Let's go to the pictures

Not "the cinema", definitely not "the movies". No, when I was a beardless lad, we went to "the pictures". In my village (Hadley) we had a "fleapit" called The Regal, housed in a former Wesleyan chapel. The films changed three times a week, and always consisted of trailers, a
short (often a cartoon), and the main feature. The cheapest seats were the ones at the front, the ones where you ended up with a stiff neck from looking up at the screen. The cost was 2d, that is, two old pennies, an amount now so small that it doesn't even register in tne new pence system.
In fact there were even cheaper seats, available to any of us who managed to "sneak in". The trick was to get past the cashier unseen, and then try to persuade the usherette that you had just been to the toilet, which was conveniently situated outside the picture house. A more time-consuming dodge was to hide in the building during the day when it was unlocked for the cleaners. I can remember hiding under seats for HOURS, and then carefully emerging as the place started to fill up with its legitimate clients.

The films I can remember were musicals, love stories, westerns, gung-ho war films, and comedies, all of which were U rated, that is, suitable for young sprogs like me to see. It's sobering to think that many of the old movies they show on daytime television are ones I first saw in the old Regal Cinema in the forties and early fifties. Remember Meet Me in St Louis? I sneaked in to that one!


A-rated films like The Maltese Falcon or The Wicked Lady were only for youngsters accompanied by an adult (Ah, Margaret Lockwood! A Wicked Lady with a Wicked Cleavage). You could hang around outside the Regal and hope to get an adult to take you in - a risky business even then. In fact, I didn't get to see The Maltese Falcon till they showed it on TV a few years back. I didn't feel the least bit corrupted by it, and it was safer than going into the dark with a strange man.


The horror films were H-rated, and I had to wait till I was able to pass for 18 to get my fill of Frankenstein and Dracula and Things-that-Crawled-out-of- the Sea that looked like John Prescott in a wet suit. A great merit of the H films was if you took a girl with you, you could be sure she would cling to you at moments of great terror. Ah, the thrill, the first time Rosemary Ricketts grabbed my hand, and I made sure we stayed holding hands for the rest of the picture.

For, my beloveds, the picture house started out as a place merely to enjoy films, but as I progressed through hairy adolescence, it became a sort of passion pit, where the fleas biting were of the amorous, even libidinous, kind. It all seems so innocent now, but it was the lifeblood of our young existence then. Ogden Nash caught the spirit:
The local cinema emporium
Is not just a sensory sensorium
But a highly effectual
Heterosexual
Mutual masturbatorium.
Hands up those of you who never had a snog in a cinema. Yep, I thought so.