After our recent Committee meeting in Birmingham, we now have our two unfilled committee posts with people willing to be co-opted into the roles.

Our new Sales Officer is Martin Hall who is busily working with our administrator for a seamless handover of the stock and process.

Our new press & public relations officer is two for the price of one- Johnnie Cliff & Gerry Glover. They can be contacted via publicity@merciacinema.org

From the Mercia Bioscope no 98 – February 2006

 

A  LINCOLN  REWIND  BOY

Frank Cossey

In 1937, at the age of 14, I started as a rewind boy at the Central Cinema Lincoln, on 8 shillings a week for 6 (full) days a week. This may seem low, but Grammar School boys with School Certificates were being set-on by one local department store at nothing a week, and then kept on if they were any good, after a year’s trial. You know what happened! Another timber store, whose owner was a Grammar School governor, employed them at 5 shillings a week: and he took off tenpence for their National Insurance stamp, whereas my 8 shillings was clear of the stamp.

The cinemas run by the same firm (the Segelman brothers – J.O.G.S. Cinemas), differed a lot in their operating staff. The Central was run by Ollie Carbutt as chief, with a settled staff. The Exchange had George Everitt in charge about that time. The Ritz had Charlie Brown – a morose mono-toned chap whose mother had run silent cinemas in Scotland in earlier days. The pay was small and I seem to think Brown got only about 27/6 a week, but that was better than being on the dole which dominated any thinking about jobs in Lincoln at the time, with several thousand unemployed.

The Central had been a Public Hall before being converted into a cinema, and the box was an elevated structure in one of the rear upper rooms, with the battery room underneath it. The rewind and film store was below the steps at a window overlooking St Swithin’s church. The non-synch was in the original operating box at the back of the stalls, and one was sent down there to operate it when the cue light came on, and they faded it out on the upstairs amplifier when they required.

The Exchange had one of the longest throws in the country and on Saturday night, before the interval between performances when the fans in the roof were put on to suck up the fumes and dust, it was necessary to add 10 amps to the arc lamps to penetrate the fog!

The Ritz was new, having opened on 22 February 1937, and was the first cinema in the country to install Western Electric’s new Mirrophonic sound system, but more of this building later.

The Plaza and the Grand were flea-pits and were run by staff which seemed to have a big turnover, meaning they were often quite inexperienced operators – at one time the Plaza was run for 25 shillings a week!

After a few weeks, I was moved from the Central where Mr Pratt, a nice old gentleman, was the manager, to the Ritz. Here Streets was the manager and a more surly, pompous, and arrogant man I had yet to meet. Here I met Charlie Brown, the chief operator.

Before looking at further events, mention must be made of the two ABC circuit cinemas in Lincoln. The Regal chief was Bill Croft, who became a great friend of mine in later years. He eventually moved to the Savoy. The Regal was well known for its rats. The screen tabs had to be operated by hand by someone going down from the box and this involved going under the stage end, where some poor rewind boy could encounter one of these animals.

Working at the Ritz had one great difference from the Central – the collection of the new films on Monday morning. These were all delivered by the Film Transport Service (FTS) to the Central to save money, and we had to meet there at 10am to collect and carry them on our shoulders or however down to the Ritz. Fortunately, they were collected from each cinema by leaving them at the side door, so we did not have to take them back to the Central. If you had a 12-reeler this was something to carry. I had an old school pal working in the market under the Corn Exchange, and after a week or two of the lugging I arranged with him to borrow a set of wheels, which made things much better. The newsreel was also shared with other cinemas; I can only remember sharing it with the Exchange but there may have been others. This meant the programme timetable had to be arranged to suit. It also meant carrying it across as a single reeler not in a transit tin but covered up in a bag, which would have upset the Health and Safety people of today.

I seem to remember the projectors at the Central were Kalee(?) which were open affairs while those at the Ritz were Simplex(?) reconditioned and called Kaplan ! These were enclosed on the picture head with a side door. The main difference was that the Kalee projectors would take 4-sprocket hole ‘V’ cuts quite comfortably while the Kaplan machines were not happy with anything above 2 ‘V’ cuts. This made quite a difference when it came to having to make joints.

The box at the Ritz was much better than the Central. It was spacious but the house lights and dimmers were at one and with the double-rack amplifier near the rear wall and the non-synch. in an alcove at the other end. The amplifier had two change-over switches when we went over to non-synch. One on the left panel changed over from projectors to non-synch, while that on the right-hand panel changed over from the horns behind the screen to side horns, which were behind the grilles each side of the stage and were illuminated by coloured lights controlled on the dimmer board.

We only played organ records by the best players and most people were convinced we had a real organist even if they could not see him. Charlie liked the job done properly and I had an ear for music if nothing else – we always liked to start records with a proper start and not a fade in. I also liked to arrange the curtains closing after the slides so that they finally met at the very end of the last note of a record; by which time the lights had been dimmed and we were ready for the film again. I knew which note was the cue on every record. These were changed weekly by the manager, the delightful Streets.

Most of the short time I was there, we had several ‘second’ operators, the turnover being as bad as that at the Plaza. They came from Leeds, mainly, and often were refugees from affiliation orders, which meant when things got hot they disappeared without trace. Once Charlie was told he had to appear in court next morning; he was not told why, but when he got there, he found our latest second operator also present, and there was the usual affiliation order dispute. Cannot remember what happened to the erstwhile lover: I had neither time nor money for such activities.

But this meant that often Charlie and I were on our own from, say, 1.50 pm till 11pm. Fortunately, we had a café below the box and we did odd jobs for the manageress and her staff, so they kept us supplied with tea -and sometimes they were good enough to provide food.

One day Charlie was sent over to the Plaza because Streets came up and said they had been showing on only half the screen for some hour and a half. The other curtain would not open. He went and I was on my own doing everything. This involved rewinding outside the box and just leaving the projector working. It also involved at the end of a film being on the dimmers and bringing up whatever lights were required, be it the colours or the house lights. Also closing the screen tabs. Then dashing over to the projector, closing the arc-lamp damper and shutting the machine down to be followed by a dash to the amplifier to change the two switches over and then, to my distress, fading up an already primed record on the non synch. Starting a new film, I did the same in reverse. Charlie was away for over two hours. Was I glad to see him back!

There were several occasions like this with problems at the Plaza, the Grand, or the Exchange. This was when the café came in handy. At the north end across the flat roof from the box steps to the steps to below there was the ventilator to the café kitchen. One would dash over there and tell Miss Graves, the manageress, the problem and she would send up some baked beans on toast or something because normally I dashed home for my tea. This was their quid pro quo for the odd jobs we did for them.

Once, however, Charlie was in an even worse humour than usual and when the call came from Streets that they had not had a light on the screen at the Plaza for over an hour he said, “Send him over: I’m fed up”. The ‘him’ was me!

Fortunately I had covered there a bit in emergencies. I knew the ropes. To get to the box you had to go up an iron ladder which meant that on Monday or when getting films ready they had to carry a few spool boxes at a time because the transit boxes ware too heavy to get them up the ladder. Up I went.

That was after Mr Pratt, who was by that time manager there, had taken me in the hall and said, “Look at this, Frank”. There it was – a foot circle of light in the middle of the blackened screen. There were only about four men and a dog perhaps in the auditorium.

These ‘projectionists’ were two lads with little idea of the job. The problem was that they had antiquated hand-fed arc lamps, where there was no centring device for setting the crater: They had not got the sense to centre the light on a projector gate without film in the gate. What they did not know was that there were two marks on the front wall of the box, which by means of a hole in the arc lamp top gave an image when the crater was in the correct place. There was not much film left on the ending reel so having set up the other reel’s arc-lamp I just changed over to it. Mr Pratt was in the hall and he assured me that the screen nearly fell over when the bright light hit it!

Fortunately, the arc lamps at the Ritz were auto-feed and that meant you could leave them when you were on your own, otherwise it would have been chaos.

There was a canopy on the east and north sides of the frontage and on the north section was a 48-sheet billboard onto which it was our job to paste the new poster over the old, every Friday morning. The board slanted from its left side being near the main building to the west side on the very edge of the canopy. To stick most of the east side on we used a short ladder on the canopy itself. But for the west side we had to get a very long and heavy ladder from the rear of the building near the boiler-house. It was a job carrying it, and it was a long way on from the ground to the top of the billboard. Behind the board were the kitchen windows for the café and there were the usual struts holding the board in place. We had an idea after a bit to go out of the window and climb up the struts behind the board and hand over to the front and using a long paste brush do most of the top half near the canopy edge. The lower bit was then done by precariously leaning out and pasting them on. Then we put on short strips saying ‘next week’, which were removed on Saturday by covering them with ‘this week’. What modern Health and Safety regulations would have said to this sort of billposting I fear to think!

One Friday Charlie said “We’ll have to strip the board next week, they’re getting too thick”. The next Friday as we went to work (I always called for Charlie on the way) we went up the High street and met a north wind blowing bits of billposting towards us. Charlie had already decided to cancel the idea because of the wind. Wondering what was happening we went on and when we got to the cinema found the doorman stripping the boards. He had helped us as usual the week before and thought he would start without us.

Another job one often got was going down to the area behind the screen to the boiler-house, which involved going under the stage past the room where the usherettes got ready. This was on the way to do something to the Plenum air-washing plant, also in the boiler-house area. As a lad it was illuminating to hear what was being discussed in the usherettes’ room about their prowess (and otherwise) with boy friends and those they had picked up in connection with their work. I found it amusing but not of much use to me; my hobby was fishing which I did every Sunday to get out in the fresh air. Not much time for anything else, and in any case no money, even after the small pay rise that the job had been given.

Charlie was a stickler and everything had to be clean in the box, but in fact, I got on with him very well and he became a friend for life. Eventually he managed to get a job as a civvy electric­ian at R.A.F. Swinderby airfield. He was so well-known amongst Electric Trade Union members in Lincoln that they had a special meeting to make him an accredited electrician in spite of his lack of apprenticeship. He was there for many years and ended up at Ruston Bucyrus in Lincoln as a technician, and he used to baffle me with electronics and other matters which he had to deal with. One university man there told me one day that, without Charlie, a lot of their younger men would have been lost.

Myself, perhaps I was quick on the uptake or just lucky, but I managed to do a lot of things that I would never have believed possible previously.

Eventually I left the Ritz as I had managed to get on the railway as a cleaner in the engine sheds because my father was a railway guard and his father had been a railway porter before him. In those days you had to have a relation on the railway before they would even look at you. I cannot remember what my final pay was at the Ritz, but I do recall that my wage as a cleaner was 27/2d. a week, which must have been more than the Ritz.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

An artist’s impression of the Ritz exterior at opening in February 1937.  Taken from a colour painting by Stephen Clarke in The Cinemas of Lincolnshire, Mercia Cinema Society, 1997.

 

The Savoy box in 1937, by the light from the No. 2 machine arc. At the rear are the dimmers with capstan master wheel and slow-motion gear.  All box pictures are from glass negatives taken by Frank Cossey at the time.

 

The Regal (ex-Picture House) Lincoln, c.1946. From the Winfield section of the Gould Theatre Collection.

 

The Ritz projection box with the original equipment. On the left we look across the rear wall to the amplifier rack, and on the right we step back to see machine no.1 with front shutter and sound-head door open.

 

The Ritz’s cramped motor-dynamo room. Switch-gear (and a gas-meter – how did they get away with that conjunction?) with the motor bottom right, and on the right the full picture.

 

The Ritz as run by Barrie Stead, having been bought by Rank in 1956, run as an Odeon, and then closed and sold by them. It was finally closed on the opening of the Rank multiplex and converted to Wetherspoon’s Ritz. Photo: Mervyn Gould 1990s

 

 

 

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Ollie Carbutt eventually left the cinema business and ended up collecting steam traction engines, which he kept at Navenby station on the Lincoln to Grantham line, where he lived in the former station-master’s house.

See our notes and queries page for details.

(Personal buyers in Coventry can get a copy from The Herbert Museum & Art Gallery bookshop).