during such events.

As time progressed and the teething issues sorted themselves out, Duncan involved me more with the business strategy to try and achieve the “mission” we had been given of getting The Gate’s business levels from a zero base start to competing with the local competition and also with the rest of the plexes in the Odeon Circuit. 

Having already agreed our operating hours we also planned to provide as many film category choices in the day as possible which left us able, thanks to cooperation with the Film Distributors, to play the major new release films at all performances in the screens whose capacity would best match the anticipated business levels (using our interlock on some performances where demand was anticipated to justify this action) and where possible to have different films playing in some screens on certain performances if the potential market was for perhaps adult evening audiences rather than family audiences or senior preference taste. Other screenings could then be interspersed with other titles at different times of the day. Timetabling was a work of art and once I grasped it in terms of now having twelve screens to programme, Duncan and I engaged in a little competition to see whose programming on a given week could achieve the highest positioning in the Circuit’s Leading Box Office/Admission tables distributed by Booking Department on Mondays for the previous week. Initially, as expected. he wiped the floor with me but as the weeks progressed the battles became more even and eventually I managed to achieve the same Chart positioning consistently as he did. In terms of the Odeon’s own in-circuit rivalry, the then “ruler of the roost” was the Odeon Multiplex in Southampton which regularly secured the Number One slot. It had the advantage of more screens and was also able to charge higher prices so, with the chart being based on “Gross Takes net of VAT”, we were more than happy to regularly come a couple of places below them and had a celebratory jig around the office when we did, fairly regularly, knock them off their perch! We had even bigger smiles on our faces when Ian MacDonald popped along from his office to congratulate us on weeks when we had also managed to achieve a Top Ten position in the UK National Box office chart.

This “friendly rivalry” between Duncan and myself was one that developed naturally although at first there had been a bit of a hurdle to overcome. Duncan, aware of my long years working closely at times with Peter, had a fear of my passing on results and criticisms from the old Pilgrim Street staff who had transferred across, to him. This may have been because of the age gap as Duncan was from the up and coming “younger generation of New Odeon thinking” while Peter and I were “Old School Odeon branded”. Thankfully Duncan soon realised there was no justification for such fears as I made clear I was all too familiar with “compartmentalising” information only on a need to know basis of mutual trust and any confidences shared between us were exactly that and remained so between the two of us. In fact I had on one occasion indicated to Peter that, had he indeed come across as the GM of The Gate, his “hands on” approach would have hampered the speed at which we had been able to achieve the spectacular results we did in such a short time. The support management team who had come across from Pilgrim Street also appreciated Duncan’s more participatory Management Meetings style being more of a two-way street in which we were encouraged to contribute ideas and argue on procedures we felt might not be as efficient as they might have been. The sessions were also far shorter in duration.

The Local Competion of UCI at Gateshead was a strong opponent but it appeared to have a slightly different audience with more of a slant to family programming which, given the greater free parking availability at the Metro Centre, meant it appealed more to “families with car” patronage especially during the 13 weeks of the year when Schools were on holiday. That left us 39 weeks when our more student and major city profile audience gave us the edge. In terms of the Warner’s Multiplex they may have been closer to the Student bedsit and Halls of Residence areas but The Gate’s pull of the bars, restaurants and clubs meant we had a bigger appeal especially at the weekends. This student audience had been one Peter had targeted for several decades at the Pilgrim Street site and they proved their loyalty. As for the manager at Warner’s, who had disrespectfully suggested Odeon would abandon Newcastle altogether now that his site was up and running, he got due comeuppance as The Gate hit his business so badly in our first year of operation that the company handed back the land they occupied to landlords Newcastle University (and Newcastle Polytechnic) allowing them to expand their Campus. There was an extra smile of contentment on our faces as we had promised we would gain revenge for the disparagement of the Grand Old Lady of Pilgrim Street, its staff and its management team and this was the proper way to do it. Payback can indeed be a bitch but if you are on the right side there is a lovely sense of justice being meted out. As for Peter, he was delighted at the speed of our success in this area!

Peter and I would continue to work happily together regularly when both he and David Elliot took over the running of the local North East Committee of the CTBF as Chair and Vice-Chair. The dynamic duo regularly organised fund-raising advance screenings at the new site of the latest Disney releases which would tale place on Sunday mornings. I was invariably Duty Manager on these shows and assigned the specific task of promoting the raffle ticket prize draw that was a key feature of them. Peter and Dave, because of their long working relationships with the Film Renters’ promotional departments - especially Disney - always managed to “procure” lots of goodies for the prizes and invariably there was a “Star Prize” of a full-size Disney Character cuddly toy. My favourite memory was lugging a giant Baloo the Bear around the audience watching the kids eyes light up and twisting parents’ arms to buy them a raffle ticket. The delight of the lucky winner was also a real joy to see.

The one personality conflict issue I had to help resolve was when the CTBF wanted to stage a mainstream premiere in one of the screens and Peter had indicated to Duncan that he would want to introduce and MC the show. Duncan was not prepared to allow this but neither was he prepared to offer an alternative compromise. The standoff was embarrassing to witness and I was delegated - press-ganged actually! - into acting as an intermediary given the prospect of the two agreeing to discuss possible alternatives face to face was a non-starter. On one of the Sunday morning CTBF fundraisers of a Disney advance screening I was left to deal with Peter and David to try and resolve the impasse. Thanks to the three of us having known and worked together for almost all our careers I suggested that both David and Peter, had they received a similar demand from an outside “person” to undertake the Master of Ceremonies role at a Premiere in one of the cinemas they managed, would have taken exactly the same position as Duncan had that someone not on the Unit’s management team could not effectively MC the whole premiere as though he was in charge. Thankfully, as Duncan had absented himself from this whole “discussion meeting”, I was able to get David on side and calm Peter down into agreeing a compromise that, as one of the unit’s current Management team, I would welcome the audience and then introduce Peter - in his capacity as Chairman of the local CTBF Committee - who could then speak about their work in this area. It was probably one of the most delicate pieces of negotiating I ever had to undertake but thankfully everyone was able to move on after this compromise.

FILM PREMIERES AT THE GATE

In the course of the opening years, The Gate often found itself being asked to stage premieres, albeit not always of major blockbusters but often with a local connection or indeed in aid of some local Charity. One of our first was for THE ONE AND ONLY which was being promoted by local star Donna Air as a fundraiser to support the CONTACT A FAMILY charity of which she was a patron. For this she managed to persuade her good friend Patsy Kensett to attend which engendered a bit of local media interest and helped shift a few tickets. One of our support management team, Craig Fletcher, was like a star-struck teenager at the prospect of “meeting her” and, while Paparazzi Sue was doing her wonder turn capturing the arrivals and the stage presentation before the film, asked her if she could “engineer” a photo of Patsy with him. All right he had to settle with the rest of the Management team being in the “group shot” but his beaming smile took a few days to fade. For this premiere Duncan undertook the “pre-show stage introductions” as he had for the “official opening” screening of THE TUXEDO but this was not an area he was particularly comfortable doing for some reason. He did, however, strike up an excellent working relationship with the local Contact a Family supremo Kathy Wrist and out of that a regular fixture for The Gate was holding a Christmas Screening for these families, many of whom would otherwise not have ever had a chance to experience the magic of Cinema or even Christmas. Between the two of them they came up with a proposal that I would make an ideal “Father Christmas” for these screenings so for the next five years I got the chance yet again to don the red garb, white whiskers and hair, the black boots et al. At least I was allowed to “hire” a proper outfit as opposed to the cheap and cheerful one I wore when, accompanied by the gabardine-mac and green-carnation wearing Chris Johnson, Santa Charlie “visited” Nell Mitchell all those years ago at the Odeon in Edinburgh.

That first year at The Gate, the Fancy Dress Costumes’ supplier only had a rather low quality Santa outfit available but for all the years thereafter I managed to book early enough to ensure the availability of the super-deluxe version for £75 a day as opposed to the £25 paid for my initial excursion. The look of enchantment and delight from all the wide-eyed kids as Santa wandered through the foyer exchanging pleasantries with them was wonderful. We managed usually to scrounge enough goodies for all the children to get a little something from Santa while my Christmas Paparazzi photographer enjoyed taking photos where the parents were happy enough for this to take place and we forwarded them after the screenings to allow Cathy to deliver to the parents when she next met them. It was also not unusual for some of the Cinema staff to twist Sue’s arm to take one of them with “Santa” and on one occasion there was a rare photo in which Duncan and the rest of the management team joined in. I say rare because, at that time, Duncan was definitely not “into Christmas” the way I was and even took exception to my tradition of wearing my “Twelve ties of Christmas” during the run up to the big day. It took me a few years of Scrooge-type mutterings of Bah Humbug! at him to convert him, but I finally wore him down and on one occasion - after I had retired and he had changed jobs - he even phoned me up asking to borrow one of my “famous” festive jumpers and ties for his works Christmas Party!  

In terms of all the later Premieres and “special Screenings” Duncan was more than happy to delegate the MC/Guest introduction duties to me. This was a bit like the relationship Dave Elliot had enjoyed over the years with Peter who would often pop up for premieres at Clerk Street and do “the stage” instead of himself. I was still a bit jealous that one of those premieres had been ENTRAPMENT, the  Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones’ starring thriller where not only Catherine but hubby Michael Douglas attended. Peter didn’t stop talking about it for months!

My first “Premiere MC baptism of fire” was for NICHOLAS NICKLEBY (2003) which received its first UK showing at The Gate and the film’s director Douglas McGrath attended with leading role star Charlie Hunnam flying in that day from LA to attend. Having researched the director I came across the fact that his most recent previous directing credit had been EMMA which involved him taking on the challenge of adapting this, her longest novel, for the screenplay he wrote. Aware that he had performed the same dual role for the film being screened at our Premiere I had a perfect intro almost pre-written by suggesting “our Special Guest, not content with adapting the Austen tome, had immediately taken on the challenge of adapting Dicken’s longest published novel as his follow up film project”! For the star’s intro I pre-ambled by suggesting claims were often made at Premieres that the “star had come a long distance to be with the audience” before adding that in the case of tonight’s star, Charlie Hunnam had literally travelled overnight from Los Angeles to attend this NE (and UK Premiere) in Newcastle. Once the film got underway I handed over the two Special Guests to Duncan for a bit of hospitality and some schmoozing with our local Press in his office while I got on with my normal Duty Management tasks. Later in the evening, once the director and star had gone to their overnight accommodation, Duncan passed on a message from the director that he had been very impressed with the research I had done for the two introductions … as well as passing on both their thanks.

For all the Premieres up to this point, the normal protocol had been for all the Duty Management team on those evenings to wear Black Tie Evening Suits. This involved hiring them from a local Men’s outfitters which proved quite an additional cost to each Premiere’s in-house cost. After consultations with Area Manager Ian MacDonald, it was agreed that I would be allowed to purchase my own Evening Dress suit through Petty Cash and be the only one wearing it on such occasions while all the rest of the team wore the traditional everyday suits we had as our normal working dress code.

Having staged the NICHOLAS NICKELBY premiere, The Gate was now clearly on a “recommended list” and found itself in action again on November 29, 2004. The film SCHOOL FOR SEDUCTION (2004) had been produced by local North East company IPSO FACTO Films and Steve Bowden, its co-Managing Director, decided with the film being set and largely actually shot in Newcastle, ODEON AT THE GATE would be an ideal venue for its World Premiere. The film’s star Kelly Brook plays a teacher imparting the art of seduction skills to a group of Geordie ladies to help them liven up their marital relationships. She flew in from LA to attend and was accompanied by her then new boyfriend Billy Zane (best known perhaps at the time for TITANIC). This helped generate a great deal of interest from local print and TV media and also on a National level as well. Local stars, sports personalities helped add to the glitz and the evening included an invitation-only VIP post-Premiere bash in the complex’s BAR BEYOND. The choice of this venue may have been strategically engineered by Dragon’s Den’s entrepreneur Duncan Bannatyne who owned and operated this unit in The Gate complex. Thanks to him appearing in the movie as an extra and some scenes being shot for the film in BAR BEYOND, we suspected this had also ensured its use for the Post-Premiere party.

Ms Brook was extremely generous with her time in meeting the media during the afternoon of the Premiere and they in turn were fascinated by her character’s advice in the film that it was all down to “confidence” and having the courage to flaunt what you had. This mantra-like repetition of the term was regularly “quoted” in the coverage and engendered quite a bit of teasing byplay between Look North regulars Carol Mahlia and Jeff Brown in their pre-premiere coverage and the following day’s reporting of the actual premiere. The amount of coverage was very much appreciated by IPSO FACTO at the time, and according to one of my personal friend’s contacts on the local film making scene, was often commented on with admiration and appreciation of The Gate’s efforts many years after the event. As for the actual Premiere itself, my MC/Host duties were barely minimal on this occasion as, after welcoming the audience and introducing the Distributor’s representative, he took over chatting and talking about the production with Sue Heel, the director/screenwriter of the piece, and others involved in the film including local “regular at Odeon Newcastle Premieres” and conveniently one of the cast, Tim Healey, prior to the screening.

Our one “delicate” moment came as the “star” arrived in the outer foyer area accompanied by Billy Zane. Both were smoking cigarettes. As the Complex was a non-smoking facility, Duncan tactfully pointed this out to the couple as they were selecting their complementary soft drinks and popcorn at our kiosk area. They immediately stubbed them out in one of the soft drinks cups - the only convenient receptacle available at the time. If by any chance you happen to have acquired a “cigarette end stubbed out by either of them” from this Premiere it could be genuine. Some of the staff were fighting over possession of said souvenirs once the star had gone in to watch the start of the screening and even arguing about the possibility of offering it as an “item” on eBay.

There was a decided local sports feel to GOAL! The Dream Begins (2005) the next premiere staged at The Gate. Kuno Becker who played Santiago, a young South American “spotted by Newcastle United” and signed up by them who ends up scoring the winning goal for the Team in a major match against Liverpool, was the star guest. The Premiere was attended by most of the then current Newcastle United Team and its then Manager Graham Souness. The film had featured many of the current players in its action scenes although Souness was not in situ at the time of this shooting and didn’t feature in the movie. The evening proved to be one of my less memorable performances as MC. The plan was for me to introduce the Film Distributor’s UK Manager who would then take over to introduce and talk with some of the stars and support team responsible for making the film. He was actually called Ian Dury and I had been made aware he was rather tetchy and very sensitive about being mistaken for a certain Rock Group’s lead singer. I inadvertently introduced him as Ian DRURY and had to go crawling apologetically to him afterwards! Sue fared almost as badly while carrying out her normal Premiere Paparazzi duties capturing all the goings on and celebrities as they arrived. She earned big plaudits for securing one shot in which the dour Souness actually smiled - very much a rarity. This may have been in some way due to her addressing him as “Mr. Ferguson”. He was a perfect gent on this and at least she knew he wasn’t Sir Bobby Robson who Souness had recently replaced as The Toon’s manager. Goal! was never going to be one of the year’s blockbusters, and indeed it earned a nomination in the following year’s Rotten Tomato awards, but at least we had the satisfaction, as with SCHOOL FOR SEDUCTION, of turning in the best takings figure in the UK on the film’s first week of General Release. 

In late 2006 we were approached by Glenn McRory, a local North East professional boxing celebrity and former IBF World Cruiserweight champion, who had encouraged the setting up of the West Auckland Amateur Boxing Gym for youngsters which might also act as a training centre for those wanting to follow in his footsteps. Through his Charity he hoped to stage a premiere of the latest Rocky movie ROCKY BALBOA to help raise funds to continue this work and had managed to persuade the distributor to allow a Regional Premier to be screened at The Gate in January 2007. Gordon Barr of the Newcastle Evening Chronicle helped get the ticket sales moving with a little advance puff piece in the paper:

    Sylvester Stallone on Tyneside? You may jest, but the Hollywood star has been invited to the     Newcastle premiere of his latest film, Rocky Balboa, next week.

    The Gate, is hosting the red-carpet event on Thursday in aid of the McCrory Foundation, which gives     youngsters in the region opportunities in boxing.

    Stars of stage and screen are set to attend the event, and former boxing champion Glenn McCrory     has sent out an invite to Stallone.”

    "We are expecting quite a lot of local celebrities and an invite has gone to Sylvester Stallone," said     McCrory.

As it turned out Mr. Stallone had a diary clash and couldn’t attend (!!! … did anyone believe he would?) but we did get a lot of local sporting celebrities to add their glitz to the evening which generated plenty of media interest and coverage on our local TV stations. McClory, through his well organised Charity, had enlisted the aid of a local agency - possibly one used to providing the glamour girls often seen at high profile Boxing Matches - who would adorn the foyer areas as guests arrived. Duncan and I decided to come up with our own “entering into the spirit of the event” ploy and managed to persuade Area Manager Ian McDonald to let us put an unusal “dress allowance” through Petty Cash for this premiere. Rather than have all our female staff in their usual Odeon uniforms we wanted them to look like the Black Cocktail Dress hostesses of the big sporting events and a few of our more “up for it” receptionists were happy to go along with our idea. They were each allotted the same sum of money - from said Petty Cash plunder - to buy either material to make up their own “little black dress” or to purchase one. After the premiere the dresses were for them to keep. All other staff, including the male ushers and management that night - apart from myself - would be in normal dress code. The lucky ladies quickly dubbed themselves Charlie’s Angels for the night as I would be the only Manager wearing the traditional Evening Dress Suit. They also found themselves featuring in some of the press and TV coverage of the evening. It was an evening they often talked about long after the event as one of their happiest evenings working for Duncan and I at The Gate. The evening raised a goodly sum for the Charity which was really what it was all about. Look North’s sports reporter Geoff Brown was one of the guests and having spotted him almost not knowing where to look with all the glamour girls everywhere, I couldn’t resist ribbing him by threatening to tip off his BBC on-air co-host Carol Mahlia if he spent too much time feasting his eyes on them, This would have allowed her to give him a hard time on the following evening’s programme. Geoff took it all in the good-natured spirit it was intended to be taken.
        
ANCILLARY ANTICS AND DIVERSIONS

While it was nice being in a new-build site complete with all the toots, whistles, plunks and booms of the latest generation of Multiplex operation as conceived by Odeon, there were the odd disadvantages of having not only the Regional Manager’s office just along the main corridor access to all the screens but also having Regional HR Manager Joanne Kelly occupying the adjoining office to Ian’s. Given both were prone to “pop along” to bounce ideas off Duncan and I, at times this meant sidelining other operational aspects we may have been concentrating on. Thankfully both were easy to get on with and always open-minded in our responses, opinions and suggestions to any matters they wanted to “tap our brains and years of experience” about. These two execs enjoyed a good working relationship with each other and, due to the facilities we had, found it convenient to organise meetings here for the GM’s and even the Assistant Managers on their area to come to us. Our Baby Screen 8, with its small seating capacity of 67, was ideal for the AM sessions while our “meeting room” - which doubled as our “Birthday Party facility” for parents wanting to bring their groups of offspring and their friends to see a film as a treat for that celebrant and enjoy nibbles and present swaps there beforehand - was more than adequate for either Ian’s GM monthly info-share or Joanne’s “training sessions” to widen the management skill sets of the Assistants. Both groups were, in their differing ways, good fun to host and participate in.

In terms of the GM sessions, on rare occasions when Duncan was unavailable I would be involved in the same way I had at the old Pilgrim Street site subbing for Peter. The GM’s were an entertaining crowd to intermingle with and I well remember one rather raucous occasion when Odeon was planning to introduce the new “extra long hot dog” and the GM’s were being invited to “sample the product” Most of the group were happy to confine themselves to a “taster sample section” of the new sliced up dog in bun but Barney’s former GM at Dunfermline, Margot, brought the house down by demonstrating her “party piece” of devouring a superdog in one continuous engulfing motion. She then decided to give a second opinion on it with an encore performance. As I watched this consumption I couldn’t help thinking back to a session Nell Mitchell, from my Clerk Street days, told me about. She had attended an AM’s session in the late -1960’s at which Glasgow GM Pat Brader had expounded over the improvement of the original “hot dog”. Pat in his own unique, deadly serious way had started by asking the assembled AM’s “What happened on (a date he specified)?” and continued to scan his audience for someone capable of answering. Nell claimed she had started nervously wracking her brain … ranging from Kennedy’s assassination?, Russia’s space flights?, General Elections? etc. Eventually with no offers forthcoming, Pat slowly stated that ”Odeon Cinemas introduced the steamer-heated hot dog to all its cinemas” He then made a grand Cordon Bleu Chef-style presentation out of slicing up the new “bigger and better” variant about to be launched, carefully skewering each portion on a cocktail stick before walking round the assembled gathering inviting each one of them to sample said item … with their preferred condiment of either tomato sauce or mustard of course.  Had he been faced with the 21st Century modern variant I did wonder how he might have reacted to Margo’s star turn!

Joanne Kelly’s Assistant Manager sessions proved entertaining as she was pretty selective in chosing the balance-mix of participants to attend them. Some, given the topic, were interesting and helpful with Joanne always including a little “fun element” to lighten the mood. One memorable session was based on New Disciplinary Interview Technique Protocols and the various steps we had to ensure we followed … basically to prevent any Unfair Dismissal claims being lodged against Odeon. Armed with her mandatory flip chart she invited us to probe aspects of one topic at a time and then highlighting from the questions we asked and the responses given which “level of questioning” we had reached in securing the most in-depth investigation/answer from the “disciplinary interview personage”. This could lead on to the general questions becoming more probing depending on the answers elicited which in turn would lead to potential new avenues to explore in our “evidence gathering” thus “moving up the stages of the enquiry”. As topics could be non-work related for the purposes of the session this opened the door to a couple of the more mischievous female assistants from North of the Border (Ayr and Glasgow) who were always fun to interact with, to have fun at my colleague David’s expense when they were allowed to “investigate his new romantic relationship” Given how besotted he had become with her (and Joanne had obviously been in the curiosity loop about the new object of his affections) this proved an uncomfortable session for my colleague and a lot of laughs for the questioners! At the conclusion of this session Joanne thanked us all for the eager participation we had shown and commended us on reaching the second highest (most thorough) level of the process she had ever seen in any of the many sessions she had held throughout the country. The two Scottish rabble rousers couldn’t resist offering her a reason for this … “We are just blinkin’ Nosey Parkers, Joanne!”

Joanne also joined Ian at his AM sessions which of necessity involved a larger number of attendees from across the area as his time was more limited. Each of those sessions, in addition to business progress aspects and anticipated future film release schedules, would always include a “small team project” to tackle for which Ian allocated the participants in each team. These always included splitting up the more experienced AM’s from their unit colleagues so that one or two was the maximum allotted to any of the groups ensuring they could mentor/guide the less experienced members and so help advance their management skills and confidence. While I enjoyed the convenience of “being on site” I did fondly look back on an early session before The Gate was up and running which had been held in the now Bar Area of the Odeon Clerk Street in Edinburgh which had allowed me to renew acquaintance with the unit I never stopped claiming was the best Odeon I even worked in … bar none!

Prior to the opening of The Gate I had been too occupied with Peter at the Pilgrim Street site to participate in any staff recruitment sessions. With the turnover levels anticipated and experienced due to largely employing part-time students and with our business level fluctuations peaking around Christmas, Easter and the Summer Holiday through to the September to October University term starting period. we tended to hold three or four recruitment drives each year. These were timed to allow for a few weeks training of the new recruits prior to these seasonal blitzes so I was soon able to make up on lost ground. The process started with applicants leaving their CV’s or filling in our standard pro-forma which would have a Polaroid photo taken attached to remind us of the applicant in the later stages of the recruitment short listing process. The junior AM’s and Team Leaders would sift through and whittle these down for the main session with a short face to face interview and the best prospects would be invited to a “second stage interview” process. This was one Joanne had designed in conjunction with Duncan. The whittled down potentials were split up into groups of five or six around tables set up in the Meeting Room. On the tables were sheets of paper, colouring pens and other assorted stationery, glues and scissors. Once settled in, Duncan (or more often myself) would introduce ourselves, talk a little about Odeon in general and the site in particular before a “breaking the ice” round robin as each potential new staff member was invited to name their favourite movie. To prevent any fear of embarrassment this always started with Duncan’s declaration (true) that his favourite film of all time was the Disney animated feature THE LION KING while mine was, and had been since first seeing it in the 1950’s, PETER PAN. The ensuing suggestions from each participant allowed whoever was nominally leading the session to interact a bit with the titles being suggested and just generally get people in the groups breaking the ice with each other. As THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION always received lots of mentions I made sure I took an early opportunity to correct this “gap in my movie viewing” at an early opportunity!

Before setting the “project task” that every group would work on in the allotted generous time frame, we introduced the other staff members present at the session - usual a couple of Team Leaders, Cash Controllers, Section Heads or other staff on duty that day - who would be wandering around the various group tables to answer any questions that may arise. The task was always the same, to create a board game concept in a rough form with rules and how it would be scored by participants. A leader appointed from among themselves by each assembled group would then outline at the expiry of the time allotted how their concept game would be played. Invariably these tended to be “movie themed” in terms of the questions with the scoring modelled on games like Trivial Pursuit. Depending on the time of year they sometimes incorporated Christmas and Easter variants and to be honest many of the projects would have been almost worthy of submission to commercial Board Game Companies. The “observers”, including Duncan and myself, during the process were looking at how the members of each group interacted with each other and helped each other arrive at a consensus presentation. This helped identify the sort of “group working together attitudes” we needed to run our busy multiplex smoothly and also highlighted who were the main drivers in the decision making and creative components of the “task” and even one’s with possible future Team Leader potential. Once the presentations had been completed we thanked everyone for coming and informed them of the time-frame that would follow, clarifying that we would only contact those selected for a final more formal interview by a specified date and that sadly if they hadn’t heard from us by that time then on this occasion they had not been successful in their application. That final vetting would have been arrived at after a discussion involving the comparison notes observers had made during the project session while referring to the photo-attached initial application form submitted to aid with correctly identifying the ones we agreed should progress.

The final recall interview would provide a chance to finally confirm the selected recruits who would be offered employment. They would then be given a start date for the training sessions which would be undertaken by Ann Curry and Sandra Headley, our two most experienced Team Leaders, who would follow the current Odeon “induction training manual” designed by HR to equip them all to cope with most aspects of the job. The Section Heads of the box office, general retail, Haagen-Dazs ice cream, hot dogs, post mix and coffee sections would provide further instruction and ongoing monitoring as the new recruits rotated round these areas as part of their shifts picking up some of the more practical skills and hygiene requirements needed for these specific areas. The whole process, while it may have sounded a bit OTT actually worked very efficiently and we rarely found ourselves having to let staff go for being unable to carry out duties even if the new recruits often gave Anne Turnbull extra work chasing them up for the relevant NI Numbers and other documents needed to process their wages. Once Anne resorted to her final measure of informing them they would not be paid unless we had this essential data by our cut-off date for wages input, this was usually quickly forthcoming!

In terms of the Support Management Team, that too would occasionally lead to personnel changes as Ian and HR sometimes needed to move Assistants to other units to cover short term when unexpected sickness occurred or to provide Holiday Relief cover. This would give them a chance to see how other units coped with the same issues but perhaps involving different business levels. Given changes generally in the Circuit, one of the earliest issues involved Darlington where the plan had been to appoint Barney as its GM in place of the existing Manager who would be seconded to The Gate for some mentoring and coaching to improve their business management skills and also in terms of their dealing with staff. The plan was that this would provide a stepping stone for Barney on the way to a busier GM position on his own career path with Odeon. Like many “best made plans” it didn’t work out because Barney’s fiancée made clear she was unhappy about moving from Scotland. Rather than endangering their future plans he decided to leave Odeon and return to the teaching career he had previously trained for. Instead, Ian persuaded Duncan to “add” Darlington to his responsibilites and we used it as a means of giving our own support management team a chance to enjoy short spells “running” a small triple screen unit while under the careful general supervision of Duncan and myself on occasions when needed. It also provided Joanne with an opportunity to widen her field of AM development by seconding junior management trainees from around her Area to Newcastle to gain valuable experience in what she now considered a really well run and very busy unit. Although it at times involved extra work for Duncan and I it was rewarding in its own way to be helping develop the next generation of potential Odeon managers. Hopefully they might remember their time at The Gate with the same affection I always held for Clerk Street Odeon in Edinburgh.

Jane, one of the AM’s who had mentored my induction at Pilgrim Street, found herself promoted to Senior AM for the Odeon at Wester Hailes on the outskrts of Edinburgh but found the GM there so difficult to work with that she too decided to leave the business and concentrate on a different career nearer to her Glasgow roots … and a happy marriage! One of her post-Odeon claims to fame was being in charge of marketing - one of her key strengths and interests - for the Commonwealth Games when they were staged in Glasgow in 2014. As she had been the only female on the management team since its opening, Duncan and I felt it important to have a member of the management team that our largely female staff could approach with any issues they might have been embarrassed about raising with any of the male managers. We were fortunate in recruiting Lauren Mackenzie whose personality melded perfectly with the remaining existing team and proved popular as a conduit with the female staff. Due to her interests in keep fit and martial arts, Lauren was soon dubbed “Ninja El” by her female staff team members.

An area of the operation I was always a little worried about, due to the long operating hours, was that the shift pattern over the five day week often meant the duty manager knocking off at teatime leaving a lot of paperwork and admin to be picked up and completed by the late-shift DM. I suggested changing the rota to one of two days working the full 10:00AM to 2:00AM the following day shift with the balance of our contracted hours made up with an eight-hour shift on one of the other days. That would given everyone effectively three or four days off to recover. The lads all thought this a great idea and, despite Joanne’s initial HR misgivings, it definitely proved more efficient. There was no pressure on anyone to participate and when Lauren asked me if she could go back to the older rota, as she was struggling with the extra long days, I had no problems whatsoever in accommodating her request. Sadly, a month or so later, she decided an offer of being a merchandiser with a cosmetics company, which had a more normal working day pattern, would suit her better and accepted that position.

As a replacement we were fortunate that Miriam Byrne had returned to Odeon having experienced working for an independent Circuit in Northern Ireland where, like Jane at Wester Hailes, she was not treated with the respect or given the support she should have received by their authoritarian ways of disrespecting staff. On returning to Odeon Miriam had been initially assigned to the Team at Ayr but after familiarising herself with Odeon systems again, Joanne transferred her to replace Lauren. We formed a formidable partnership with her picking my brains in terms of operation and film distribution while I gained an insight into her traumas working with a Company that remined me in some ways of my short time with Cannon Classic. We both enjoyed working the same shifts and neither of us ever left “our work” to be finished by others. Possibly one reason we got on was that she had a boyfriend in Edinburgh and loved that I accommodated her with regular weekends off as part of the Duty Management rotas which I was in charge of preparing. To be fair this same “perk” was regularly offered to most of the Support Management team as I loved the buzz of working Saturdays and, doing the Sunday shift, also allowed me relatively undisturbed time to bring all the weekly business stats (one of my many other specifically assigned tasks) up to date for Duncan’s perusal prior to meetings on Monday with Regional manager Ian.

Sunday was also the time, once a month, when Anne T and I could also find relative peace before the afternoon pick-up in business levels to compile the monthly payroll input accurately and ensure there were no errors in the monthly bank transfers to staff accounts. This was a time when staff knew better than to disturb us for trivial matters that they were more than capable of resolving themselves or via the Team Leaders on duty or their section heads. As my temper occasionally unleashed itself if we were interrupted while giving this wage prep our total concentration, it was jokingly referred to as Charlie’s “Time of the Month”. I always made a point of spending time with those who had been on the receiving end of any tantrum to apologise and explain why Anne and I needed this window to be as undisturbed as possible.

Sunday evening also involved some of the Film Renters agents needing to have the weekend admissions and gross takes emailed to them on the opening weekend for whichever of their releases we happened to be playing. This was something I was very familiar with and a routine that had not changed really since 1968 when I started in the business although, in the changing cinema environment, it had expanded from Company internal booking department to include the Film Renters as well. One contact I enjoyed communicating with was Peter who collated the info for Twentieth Century Fox releases. On one memorable occasion I received an almost immediate follow up phone call from him after submitting our opening weekend figures on the Ali G starring film BORAT. He asked “very delicately” if I had made a mistake in the number of zeros added to my submitted figure as our 50,000+ admissions figures over the three-day weekend was way in excess of every other cinema or Plex screening that film in the UK. After explaining that, because we had identified BORAT as very much a movie that would appeal to our core student audience and other groups, it was playing on several performances in more than one screen (using our interlock system). I also added that we had deliberately programmed the timesheet for turnaround times on this film between performances of only a couple of minutes with the first screenings at 10:00 AM and the last starting at just after midnight. Peter was amazed and delighted that our figures were accurate … as were Duncan and I on Monday when Ian popped along to tell us that not only were we Number One in the Odeon tables over the weekend but we had also achieved that landmark position as Number One in the whole of the UK for this film. We had smiles on our faces as we quipped in response: Don’t you just love it when a plan comes together!

That coveted UK Top ten position was one we managed to achieve on a few occasions which, given the short period we had been operating, we were all immensely satisfied with.

It was during this “golden Period” that a merger/takeover was being mooted between Odeon Cinemas and the UCI Chain of multiplexes to bring them all under the Odeon branding. As a casualty of this, many old style Odeon units would close, including my first and forever favourite home town cinema at Clerk Street in Edinburgh. By now this had transformed from single screen to a triple and laterally to gaining a further four screens built on what used to be the Stage Area behind the main screen, In preparation for its impending closure on August 30th 2003 Miriam had been transferred there to help GM Kim Thorne during this period. In various conversations with Miriam I had often waxed lyrical about this Cinema and, after a few weeks of working there, she rang me up to say she now appreciated why I had been so attached to it. I also made a point of scheduling myself to be “off duty” from The Gate to be able to drive up and sit in Clerk Street’s biggest auditorium for its final show. Kim and Miriam had tried to transfer PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN, which late in its run at Edinburgh was now playing in one of the mini screens, into the biggest screen for the final show but typically the renters wouldn’t play ball and it was the second LARA CROFT movie, TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE that was watched by a mere handful on that sad occasion with many of the staff enjoying gratis goodies like ice cream and hot dogs that would otherwise be junked after the closure.

Thankfully the Odeon name has continued in Edinburgh (at time of writing) as the Odeon Circuit had previously secured the former ABC location on Lothian Road, adapting the lower sub street level area into a few mini screens. Sadly these never did justice to the former glory of both the original 2000+ seating of the ABC or the old 1800+ Clerk Street site. Kim gave me a tour round this new Odeon a couple of years later and we both remarked how it failed to do justice to either of the two predecessors of movie entertainment in the Scottish Capital.

A MAJOR UPHEAVAL THAT PROVED UNAVOIDABLE

As often happens, changes beyond our control were soon looming menacingly on the horizon that would impact on Newcastle as a result of the proposed merger between UCI Cinemas and Odeon. As Odeon operated both The Gate and its multiplex at Silverlinks, combining ownership with the UCI Multiplex at the Metro Centre would mean Odeon having a monopoly of screening operations in the Newcastle connurbation which the Office of Fair Trading was not prepared to accept. As a result one of the units would have to be sold on to another operator, the big question was which one? Regional Manager Ian held a confidential meeting with Duncan and myself to consider possible arguments for The Gate to remain under the Odeon banner. We had always felt our core audience was different to the other two plexes but opinions needed to be backed up with statistical analysis which meant I was given a two-week deadline to trawl through weekly admission data against specific film titles for all three sites to see if this argument stood up. As this data had to be coordinated against film titles/genres and other mitigating factors such as timing of school holidays I ended up largely locked away in Duncan’s office with weekly box office figures provided by the Film Distributors which Ian, in his executive capacity, had received and fortunately archived in his office. After a few days he seemed happy with the approach I was taking but realised it was more than a one-person task and kindly loaned me the services of his Personal Assistant cum Administration Secretary. She quickly understood the approach being taken and definitely helped get the job done ahead of our deadline.

It was comforting to note that our impressions of the variances in audiences being attracted was borne out by the data. The strength and appeal of both Metro Centre and Silverlinks was during school holidays with family movies, where their access to on-site car parking facilitated this core audience, as against our city centre with limited parking facilities during these periods. In terms of the more adult, student or upmarket titles we knocked spots off both their figures which led to a clear conclusion that one of the two similar-market units should have been the one to go. The OFT did not agree which meant The Gate would be the one to change ownership, which it eventually did. It was sad that all the great work the Management team and staff at The Gate had put into making a success of the site from zero admisions to over 800,000 in our second year could not have been given a chance to build business up even more as we would have loved to achieve the 1 million ads (or more) in a calendar year we felt was well within our grasp. My one consolation was that Ian, as he had once before with the Festive Fire evacuations on our first year of operation, suggested I take Sue out for a nice meal again as a personal thanks from him for all the hard work I had done in preparing the box office data for the three affected sites analysis that had allowed Head Office to argue their case for retaining The Gate with the OFT.

Under subsequent ownership as a key unit in the new Empire Cinemas UK Circuit - an offshoot of the Irish chain Miriam Byrne had worked with! - the “micromanaging by head office” in terms of operation, staffing and film booking ethos, meant far less job satisfaction all round especially for Duncan and myself. More critically, it led to a general drop off in attendance figures despite our best efforts.

The one big plus out of this short period (for me before I retired) was that when Empire eventually took over control our Film Booker was Derek County who I had known indirectly when he worked for Odeon and was Peter’s main Booker at Pilgrim Street prior to Brian Corless taking over. During that period, at the Coli, I was often in touch with Peter on Monday afternoons to see if any of his film prints were finishing on the Thursday week-ending that had become the norm for UK Cinema exhibition. Derek, fully aware of our arrangements, always tried to inform Peter as early on a Monday as he could to allow me to then negotiate with my own Renter contacts to see if they’d agree to me picking up the Odeon Newcastle print and then running it for a week at the Coli as this print would normally have been lying idle for the next seven days due to the then film transport arrangements in situ. This was the sort of inter-exhibitor cooperation Peter and I had nurtured in the North East as a result of the hard work put in by all the Cinema Managers on the local Committee who had helped organise  the many British Film Year events we had staged. When I first met and talked with Derek he remembered me from those “bargaining days” and we enjoyed the same mutual respect relationship and trust that I had previously enjoyed under Odeon with Brian Corless. These two “booking titans” had often crossed career paths in the Companies they were employed by and on one occasion, when Derek was on holiday from Empire, Brian had stepped into the void and our mutual banter resumed as if there had been no gap whatsoever. That was quite a common theme in my career path and one I always cherished.

With my 60th Birthday looming and the lack of job satisfaction under the micromanaging of Empire, my thoughts were turning towards calling it a day as, thankfully, Sue and I were now comfortable in our pension provisions that the sums added up for us to enjoy a comfortable retirement. I shall come to the Grand Farewell in due course but first, conscious that I have perhaps concentrated more on proceedures and personalities rather than the more essential aspects of the success of The Gate, it would be remiss to not say how fortuitous it had been that the run of product in the early 21st Century helped immensely. With multiplex expansion had come more available screens for films to play in and the Film Companies had done their bit by providing big budgets to maximise the potential of blockbuster movies and, crucially, the number of prints for initial runs. It was the era of the HARRY POTTER franchise taking off and Peter Jackson’s amazing LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy which continued on into THE HOBBIT trilogy to keep the box office tills rattling healthily. While Disney and Bond added to the frequency of strong product, thanks to the varying capacities of the screens in the plexes release titles could continue on far longer runs than previously. It also opened up access for the more minority appeal “classy product” to find a bigger audience … especially if local managements who knew what they were doing were allowed input into the programming, screen allocation and screening times for the films. Flexibility by the renters in allowing different films to share the same screen on a given day - for appropriate adjustments to sliding scales depending on the number of shows being offered each title - had been truly transformational and profitable for both sides of the business.

It was fascinating to look back sometimes at just how pioneering Odeon had been in this early 21st Century period, even at the old Pilgrim Street site where we had trialled subtitled screenings for the hard of hearing and also audio commentary synched to the running of the film which could be picked up by handsets available at the box office free of charge. As subtitled screenings initially used “hard copies” with the titles printed onto these limited release copies, these were restricted to certain cinemas on one day in their operating weeks. This issue also limited in the range of films being offered. When we moved to The Gate, new technology had been developed with some screens fitted out with a compact disc reading box that could be linked to the Projection equipment to play the soundtrack commentary and dialogue in synch for the visually impaired through the headsets or their mobile phones and also project subtitles for those with hearing issues. While these subtitled screenings were always carefully advertised as such and explained to any customers wishing to attend such screenings when they purchased their tickets, it was a bit annoying that so many complained afterwards about it “spoiling the film for them”. It was one of those occasions when such try-it-ons were not offered Guest Tickets for another visit!

At the Gate we had. in the early years, also tried to accommodate special screenings for the Indian and Chinese communities. These had been Bollywood titles for the Indian community. In terms of the Chinese community, the contacts I had maintained from my days running the Tyneside Film Theatre - on a theatre let basis with their local representatives being responsible for securing the films to show - were happy to come from Pilgrim Street to The Gate. The Indian screenings took place on Sunday afternoons while the Chinese films were late night screenings starting about 1:00 AM, usually on Mondays. The Chinese community had also wanted to screen on Christman Day, our New Year’s Day and as part of their own annual New Year celebrations and when the Tyneside closed for the first time in 1975 I suggested Peter Talbot might be willing to accommodate them and the Odeon Pilgrim Street managed to run them for a few years for the Chinese community … albeit not on Christmas Day. When the AMC Gateshead Metro Centre Multiplex got up and running the organisers decided to move there to take advantage of its prestige status as the then ”new kid on the block”. Once The Gate was up and running, however, it didn’t take us long to nick them back for Odeon! In terms of the Bollywood screenings, we initially took them over but given the tight timetabling of our own screening programmes it proved problematical. The organisers of those screenings kept asking us to hold the start of their shows to “accommodate” those travelling who couldn’t be bothered to arrive at the agreed start time. As the delays caused by this were impacting more and more on our main operation, after giving them a few “reminders” that their shows needed to start at the advertised times without interfering with our own timetables on those days, we had no alternative but to terminate their hiring agreement for our screen, We did suggest UCI might be more tolerant as their film scheduling didn’t timetable as tightly as we did at The Gate.

Given The Gate’s newly acquired cult status as “the place to go in Newcastle” and always conscious of maintaining the student core of loyalty Peter had built up over the years at the Pilgrim Street site we made sure to target the new University year’s Fresher’s Fair in the run up to our transition and try to build on it. By arranging some “free shows” of classic cult movies THE GOONIES, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF, GREMLINS in the run up to our Opening, with tickets distributed through our University campus contacts, these screenings allowed all the new staff at The Gate a chance to get into the operational routine of dealing with “actual customers” and also, needless to say, allowed us to open up the retail facilities allowing staff to be deployed in those areas to get familiar with the requirements for serving a much wider range of items than had been possible at the Pilgrim Street site, Given the profit margins on these they were an essential in adding to the overall viability of the new site as quickly as possible even if it all meant more headcahes for Tuft as she had loads more stock to monitor, count on a weekly basis and ensure orders were placed in sufficient time and quantities to ensure they were always available especially at anticipated peak periods. As always she rose to the challenge and got good support from myself and what were now known in some quarters as “the Pilgrim Street Irregulars” like Team leaders Ann Curry, Sandra Headley, Miriam, Becky and Pat as well as Sarah-Jane Soloman and Joanne Gathwaite who had all come across to The Gate.

What proved disappointing to the younger members of the support management team who had enthusiastically taken on the bulk of the Student screenings programme was the poor quality of the screening prints available to us. The Utopian future on the horizon was that digital screening equipment was likely to be rolled out in next ten years and with pristine digital prints for every title the possibilities for such niche programming would expand in the hands of programmers who knew their audiences. For the present, however, we gave up on such nostalgia trips and stuck with special screenings of current and, where available, previews of upcoming releases in the following years for our student promotions at the start of each University Year. Thankfully not impacted by such print quality issues” were the senior screenings which continued to be a fun chore on Wednesday mornings embraced enthusiastically by Ann and myself. The staff regularly on duty on these shows also enjoyed the weekly interactions with “the old dears” as Jane fondly referred to them. I would often be joined at the door ticket check on these shows by Gary who had the sort of personality that worked effortlessly and smoothly with all age groups but most especially with the seniors. It was on one of these shows that a youngish lady (probably mid--thirties/forties) approached me and on checking my name badge asked if I was indeed, as she suspected, the “legendary” Charlie Picken who had been involved with school and university film society shows in Edinburgh many years ago. After sharing some memories of those days she left to look after the “seniors” she was caring for on that particular morning. Gary, picking up on the vibes, then decided that from now on he would refer to me, when introducing me to new staff, as The Legend! At least that wasn’t as weird as coming into work one day and being greeted by David and Andy telling me there was a bizarre email on the system from someone claiming to know me and asking if “Charlie Picken still worked there“. I immediately recognised the name of Graham Morrison who I had lost contact with since moving to Newcastle in the early 1970’s and also because he had moved South to London. I couldn’t resist responding with a flat denial that “Charlie Picken had ever been known to do any actual work at The Gate” before admitting that I was indeed his long lost sparring partner from the school, University and Film Guild days. We arranged to meet for lunch and have had regular meet ups on his occasional stopovers en route to or from Edinburgh when he had been visiting his mother, now very much in her senior years. That relationship has been maintained since our retirements and always brings back lots of memories of our younger antics and friendship.

One area The Gate management always enthusiastically engaged in were the Late Night Advance Screenings of the latest Blockbuster releases. This was really the Film Distributors latest ploy to boost their “Biggest Ever Opening Weekend” claims and had started in the lattermost days at Pilgrim Street with “One Minute Past Midnight” screenings of movies like the STAR WARS later episodes and the nascent HARRY POTTER series before expanding to encompass the LORD OF THE RINGS and THE HOBBIT trilogies as well as other tent pole releases. The Gate was ideally positioned to take these to a new level as on occasions we were able to take advantage of our Interlock facility and play the copy in two screens effectively doubling the potential take. Takings for such releases nationally were added to the “traditional opening weekend takes for Friday, Saturday and Sunday” to create this, in truth, artificially inflated figure … but then since when did honesty ever triumph over hype?

These shows were always ones Duncan and I, and the staff on duty, enjoyed working as there was always a big buzz of anticipation while the audiences lined up in the foyer area waiting for the official Doors Opening time and then the One Minute Past Midnight starting time allowing them to claim bragging rights among their peer group for having secured a ticket for the screening and being the first to see whichever film was being shown. As more and more of these shows were scheduled, where demand justified it we were able to secure sometimes more than one print of the film which effectively allowed us to use it in more screens. On one of the HARRY POTTER series we actually had three copies playing in SIX screens for its “one minute past midnight” screening and they were all jam-packed to capacity. No prizes for guessing which Cinema came top in the UK that weekend!

One of the most colourful and fun screenings we engaged with was for STAR WARS Episode 6 - Revenge of the Sith where the distributor’s publicity department had shipped us up some costumes for staff to wear. There was no shortage of volunteers from staff to play Obi Wan Kenobi or even Chewbacca but there was only one possible contender to the Darth Vader costume, which was how The Gate’s Santa Claus forsook his red and white garb for one night only to don the iconic black Cape and Helmet to perform the “official Opening”  allowing the audience access to the screening of the latest chapter in the STAR WARS saga. I got a resounding cheer when I emerged from the corridor to perform the task which was a shame really as I was hoping for hisses and boos … as do all theatrical villains in  Pantoland.

A FINAL PREMIERE

Given that my mind was now made up that the frustrations caused by Empire’s micro-managing of everything was leading to less and less job satisfaction, I decided June 18th, 2007 - my 60th Birthday - would be my retiring day and that this time it would be a final one. Thankfully Duncan and I had already earmarked an upcoming film that we wanted to give a bit of Gate razzmatazz to and on April 4th 2006 we were able to stage one last Premiere for me to go out on in style. The film may not have been a classic but it was local lads Ant and Dec’s first (and to date only) big screen outing. ALIEN AUTOPSY was scheduled to have its World Premiere as per usual in London on April 3 but Warner Brothers were happy to agree to a Newcastle screening the following day at The Gate which would also be attended by the two stars.

In the months leading up to the day, because of the duo’s fan base, we had expected there would be lots of young fans gathering outside for a glimpse of their heroes and planning to deal with this was entered into at a very early stage. Meetings were held with local police and council officials to plan how to control the anticipated numbers and the pre-planning paid off in spades with the Council agreeing to close off the streets leading to The Gate for several hours on the evening of the Premiere which would allow exclusive access to the VIP invitees, the media and the stars themselves. We also managed to have tensator barriers erected in the main street entrance and foyer area to create a safe walkway for those attending the event while still allowing the general public to gather behind some additional “portable temporary crowd control street barriers” and enjoy the arrivals. Included in the plan would be a “safe cordoned-off corridor” in the foyer area for the Guests, VIP’s and Premiere ticket holders to make their way unimpaired through to their screen. Needless to say the “Orders of the Day” assignments and timetabling were one of the more complex ones to finalise and the day itself would prove a rather long one for all involved.

A Press Screening was arranged for the morning to allow the media to see the film prior to them meeting the two stars at the Hilton Gateshead hotel where a reception was being laid on for them in the early afternoon. The Distributor, Warner’s, had arranged for two of their general promotional PR girls to be on site at The Gate to ensure all media were welcomed to the screening. These young ladies, being totally unfamiliar with any of our local media, were placed under my wing and introduced to the journalists and TV reporters as they arrived. They really appreciated this “assist” and at the same time it made them aware of the professionalism of The Gate personnel. Having run the print through the previous day we knew there would be no presentation issues for either the Press showing or the evening Premiere.

In the course of conversations with the two PR’s I enquired if any bigwigs from Warner’s would be coming and was told that only the UK Head of Distribution would be attending as he was accompanying the two stars in the private jet that had been laid on to get them from the London Premiere the night before to Newcastle and then, the following day, take them over to Ireland for a further “Premiere” there. I managed to keep a totally blank face when I realised this would mean renewing acquaintance with Peter Taylor whom I had known since my Coli days. The two youngsters were clearly nervous that he planned calling into the Cinema in the afternoon, once the Media Reception had got underway, to check on all the arrangements at The Gate itself for the evening and were a bit relieved when I told them I had known him for almost thirty years. What I didn’t tell them was that he and I had a serious falling out over a film called NIGHT OF THE CREEPS.

At Columbia, where Peter started in the “shorts supporting programme” library, I had often cajoled him for a twenty minute short for the Coli to go with the single main feature policy all the renters adopted at the time. This would allow us to “create” an intermission window prior to the main feature which would enable us to boost auditorium sales. In later years he progressed up the echelons to become my main features liaison and also first point of contact when the biennial adjustment to the Coli’s sliding scale was being negotiated. Further progress saw him become Deputy to the UK Manager for Columbia and now he had, after another switch round among the Distributors’ studio affiliations, assumed the responsibility of UK Head of Distribution at Warner’s. Our falling out happened during the period when flexibility of programming was being allowed by the Distributors as long as the sliding scales for each film were adjusted depending on the number of shows for each title in the week. In general terms this usually involved a pro-rata adjustment for the two afternoon family screenings and a similar one for the evening adult programme … effectively a 2/3rd and a 1/3rd slide scenario, In addition, during school holiday periods, following the transformation in thinking in the wake of CROCODILE DUNDEE I often managed to slot in an additional more adult film starting after 9:00PM which was often one with a horror slant and not anticipated to be a major earner. Usually these “late slot fillers” would be charged at a flat 25% of net take. With NIGHT OF THE CREEPS I had anticipated these terms would apply and was shocked when Frank Smith, my then booking contact at Columbia, asked how many screenings of each film I would be playing that week as terms would have to be approved by Peter. In total that week I had one title playing 18 shows and another playing 7 in that same screen while the other screen was the one I also wanted to squeeze in the six shows on CREEPS. When I was told this would mean me being charged a 6/31th slide on this film’s take I challenged the greed and was bluntly told to “take it or leave it”. Having already sent off my press ads in anticipation of the usual arrangements I reluctantly agreed but took the opportunity, after the week’s figures had been finalised, of working out how much “more” Peter had benefited from his stance. It worked out at 21p more for that film than it would have earned on a 25% of net take basis. I couldn’t resist firing off a letter to him suggesting he check out a certain Shakespeare play for the comeuppance a similar ruthless money grasper had received for his efforts in pursuing due payment for what he perceived to be his “pound of flesh” terms. While I didn’t get a response directly, in conversation with Frank on a later occasion he commented that my “communication” had been given place of honour on Peter’s “trophy wall” mounted in its own frame with a caption, signed by Peter, to all his “salesmen” that this was how tough they needed to be when faced with “uppity Independents having the temerity to argue about terms”.

When Peter strolled into the foyer that afternoon and made a bee-line for his two PR girls I emerged from the office corridor and greeted him with “Hi Shylock, still trying to screw Independents for their last penny?” at which point he immediately recognised me and beamed in delight while responding: “Charlie, nobody holds grudges as long as you!” After this we immediately resumed the totally friendly banter our long term relationship had always enjoyed. Later on, after the PR’s realised it had all been in jest and they weren‘t going to be on the receiving end of any ire, I explained the history and they enjoyed a chuckle too. After that I outlined how the evening timetable would work out and Peter was more than satisfied that everything was well catered for and any potential pitfalls had been identified and preparations made to prevent them happening.

Despite our pre-planning and crowd expectations on numbers, we were still taken a bit by surprise at the hordes who turned up and how early they sought out positions behind the barriers to catch a glimpse of proceedings and indeed the arrival of the two Principal Stars. Duncan, David and Andy were on the meet and greet for the civic and local media and celebrity arrivals smoothly ushering them up to the foyer level and from there staff working the Premiere screen ensured they had no trouble accessing their seats. With both Screen 1 and 2 on a side corridor off the main one serving all the other screens it was relatively easy controlling access to the ALIEN AUTOPSY auditorium and the filling of same proved smooth. What held things up was the local duo almost trying to outdo Tom Cruise, famed for his schmoozing with fans at Leicester Square events, by interacting with the assembled crowds. Getting them from their drop off, through the media photograph pack and eventually up to the foyer level took more than half an hour and even then they had to negotiate a further assemblage of fans wanting autographs, selfies and even wanting to share their hot dogs with the duo as they tried to make their way through to the screen. They were having fun and it showed …even signing a couple of hot dogs thrust at them!

Conscious of the late running of the scheduled start time for the film I had been making regular “off stage” announcements to those waiting patiently in the auditorium explaining that the duo were trying to interact with as many outside and in the foyer as they could and would be appearing in the screen as soon as we could get them past this area. Eventually they did and I had a chance to have a quick word with them outlining the intro I would be making and also how the two hand mikes they would be using could be operated. I was totally impressed by their utter professionalism in taking everything in straight away at the first time of my outlining it and this whole pre-session only took a couple of minutes allowing me to kick things off by going to the front of the auditorium and welcoming everyone to what was now Empire at the Gate.

Knowing this would be my last time of doing such duties I was determined to be a little mischievous. After carrying out the normal toilet locations info and emergency evacuation protocols should such arise, I had noticed Peter Taylor had also snuck in and was standing with the duo alongside the two PR’s near to one of the access ramps. After thanking the audience for their patience and understanding over the delays I teased by indicating that some of the audience may have heard of some minor event in London the previous evening that had been billed as the World Premiere of the film they were about to view before emphasising that, as far as our two stars were concerned, said event was really only a warm out for tonight’s far more important GEORDIEWORLD Premiere. This brought a resounding roar from the assembled audience. I then invited the two stars to come down and say a few words, introducing them by the names they would see on tonight’s Screen Credits of Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. After doing a typically in-character interaction between themselves they wound it up and allowed me to relieve them of the microphones as they made their way back to the VIP seats and the film could finally get going.

The whole evening went without any glitches and it was only afterwards that I was given news I had acquired my own star status, at least in the eyes of the two Warner’s PR girls  … and a pair of groupies! Throughout my intros they had been purring about how professional and smooth I was and likewise lauding my light banter efforts to the nines blissfully unaware that standing next to them were Sue (on her usual Premiere photo-taking duties capturing the event) and Sarah-Jane Solomon, one of the cheekier staff members who was always prone to being mischievous. S-J turned to the PR’s when they were in mid-flow and simply said “Have you met Charlie’s wife Sue?” at which they apparently didn’t know where to look in their embarrassment! Their Boss also managed to get a little dig in as a parting shot about my decrying the Leicester Square event by saying he had anticipated me not being able to resist popping one into such an open goal. The following day I dropped him an email saying how nice it had been to meet up with him again after all the years we had known each other and that I hoped he had been happy with our “humble provincial efforts” with the Premiere. In his reply he said that in this business, surprises were normally on the nasty and depressing side but in this case it had been a sheer delight to spar with me again and that he was absolutely delighted, as were the two stars, with how smoothly it had all gone.

FINALLY CALLING IT A DAY

In the weeks leading up to my leaving day I was unaware of a lot of the secret meetings being held on site involving my departure. As well as on-site conflabs between staff and management there appeared to have been other communications between some of the Team Leaders and Sue to try and secure some “embarrassing photos” of my career highlights. The old Pilgrim Street veterans had also included Peter Talbot in their cunning ploy to surprise me by delivering some reminiscences of our years working together at the event they were planning. Their plan had been to involve not only him but also to include some of the former staff from both the old Odeon site and The Gate I had worked with. Those plans were given the kibosh when Duncan made clear that Peter and staff not currently working at The Gate would not be allowed to attend. I never did fully understand why he took this path but, in doing so, he missed a great chance to heal some of the rifts that had clearly been festering during the transition years.

As for the day itself, Dunc had let me know EMPIRE’s MD Paul Baxter and his deputy Andy Bush would be visiting the site that day while hinting strongly that I should try and restrain some of my low opinions of the edicts they had introduced since the takeover. Their big gesture, which I did appreciate, was that they were planning to present me with a Lifetime Free Pass to come in and watch films at any Empire Cinema. Along with my Cinema and Television Veterans pass this would mean never having to pay to see any films during my retirement years… not something I ever had to do anyway in my near forty year career!

On the morning I did have a sit down with Paul which proved quite a surprise in that he seemed disappointed that, having asked many staff members and management colleagues about me, not a bad word had been spoken. He claimed he had encountered the same reaction in asking among the many Film Distributor contacts he dealt with in London. In trying to continue making conversation he presented me with an open goal by asking, given all my years in the business and all the people I had worked with, if I had any thoughts on how Empire could have done things better in terms of boosting their business model since assuming operational control of The Gate. From the far side of the office I caught a glimpse from Duncan dreading what my response might be. As it was I merely suggested that the better cinemas always stood out because their managers had taken the time to interact with their audiences and get to know their tastes in films and so should be listened to when they made programming and screening time scheduling suggestions rather than being totally ignored and having them imposed on them as part of a non-negotiable edict. In later years Duncan has conceded many times that I was spot on the money with those sentiments.

As for the buffet and refreshments part of the leaving do, I was delighted with the effort the “organising committee” had put in. The blown up photos Sue had provided were eagerly perused by many of the younger staff members earning me further kudos from being snapped alongside such luminaries as Sir Richard Attenborough, Sir John  Mills, Phil Collins and other celebrities at events and Premieres over the years. I was delighted Sue was there to share the experience with me and forgave her for including the embarrassing photo of me (aged about 5) wearing  a kilt and a woollen cap my mum had knitted for me!

The one disappointment of the day was that no-one had been delegated to deliver any eulogy which meant me being coerced to say a few words myself. Still it was nice to interact with so many of the staff, some of whom had come in on their days off, to bid me a fond farewell. The sentiments they had written individually in the lavish card they presented me with were so moving and is something I will never forget. If one message stood out and summed things up in terms of how I treated staff it was from the cashier who had been sworn at by the student “showing off to his mates and girlfriend” that I had dealt with. Kate never forgot that incident which had led her to tears and wrote: “You may at times have been firm in demanding high standards but you were always fair and, if support was needed, always available to help sort things out.”

The other thing that overwhelmed me on this day of many such emotions was how much had been donated to fund a gift for me. The main presentation was a glass plaque with the inscription “FORTY YEARS OF CINEMA   from all your friends at the empire”. I couldn’t help wondering if the “small case e” in the chain’s name had been deliberate or just another example of their incompetence compared to Odeon? The promised “lifetime pass” would not be sent for a further two months due to delays at Head Office! When it did arrive and I went in to collect it from Duncan, we both had a chortle at it only being valid for two years! In sending off a thank you acknowledgement to Andy Bush I did add a little query as to whether they knew something about my potential life expectation that I was not aware of and was relieved when he responded that they only issued such passes with two-year validities and If I contacted him near its expiry date he would issue a fresh one.

In areas under The Gate management’s own control, David had taken upon himself to source a “suitable remembrance item” for me but that it was something difficult to guarantee when it might become available. Knowing that one of my favourite Vincent Price movies was THEATRE OF BLOOD and remembering how he and Jane had often joked as to whether my TMA judging period duties ever involved anything akin to facing the excesses of the critics coming to nasty ends at the hands of the actor character he played in the film. He eventually sourced a black and white still of Price dealing with one of his victims and had it suitably framed. It holds pride of place above the computer desk where I used to submit my “judgements” to TMA. Even then there was still a lot left in the kitty (actually several hundred pounds!) which meant Duncan asking for guidance. I suggested it be used to purchase Theatre Tokens allowing Sue and I to continue enjoying our theatre visits or other shows. He duly did and I picked them up during one of my post-retirement visits to keep in touch..

As for the departure at the end of the day’s celebrations there was one final surprise. While I’d been saying my farewells to all the staff attending or on duty that afternoon I hadn’t noticed Sandra and some of the other mischief makers disappearing and returning later to “see me off the premises”. My car had been parked in The Gate Car Park and when we approached I couldn’t help noticing the balloons and farewell messages attached to doors and other suitable fixing points. We got some strange looks as we exited the garage area and took an early opportunity to stow the adornments in the boot in case we got pulled over by a police car on our way home.  

POSTLUDE

 One of the key deciding factors in my retirement plans had been the consensus that it would be at least another decade before the switchover to digital projection would become a reality. Had we not been sold to Empire I may have delayed plans and found out how wrong my estimate was! Despite this, I can still comment on the actualities of this arriving much sooner than my “guesstimation“. First up was that scratched prints detracting from audiences’ enjoyment were consigned to the now long gone past as each digital print ensured pristine screen images at every show for as long as there was a demand for the title to be screened. Some lateral thinking and cooperation between cinema chains and major live theatre venues  resulted in some experimentation with transmissions of major productions of dramas and musicals as well as live concert performances being made available to audiences around the world through such “live” digital transmissions or recordings. I certainly enjoyed many such shows even if sadly the general deterioration in audience behaviour standards often detracted from the experience. One of the most heinous was a transmission of HAMLET  starring Maxine Peake which I caught at Cineworld’s Bolden Plex. Two rotund persons of female gender were occupying seats adjoining mine and had arrived carrying trays of nachos, enormous cups of post-mix drinks and supersized cartons of aromatic (i.e smelly) buttered popcorn. The Bard may well have been turning in his grave as the duo’s noisy mastication, slurping and regular belching drowned out most of the “To be, or not to be” speech while the smells added the extra dimension of SMELLOVISION nausea to the experience. Thankfully my, now more local, Vue cinema has a much better behaved clientele.

The arrival of this digital technology meant the days of projection booths “personned” by actual technically qualified technicians were numbered and owners took the earliest opportunity to cull their ranks and save the big hit to the wage bill their employment had previously incurred. Now the job of loading up the digi-prints and programming the time scheduling of the automated projection of the films was being done by members of management or indeed in many cases by the staff also charged with seating, selling sweets or even cleaning the screens between performances. Methinks an Operation Charlie would not run nearly as smoothly given the skeleton staff numbers now employed.

One area where Cinema finally came to grips with old bogeys was with 3D. In the 1950’s, and in some later revivals, the two-tint glasses required proved cumbersome and relatively ineffective. With the digital projection systems in the early 21st century this became far more impressive and did indeed add an extra dimension on some releases even though the modern glasses were still necessary but far more comfortable to wear. There was also a move into specially adapted auditoria where the “seats” had been fitted with means to vibrate, shake, blow cold air or moisture at the occupant in certain keyed sequences during the on-screen actions. This “gimmick” had probably developed out of the Theme Parks novelty rides or the Sensurround trials with EARTHQUAKE. Although occasionally adding something to the experience my own feeling remains it really was not worth the extra cost of admission being charged for such 4D presentations.

Under EMPIRE ownership, The Gate gained a further four mini-screens in the top floor area that had lain unoccupied since our opening. While widening the choice of films available I never felt the cramped presentation ambience of these units did full justice to the cinema experience of the other 12 screens. A few years later, Empire’s nascent chain ran into its own fiscal issues and CINEWORLD acquired the site. In typical fashion this heralded another round of staff level reductions. In this case the years of experience acquired by the former Pilgrim Street team leaders and Anne Turnbull that had made such positive contributions to the success of the Odeon’s Gate operation in its nascent years was “dismissed with basic minimum redundancy payments“. They are now enjoying well-deserved retirements or have secured employment in other customer-facing enterprises.

Even the UCI/Odeon merger, in the aftermath of the Multiplex explosion, had led to upheavals in personnel. In this case it had been the UCI executive and regional managers who had gained the upper hand and the long experienced “Old School Odeon Regional Managers and Head Office Staff” who had been given their redundancy notices. One of those, sadly, had been Ian MacDonald. A couple of years after retiring I received a letter from him completely out of the blue. He had bumped into Duncan who, when he asked after me,  informed him I had retired. Ian’s letter was one thanking me again for all my hard work at The Gate and wishing me all the best for my “leisure years” Needless to say I responded graciously and in turn thanked him for all his kindnesses during our years together and wished him too a happy retirement when it came.  

The final link to be severed in the Gate chain of command was Duncan. He had never been shy of arguing with the Empire upper echelons and became ever more frustrated as time went on that all our hard work was being squandered by their lack of vision and/or competence. He eventually got signed off with stress and in the end secured his own redundancy package and left the business. During this difficult period he often called at our house to remember the good times we enjoyed and always left those encounters in a happier frame of mind at getting some of the experiences he was having to put up from Empire off his chest. In the years since, we have kept in touch and, now living in Devon and happily remarried, he is in a much happier place and appreciates my many pieces of advice that helped him cope with the bullying duo at Empire.

My other final “circle squaring exercise” came in 2019 when I spotted an article in the BCTV VETERAN magazine featuring an Odeon reunion gathering attended by a Lesley Keys and Edward Way. Thanks to their help I contacted them and enjoyed a couple of meals with Sue and I joining them and sharing happy memories of our time together at the Clerk Street Odeon in Edinburgh.

 FOOTNOTE:   HOW THIS TOME CAME ABOUT

 Sadly many of the personalities who have featured in these pages are no longer with us but in many ways the motivation for these tomes was initiated by regular conversations David Elliot, Peter Talbot and I often had when we met up. During these we would often share silly stories of incidents that happened or strange customer facing exchanges. David one day suggested we should pool them as a basis for some sort of cinema-set sit-com. Sadly this never progressed and it is now too late as David is no longer with us and Peter now has other health issues. In its stead, thanks to prodding from my brother-in-law Richard, who had taken upon himself to create an archive of three generations of the Girdler family’s long association with working in Odeon cinemas, these now include my own “participations.  

I hope you have enjoyed my reminiscences and adventures with the many protagonists and colleagues I shared my journey with and the occasional inclusion of the paying public without whom I would not have been able to enjoy this wonderful life.  As Peter, David and myself often said, we were so lucky to have been able to work in the Cinema Industry when it was still a fun business and audiences were a pleasure to work with and entertain.

As for my headmaster’s prediction way back in 1965 of the industry’s impending demise, it would appear that fate still has to befall it … and long may it be postponed!
 

 THE END