Saturday morning pictures and children's clubs
- Ted
- "It used to cost tuppence – two pennies old money and we saw a variation of films such as westerns, comedies, not too serious films. Mainly westerns… I did my Saturday morning pictures at the Broadway, at the bottom of Tanners Hill, right opposite Deptford High Street. That was well used by everyone in my area. We mainly were all school kids together … mainly because it was cheap and cheerful and the film suited us… I invariably stood in the queue outside until they let us in with Alec, Gladys, Sid, Keithy – all schoolmates and we're still firm mates. In actual fact I still see four or five of them now – even at my age and that's nice. We often talk about the old pictures."
- Vic
- "Well I started off when I was seven or eight – used to be a Saturday morning – run round, used to have to do errands and that and I used to go to the Woolwich Hippodrome, which had been a theatre – converted into a cinema next to Woolwich Town Hall. We used to go on the bus from The Standard in Blackheath and it was open top buses in them days – about 1927, 1928."
- Vic
- "It was a penny on the bus, a penny for a bag of peanuts and we went up in the gallery. Larkins peanuts. The old boy was there with a big straw basket and a penny bag of Larkins peanuts – the shells went all over the cinema and you had to climb forty or fifty stairs."
- Vic
- "I saw the first Mickey Mouse film – Tugboat Willie, I think, Steamboat Willie. Also Felix the Cat. There used to be a fountain pen that came up with a blob of ink and it used to become Felix the Cat. "
- Ken
- "About 1948, when I was about eight years of age – Saturday morning pictures at the Regal, Bexleyheath. In those days, to get into Saturday morning pictures you had to be a member of the ABC Minors, which meant you had to fill in a card and an application form to get an admission card and a little tin badge to display on your lapel. Before the cinema actually started there was usually some fun by the manager from out on stage. He'd announce a few birthdays and sing Happy Birthday to whoever it was. Then before the films actually started there was always, every week, the ABC Minors Song (lyric sheet as PDF)."
- Ken
- "I started going to the cinema as a kid. I went up to the Granada at Woolwich. I was a Grenadier. That's what they called us. They had an organ there and everything. If it was your birthday, they used to play Happy Birthday To You."
- Ronald
- "The earliest I can remember is about 1926 or 27. I must have been about 8 or 9 years old. Saturday afternoons – children's programmes for 2d (tuppence). I was from a pretty poor family, so 2d wasn't very available. So you had to go out on Saturday mornings with a bucket and shovel, shovelling up horse manure because we had all the horse traffic around and selling it for a penny a bucket… All young boys would be doing it because we'd all go to the cinema…This was the Park Cinema up at Hither Green. Silent of course. It lasted about two hours but if you went in early evening they had a piano. The lady used to play piano and all the music."
- Ronald
- "I remember the stars. Tom Mix –always the cowboys – Tim Maynard, Tom Tyler and Charlie Chaplin of course – always a Charlie Chaplin films and Buster Keaton of course. And sometimes there would be drama and I can always remember the lady being tied down on the track and the hero coming to rescue her, and the music playing. Pearl White
I believe. They were serials."
The Odeon Club Promise
"I promise to tell the truth, to help others and to obey my parents.
I promise to be thoughtful of old folks and to be kind to animals
and always to play the game.
I promise to try to make this country of ours a better place to live in."
- Related resource
- Poem: Sina Ma (PDF)
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