Last Reels - 2. A Slow Decline

1963 - 1973

Bill

Bill mopped the vast expanse of the projection box floor. He reflected that although the job had seemed faintly exotic, like joining the circus, even there someone had to muck out the elephants. After ten weeks in the cinema business, his working days followed a long standing tradition of drudgery; cleaning, mopping, polishing, making tea and coffee, washing up dirty mugs and taking the rubbish out to the bins. The nearest he’d been allowed to get to a film was carrying the heavy metal transit cases from the film dump downstairs to the lofty heights of the projection box. It was one hundred and eleven steps. He’d counted them often enough.

He was the newest and lowliest of the five men working in projection. Harold, the Chief, spent most of the morning in his office at the far end of the box, then just after eleven o’clock, went for a meeting with the General Manager to the ‘other office’ – the Rose and Crown pub next door. He would return before the first show was due on to make sure everyone had carried out their allotted duties correctly. In his absence, the Co-Chief, Charlie, was supposed to be in charge. In actual fact, he sat in the staff room reading the newspaper and smoking. Most of his fag ash was flicked onto the floor; it was one of Bill’s jobs to clean it up and empty the stinking ashtray.

The real work was done by the rest of them. Bill did all the menial tasks while Brian, the Second Operator, maintained the projection equipment and prepared for the day’s shows. John, the unlucky Third, who was just a few years older than Bill, never quite managed to achieve the high standards Brian insisted upon. It didn’t help that he was slightly clumsy and got flustered under pressure.

‘I hate this job,’ he told Bill, just a few days after he started. ‘Soon as I can, I’m getting out. This is a mug’s game, anyway. My old man says as soon as everyone’s got a telly, cinemas will be done for.’

Bill thought of the queues the previous night. Cleopatra was really doing the business. The front of house staff had to turn people away, but many of them would be back to try again. He’d managed to catch a few tantalising glimpses of the film through a viewing port when he wasn’t being told to do something else. Who would want to watch something that spectacular on an eighteen inch screen in black and white?

‘Besides,’ John went on, ‘It’s no good for your love life. Girls want to go out of an evening, but when you’re stuck here five nights a week, there’s no chance of that.’

Both Harold and Charlie had ended up marrying women who worked in the cinema. ‘It doesn’t work, going out with someone who isn’t in the business,’ Charlie said one afternoon. ‘They’ll moan about you never being around. They don’t understand. My first wife kept trying to get me to leave the trade. When I wouldn’t, she buggered off with a plumber.’

He was right. Bill kept in contact with friends from school, but soon lost touch with who was seeing who, where they’d been and where they were planning on going. After just a few months, they had little in common any more. It was almost inevitable that he ended up on a date with the prettiest ice-cream sales girl.

‘That afternoon when you came down to the ice room to fix the light on my tray, I knew there was something between us,’ Maureen said later.

‘Yes, five raspberry ripples and a choc and nut sundae,’ he joked.

By then, he’d been at the cinema nearly a year and in addition to his menial duties, was finally allowed to rewind film, as his job title implied. His fingers had hardened up so they no longer burned when he built up a bit of speed. He’d passed Brian’s scrutiny before he was permitted to progress from scrap film to adverts, trailers and finally, the feature itself.

He’d also learned how to lace up a film through the projector and how to start it up, although only on the quieter afternoon performances. Harold or Charlie always started the main show of the evening, to ensure good presentation. They also took the changeovers between reels, as inexperienced trainees couldn’t be trusted to do it correctly.

‘If it’s smooth, the audience shouldn’t even know we’ve changed over from one machine to the other,’ Charlie said. ‘Back when I started, if you messed up a changeover, you were fined sixpence from your wages.’

There was something about getting everything just right that gave him a great deal of job satisfaction. Even the never-ending cleaning had a purpose – tiny specks of dust on the film were magnified into huge black spots on screen and could cause scratching too.

Bill and Maureen ‘went out’ for nearly two years, although actually going anywhere was made difficult by their shift patterns. Sometimes, on a quiet afternoon when they managed to wangle their breaks together, they would sneak into the darkened auditorium and cuddle in the back row or go and explore the vast and empty backstage area, which often ended in other kinds of exploration. Maureen was a kindred spirit. She was a real film buff and kept up with all the gossip about the stars. Soon, everyone knew they were an ‘item’ and proposing to her was just the next logical step. They married in nineteen sixty-seven. The wedding was attended by as many of the cinema staff as could get the day off. There was more popcorn than confetti thrown as they came out of the registry office.

When John finally left, Bill was promoted to Third. He would still be the lowliest member of the crew though; the company had started to reduce staff numbers due to steadily declining admissions.

Harold had protested this vehemently. ‘How can they expect us to keep up standards if there aren’t enough men to do the work?’ He was even more opposed to the introduction of automation, which was gradually being installed around the circuit. ‘Listen to this rubbish,’ he said, reading from an advertising brochure. ‘“Runs the show perfectly every single time.” What do they think we do all day?’

Electricians came in and installed a new isolator for the Projectomatic system. Then the company engineers arrived and within two days had it assembled, connected and ready to run. It worked along the lines of a musical box; a rotating drum with removable pins, one for each function such as projector start, tabs open, non-sync and film sound. You pinned up the shows for the day and then left everything in the charge of the machine. And it was clever, no doubt about that, but never one hundred percent reliable. You couldn’t deny it did a perfectly good job of running shows nine times out of ten, but something was lost; that individual touch and the feeling of pride in good presentation that had always been an integral part of the job.

The cinema union representative visited every couple of months. He provided a useful source of information about what the company intended to do. Projectionists were rarely informed about what was planned by those whose days ranged between high level meetings and all expenses paid lunches, so they had to rely on the ‘grapevine’.

‘We’ve had some talks with the company about what’s going to happen once the installations have finished. They don’t spell it out, of course, but we know they’ve been over in the States, finding out how they run things over there.’

‘And how do they run things over there?’ Harold asked.

‘With a lot fewer projectionists than we do. Most cinemas only have one man on duty at a time. It’s only a matter of time before it happens here as well.’

‘So do you think there’ll be redundancies?’ Bill asked. The tea left an acid taste behind in his mouth. Now he was a married man, he couldn’t afford to be out of work, and the usual rule was ‘last in, first out’.

‘As far as we can tell, it’s not going to be that drastic. If someone leaves, it’s unlikely they’ll be replaced. Mind you, the business hasn’t been great these past few years, as you know. And it doesn’t look as if it’s going to improve.’

‘Bloody television,’ said Harold. ‘It rots the brain. My grandkids sit in front of the goggle-box for hours, when they should be out playing.’

‘I know, I know. But we can’t do anything to stop that. We’ve just got to limit the damage. There’s still a place for cinema. People will always want to see a big film on the big screen.’

Charlie retired. Brian kept writing to the Zone Engineer, asking to be promoted to Co-Chief. When it was obvious nothing was going to happen, he applied for a Chief’s job elsewhere. He seemed as surprised as anyone when he was successful. ‘Just goes to show you don’t have to be over fifty to be a chief these days. Times are changing.’

When he left, Bill was promoted again, but no-one else was taken on, so despite the title of Second Projectionist, he wasn’t actually in charge of anyone. With just the two of them left, there was no choice but to ‘single man’ the cinema. Bill was earning good money from all the overtime. He wasn’t going to complain; especially now there was a baby on the way.

His early years in the cinema trade were marked out by notable film releases; the Carry On films, slightly risqué and good fun. The inevitable Bond movies; Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Spaghetti Westerns, such as The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time In The West. The Sound of Music; destined to become a Christmas TV classic long after its last showing on the big screen. There was Disney for the family audience and Hammer Horror for the adults.

He’d got himself a reputation for being reliable, dependable and conscientious. Whenever the Sound Engineer came in, he always made sure to be there, finding out as much as he could, asking questions and helping out as much as possible without being in the way.

‘You should put in for a chief’s job yourself,’ Bertie Arkwright, the engineer, said one afternoon as he slurped his black coffee and chain smoked his way through a pack of ten cigarettes.

‘I don’t have the experience yet. I’ve only been a projectionist for six years.’

Bertie made a disparaging gesture, punctuated with a snort that sent ash flying in all directions. ‘And you’ve already learned more than some of these idiots will ever know. You must have heard about the plans for tripling cinemas?’

Bill nodded. ‘“More screens, more choice,” so they say.’

‘Well, it’s going to be a whole different operation. Xenon lamps, cakestands. Two or three separate boxes. Lots of opportunities for young blokes like you.’

Harold was due to retire in eight years’ time. Bill could wait it out. He was content enough here. Besides, he and Maureen had settled down in the area. Neither of them wanted to up sticks and move and it was a good place to bring up a family. Still, Bertie wasn’t one to mince his words and if he thought Bill was fit for a chief’s job, it meant a lot.

In the early part of nineteen seventy-two, they were given a date for the work to begin on the conversion to three screens. The Circle would become Screen One, and the rear stalls area Screens Two and Three. Another cinema in a nearby town had already been tripled, so Bill caught the train over on a day off to have a look and get a feel for the changes that were about to happen.

As he walked along the suburban street, daffodils in the front gardens were just beginning to bud and the sun shone bravely as it broke through a bank of dark cloud. Like his own site, the cinema he was visiting dated from the nineteen-thirties and was one of those tiled and curvy examples of Art Deco which had once been thought shockingly modern. To the left was a shopping parade dating from the same era. On the right, a newly built office block with big windows and bright orange panelling made everything else seem slightly out-dated and grubby.

As he drew closer, he could see that attempts had been made to bring the cinema into the seventies. The original entrance doors had been replaced by up-to-date aluminium frames with large glass panes. Above the canopy an illuminated Readograph covered the grimy Art Deco windows. All the film titles were displayed along its length in large red letters, legible not just to pedestrians, but also the bus passengers and car drivers who passed by. The canopy itself had been repainted and proclaimed the building to be a Film Centre rather than just another boring old cinema.

The refurbishment continued inside the foyer. A suspended ceiling hid all traces of the original architecture. Fluorescent lights hung over the large kiosk and a new carpet covered the floor, springy and soft beneath his feet.

‘Lovely, isn’t it?’ said the manageress, who had let him in. ‘We’ve got a double hot dog steamer so we can cook twice as many sausages at once and extra popcorn warmers too. And now that they’ve integrated the ticket office and kiosk together, you only need one person on duty to sell tickets and sweets during quiet times.’

More staff cuts, naturally. He wondered how the cashiers felt about it. Among front of house staff, selling the tickets had always been seen as the most responsible position, occupied by those who had worked their way up to it over the years. Very similar to the hierarchy of projection really. Now those same cashiers who’d thought their days of selling Maltesers were long past had to do both jobs.

The chief arrived. Bill noticed that he was quite a young man, probably only in his late thirties. He led the way to the main projection box upstairs. Once out of the public areas, the facade of modernity vanished. Painted brick walls that hadn’t been touched since the place first opened and concrete steps in the traditional red tile paint with white nosings. Varnished wooden doors bore faded lettering; Rectifier Room, Battery Room, Rewind Room.

‘You’ll find you get plenty of exercise carrying films up and down all the stairs,’ he said. ‘During the school holidays we had the Disney release playing up here all afternoon - and to packed houses - then swapped it with screen two for the evening show. A right pain it was, pushing your way through the crowds carrying the film. They don’t always wind on tight, so you have to be a bit careful.’

He opened the projection room door. At first sight, not much was different. A pair of Victoria 8 projectors raked steeply towards the portholes, with old carbon arc lamp houses converted to take xenons. The most obvious change was the Philips cakestand standing next to ‘A’ machine. Bill had only seen pictures of them before and was surprised at the diameter of the three horizontal platters and the size of the film which lay on the top plate like a huge Liquorice Allsort.

The chief patted it fondly. ‘That’s the whole programme there; adverts, short, trailers and the main feature. No more changeovers nowadays. Once you start this, it runs right through to the finish.’

There was a multitude of rollers to transport film between the cakestand and projector. ‘It looks complicated,’ Bill said.

‘No more than lacing up the projector, once you’ve done it a few times. Mind you, you need to double check it’s sitting on all those rollers properly. When you’re running reel to reel, if you’ve made a mistake you’ll damage twenty minutes of film at worst. With this set up, you can wreck a whole print if you aren’t careful.’

Bill looked through the viewing port to the former circle, starkly lit by cleaner’s lights at this time of the morning. ‘They’ve not done anything out there, then?’

‘All the money was spent on the new screens downstairs. Come on, you can have a look yourself. But let’s have a brew first, eh?’

While they drank their tea, the chief talked enthusiastically about the new procedures he’d had to learn. ‘To be honest, it wasn’t that hard for me, but some of the older guys who’ve got set in their ways haven’t made the change easily. And even though there’s two of us on for most of the day, you’ll find you’re up and down those stairs a good few times.’

Afterwards, they went downstairs to see the new boxes, one for each of the screens that had been constructed underneath the Circle. Bill’s first impression was that they were tiny. You had to squeeze past the rear of the single Victoria 4 projector. The cakestand and a tiny rewind bench filled the rest of the room.

‘I know what you’re thinking. It’s not much space, but you get used to it.’ He showed Bill into the auditorium. It had a surprisingly small picture; no more than about fifteen feet from one edge of the masking to the other. The auditorium was an odd shape, too. The outer wall, unaltered in any way save for a repaint, was still as ornate as it had always been, but the decoration stopped abruptly where a plainly constructed partition cut the stalls straight down the middle. The old ceiling light fittings had been removed, leaving empty recesses behind. Two pageant lights mounted on the side walls provided all the decorative illumination. Bill couldn’t help but think that something was missing; the sense of occasion you got in a single screen cinema, whether sitting in the circle or stalls. Yes, you needed to offer choice, and at least with three screens you wouldn’t be stuck with empty houses all week if the film wasn’t a hit, but would people really pay good money for this? He asked the question.

‘They say we’ve doubled our takings since the conversion. Personally, I still prefer to watch a film upstairs on the big screen, but if it’s a choice between this, or becoming a bingo hall, I’d rather stay open.’

You couldn’t argue with that. Over the past decade, so many cinemas had closed, some turned to other uses; bingo, churches and car showrooms, while the less fortunate had simply been demolished.

He reported back to Harold, who was becoming more worried about the conversion the closer it came. Bill found himself glossing over the less-than-ideal parts. He didn’t mention the tiny projection boxes or the picture size in the new auditoria.

‘I don’t know…’ Harold shook his head. ‘When you’re my age, you don’t like change. At least, not all at once, like this. I didn’t want them to take out my good old B.T.H. projectors, but I know what I’m doing on these ones now. I coped with the change from Academy to Widescreen and all the different sound systems we’ve had through the years.’ He paused for a moment. ‘When I was just starting out, I remember some of the old boys saying it wasn’t the same since talking pictures came in. A few of them didn’t want to learn about sound, amplification and all the new kit as it was then. Some of them left the business…’

He fell silent. Bill felt as if he should say something to reassure him. Harold was a good chief, after all, not like some of the idiots Bertie talked about. ‘Listen, it’ll be fine. We’ll be back to multi-manning again. And we get a pay rise for more screens too.’

Harold nodded. ‘I suppose so.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Ah well, time to get the old place open.’

‘Is everything okay, love?’ Maureen asked him the next day.

He knew he had been quieter than usual, mulling over the coming conversion and what it might mean. ‘Fine. Just thinking about work.’

‘You said it was going to be fine after you visited that place. What’s happened?’

‘Well, it’s Harold. He seems to think he’s too old to cope with the changes.’

‘And what if he is? It might be your chance at a chief’s job.’ She spooned mashed potato into Neil’s mouth as he sat in his high chair. ‘I know you’d make a good job of it. And the extra money would come in useful.’ She glanced down and patted her stomach. ‘I’ve got some news too.’

‘Oh, Maureen, you’re not?’

‘I am. We’re having an addition to the family.’

A few weeks before the conversion began, Bill helped bring the new equipment in. The cakestands came in separate pieces, so they were fairly easy, but it took four of them to carry the new rectifiers up the hundred and eleven steps, one at each corner, moving slowly up one stair at a time. The existing mercury arc rectifiers didn’t provide smooth enough DC current for xenon lamps, so would be rendered obsolete.

‘But we won’t be taking them away – too bloody heavy!’ one of the engineers said. ‘Only good for the scrap heap anyway.’

It had been decided that it wasn’t necessary for the cinema to close fully while the work was carried out. They would open each day at five o’clock, making two evening shows possible.

The first night’s work entailed ripping out all the stalls seats. These were left stacked untidily against the stage, fully visible to patrons in the Circle, along with various building materials. Bill was on shift that night and went down to the office as soon as he saw it.

‘Look at the mess they’ve left,’ he told the assistant manager. ‘We can’t charge people to watch films in a tip like that. Come and have a look yourself.’

He was reluctant to leave the office, but eventually agreed. ‘It’s not too bad,’ he said. ‘Anyway, we were told us that if anyone complains we’re to give them free tickets.’

‘If that’s their attitude, they’ll be lucky if there are any patrons left by the time this thing’s done,’ he said to Maureen as they had tea and toast before bed.

‘Well, there’s always a bit of a mess when builders are in,’ she said. ‘As long as people know what’s going on, they’ll put up with it.’

Next stage was the construction of a drop wall down from the front of the circle, closing off the area that would become the two new auditoria. The dust was appalling. It travelled far beyond the building works. The workmen were supposed to clean up at the end of each shift, but their idea of cleanliness left much to be desired. It was a miserable experience putting on a show each evening when half the lights no longer worked and the power had been turned off at the stage end, meaning the curtains couldn’t be used.

Gradually though, the conversion began to take shape. Bill helped install the new equipment in the boxes for Screens Two and Three. Thankfully they were larger than those he had seen on his visit, as there was more space to work with here. The picture size was also slightly larger, although Harold shook his head sadly when the screens were put up. ‘Whatever happened to big screen entertainment? People will laugh when the tabs open to reveal that… postage stamp.’

They both worked hard to get the new boxes cleaned and ready for action. By then Pete, one of the new projectionists, had started, so there was another pair of hands to help with the extra film make-up. On opening night, Bill felt quite proud and excited as the Mayor cut through a piece of black film spacing and declared the new three screen Film Centre open for business. Soon the foyer was bustling with people, the Automaticket machine ringing and the smell of hot popcorn filling the air. He recognised familiar faces; the regular patrons, many of whom were using their free tickets given out during the building works. One of the staff told him the car park was overflowing. It looked – and felt – like a success.

They became used to the routine of moving films around between boxes and the extra workload. It wasn’t just the amount of film to be made up, but all the maintenance for the new projection equipment. Plus there was Harold’s problem.

Harold wouldn’t go near the new boxes and always chose to run screen one. During the first couple of months they were open, two prints were badly damaged. He blamed the cakestand, but the engineer who came in to check it said it was working perfectly. The scratching had been caused by the film coming off one of the rollers returning the film from the projector to the take-up plate.

After that, Harold decided he wouldn’t use the cakestand anymore.

‘This new equipment’s no good,’ he stated. ‘I’m going back to running changeovers. That way, we can be sure there won’t be any damage.’

Bill didn’t like to point out that they also had cakestands downstairs, but no damage had occurred in the smaller screens. Harold was the chief, and if he wanted to run screen one his way, that was his prerogative. It made for a lot more work when the film needed to move from the main screen to a smaller auditorium on its second or third week, though.

It was during the school holidays that everything went wrong. Booking department insisted on Dumbo being shown in Screen One for two afternoon performances, then moving to Screen Three for the less busy evening show, when Young Winston would take its place upstairs. It was obvious even to Harold that there would be insufficient time to run the kid’s film onto the cakestand and to put Young Winston back onto spools so that Harold could run it in his chosen way. There was no choice but to use the cakestand in Screen One, if only for that week. He reluctantly agreed.

Bill was off the day the disaster happened. He heard about it the next day, when he arrived at work. Young Winston had wound on loosely. Harold had unwisely tried to move it on his own but half way across the foyer, the centre ring had come out, leaving two hours and fifty-seven minutes of film all over the carpet. He’d been so shaken up by the event, he’d had to go home early, leaving Pete to carry on alone while also trying to get the feature back into one piece. The evening show had, of course been cancelled.

All credit to Pete that he’d managed to get three reels back on a platter. ‘I had to cut it loads of times, it were just so twisted up. There’s carpet fluff all over it too.’ Together they worked at untangling the rest and managed to get it back together for the first afternoon performance, but it was dirty and damaged from the experience.

Harold called in sick before his next shift. He came back just over a week later, but his confidence had been shaken. In his entire career, he’d never lost a show for anything less than total mechanical failure and it had hit him hard. He began to take more time off for a variety of health problems, until finally, after consultation with the Personnel Department, he took an early retirement package.

Bill became Chief Projectionist just ten years into his career. He felt proud, yet sad that Harold hadn’t felt able to see out his time. Now it was his responsibility to look after the place and ensure that the presentation standards were maintained. You couldn’t bring back the old days and the old ways of working, but you could still do the best job possible.