Sunderland's lost cinemas of the 60s
Walking tours guide Ian Mole takes us through memories of Sunderland's old cinemas - and the culture around them - in the 1960s
Transcript
00:00 Hello, my name's Ian Moore. I conduct walking tours of central Sunderland.
00:04 Today I'm going to talk about one of my tours, which is Lost Cinemas of Sunderland Town Centre.
00:08 You might have seen Tony Gillan from the Echoes video about cinemas,
00:14 the history of the cinemas in Sunderland Town Centre.
00:17 I'm a bit older than Tony, so I want to talk about my memories
00:20 of what it was like going to the cinema in the early 60s.
00:23 Now, just talking about language, we never used to say, "I'm going to the cinema."
00:27 Everybody would say, "I'm going to the pictures."
00:30 I mean, previous generations, like I said, talking pictures,
00:32 even your grandparents, great-grandparents.
00:34 Nobody used the word "movie" in the early 60s, late 60s, yes.
00:39 I remember one of my classmates at Chester Road Junior's getting severely chastised
00:44 for saying, "My friend and I went to the Flicks."
00:47 Flicks was a bit of a rough word, apparently.
00:48 So the cinema behind us is now The Point.
00:52 So when I used to go there, late 50s, early 60s, it was called The Ritz.
00:58 And we kids, we tended to use the words that my mother used for the cinemas,
01:01 even though they changed.
01:03 So in 1961, this became the ABC.
01:06 And I mainly remember the ABC for going to the sixpenny matinees on Saturday morning.
01:11 Now, anybody under 55, you might be wondering what exactly a sixpence is.
01:16 So it's two and a half pence in modern money.
01:18 And it looks just like this.
01:21 Now, having a look at this now, it seems extremely small.
01:24 But if you had a sixpence in the early 60s, you were really doing OK.
01:27 You could buy quite a lot of things for sixpence.
01:29 There was also a coin, a ha'penny, a half pence,
01:33 which was a twelfth of the value of a sixpence.
01:36 So if you went to a sweet shop,
01:39 it must have drove the people in the sweet shops mad.
01:41 They would say, "What have you got for a penny?"
01:43 And they'd go, "Oh, God."
01:44 And they'd rattle off six midget gems, four blackjacks, three seafood,
01:48 wherever it was.
01:49 And then the next kid would ask the same thing.
01:51 So you could get quite a bit for a sixpence.
01:54 You were doing well.
01:55 So it was sixpence to get in.
01:57 What kind of programme did it have?
01:59 Well, there were very few adults.
02:01 You might have had a few parents taking little kids,
02:03 but mainly kids under 11, in my memory.
02:06 So you'd have loads of cartoons
02:09 and the kids would go mad when they'd see Bugs Bunny's face at the beginning.
02:12 Everybody was chomping and shouting and stuff like that.
02:14 If ever we got too carried away and we were shouting and stamping on the floor,
02:18 the cinema lights would come on and that would be a threat
02:21 that would stop the film if we didn't quieten down a bit.
02:25 So you'd have loads of cartoons and a small feature, maybe 15 minutes,
02:29 and then a much longer feature.
02:31 Like I said, if you had a few bob,
02:33 you could afford to take a few sweets in with you.
02:36 So there were special sweets for kids, really.
02:39 There was something called an Everlasting Strip.
02:41 It was said to be about, it was probably about a foot long,
02:43 but very thin toffee.
02:45 So they were really nice. They lasted quite a long time.
02:48 One of my favourites was quite a new sweet in the early 60s called Spanish Gould.
02:52 It looked like worms really covered in demerara sugar.
02:55 Very, very tasty.
02:57 There used to be a little fruit and vegetable shop just up here on the left.
03:00 That's the Biz Bar.
03:02 And I don't know why I got them really, because they didn't have much taste.
03:05 You get a packet of what we called monkey nuts.
03:07 So they were peanuts in shells.
03:10 So get a bag of them and chomp your way through them.
03:13 And I didn't try to make a mess like when inevitably there'd be shells all over the floor.
03:18 Like so I pity the poor cleaners who had to shovel all that stuff up
03:21 after we'd been in.
03:23 There was one delicacy which caused a bit of trouble
03:27 and that was Sunderland's favourite, the willock.
03:30 Now if you don't know what a willock is, it's a small shellfish, I believe.
03:32 It's a periwinkle.
03:34 If you've got a bucket and you live near Whitburn,
03:36 rocks get down there and have an afternoon picking willocks.
03:40 Now I never liked them much myself,
03:41 but there was a bit of trouble with the willocks I'm afraid.
03:44 Because they might be quite nice to eat if you had a little pin to scoop them out with.
03:48 But some bad lads, when the lights went down,
03:50 a willock was a very handy thing that stopped off other kids' heads.
03:53 And they're quite painful obviously.
03:55 So a few parents must have complained and there was a willock ban.
03:59 So I came in one morning, I had my bag of monkey nuts
04:04 and I was stopped at the door by the commissioner.
04:06 He's a little fella, the old war kind of maroon coloured uniforms.
04:10 I think in those days they came from a corps of commissioners,
04:13 so like ex-army lads.
04:14 And the commissioner stopped us and he uttered the immortal question,
04:18 "Is them willocks?"
04:19 And I said, "No, no, monkey nuts, monkey nuts."
04:21 So he let us in and there was no further trouble about the willocks.
04:25 So we had, I'm going to sing here so I apologise.
04:29 So most of the Saturday morning clubs, they had a special song that the kids sang.
04:34 And the manager would get on the stage beforehand and say,
04:37 "Come on boys and girls, let's sing the song."
04:40 And the song went as follows.
04:41 We are the boys and girls well known as the miners of the ABC
04:47 And every Saturday all line up to see the films we like
04:52 And shout aloud with glee we like to laugh and have a sing-song
04:56 Such a happy crowd are we, we're all pals together
05:02 We're miners of the ABC!
05:04 And we had to sing the last bit really loud.
05:06 So back in the early 60s, this was called the Odeon Cinema.
05:10 And again, my mother always called it the Regal,
05:12 because until I think 1952 or so it was called Regal Blacks Cinema.
05:17 Black was like a cinema chain back in those days.
05:21 Now, my mum had three kids in 1960.
05:25 So I'd be six, our Linda was seven and our Graham was eleven.
05:29 So getting three kids marshalled in and out of the house for a trip to the cinema
05:33 obviously was no easy task.
05:35 Because for years I didn't really know that you could start at the beginning of the whole programme.
05:40 Because we always arrived late.
05:42 In those days it was a continuous feature.
05:45 You'd have the Pathé News, which was news about the Queen and Prince Philip
05:49 visiting a safari park in Kenya or something.
05:52 Then you'd have the Bee feature, a shorter film.
05:55 And then you'd have the main feature, wherever that was.
05:59 So we'd always arrive, I don't know, halfway through the Bee movie.
06:03 And I thought that's just what everybody did.
06:05 Because in those days you'd have usherettes, ladies with nice uniforms and torches
06:09 that kind of guide you in and you have to sort of squeeze in past everybody.
06:12 And you'd just stay until the whole programme finished
06:15 and then start that again.
06:16 And you'd say, "Oh, this is where we came in."
06:18 And then we'd leave.
06:20 In those days they'd play the national anthem at the end of the programme
06:24 and it would be a race for kids especially to get out of there.
06:27 Because a lot of adults would stand to attention
06:29 while the national anthem played and then stand until it finished.
06:32 There was kids we weren't interested in doing that.
06:34 A really good film I saw here was Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
06:37 I think that was 1977.
06:39 And I knew a lass who worked here and said, "Hey, I'll get you in for a night on my free pass."
06:44 So I got there early to meet her.
06:46 She was one of the usherettes.
06:48 And her and her mates were taking this very seriously.
06:50 They all had t-shirts with, "We are not alone."
06:54 Sometimes on Saturdays I'd moonlight from the ABC matinee
06:57 and come down here to the Audium.
06:59 And they had a little song as well.
07:02 Which was, I mean, remember this was during the Cold War.
07:05 Like it's a very patriotic one, this.
07:07 "We come along on a Saturday morning
07:11 greeting everybody with a smile.
07:13 We come along on a Saturday morning
07:16 knowing it's all worthwhile.
07:19 As members of the Audium club we all intend to be
07:22 good citizens when we grow up and champions of the free.
07:25 We come along on a Saturday morning
07:28 greeting everybody with a smile, smile, smile.
07:32 Greeting everybody with a smile."
07:34 And they'd go through the same routine.
07:36 The manager would say, "No, try it again. Try a bit louder."
07:39 So that was a good laugh.
07:40 So just behind me where Primark is
07:43 used to be a very popular cinema.
07:45 Its real name was The Picture House.
07:48 But most people called it The Flea Pit.
07:50 It was a bit on the scuzzy side, it has to be said.
07:52 And I didn't know it until a few years ago.
07:54 A lot of people called it The Ranch
07:55 because there were a lot of cowboy movies on there.
07:58 So as I said, it was a bit cheaper than the other cinemas.
08:00 So we quite often used to go.
08:02 When I was there, I remember the date.
08:04 January 1966.
08:06 Saturday afternoon.
08:08 We were watching a great movie starring Frank Sinatra
08:10 called Von Ryan's Express.
08:12 It was a very dramatic movie.
08:13 But one part, there was a bit of a comedy scene.
08:15 They were sitting together in the real car,
08:18 kind of having a bit of a joke.
08:19 And suddenly, along the bottom of the screen
08:22 came the word "Sunderland 2 Newcastle 0."
08:25 And it was a bit of a Scooby-Doo moment.
08:26 Everybody went, "Huh? What?"
08:28 And then everybody cheered because they realised
08:30 the projectionist had got the score from the match,
08:33 from being played at that same time,
08:35 and would beat Newcastle 2.
08:37 So it was a great cheer.
08:38 I don't know why it wasn't at the game, actually.
08:40 But that's one of my happiest memories of there.
08:42 The Picturehouse closed in October 1966, I think it was.
08:46 And then later on, it became the Gannett Pub,
08:48 later called Digby's and various other names.
08:51 And now, it's what we have today, Primark.
08:53 So this is progress.
08:55 We're down High Street East in front of
08:57 Frank Stiles' lovely mural.
08:59 Now, the exact location of this next cinema,
09:02 I'm not 100%.
09:03 It was around about here somewhere.
09:05 It was Studio 1 and 2.
09:07 I think in a previous existence,
09:08 it had been the Gaiety Cinema,
09:10 which I don't remember at all,
09:12 but the same building.
09:13 So Studio 1 and 2 opened, I think, about 1971.
09:18 And they had an interesting mix of programmes.
09:21 The first movie I saw here is one called Zed.
09:24 I think it means "He Lives."
09:26 So it was about the Greek colonels
09:29 take over for Greece in 1967.
09:31 So pretty heavy stuff.
09:32 But they had a lot of much lighter material,
09:34 especially Imanwell movies and Kung Fu movies
09:38 and stuff like that.
09:39 A couple of my mates were in here once
09:40 watching this Kung Fu movie,
09:42 and it was very, very badly dubbed into English,
09:44 and they were at the front.
09:46 There was a lot of hardcore Kung Fu fans behind them,
09:48 and they thought this dubbed English was hilarious.
09:50 Like, they tried not to giggle
09:52 in case they got filled in.
09:53 By the way, if anybody's interested,
09:54 I've written a number of books
09:56 about my memories of Sunderland in the '60s and '70s,
09:59 and we're outside Sunshine Co-operative
10:00 in High Street East here.
10:02 So this is about being a Sunderland fan for 60 years.
10:05 These are Sunderland poems about nature
10:07 during the pandemic.
10:09 This is me mam's memories of growing up from 1930,
10:12 what it was like during the war.
10:14 And this is not Sunderland, where it's all me,
10:16 about me travels in different countries,
10:17 Australia, Poland, and whatnot like that.
10:20 So I just want to finish off with a few anecdotes
10:23 to add to what Tony said in his video.
10:25 He mentioned a cinema called the Bromash,
10:28 which used to be just at the edge of the bridge,
10:32 the far side of the bridge on this side.
10:34 And as Tony mentioned, it was destroyed in 1943
10:37 by a Nazi bomb, killing several people.
10:41 But me mother was born in the Wade Chaff, not far away.
10:44 And that was one of her favorite cinemas
10:45 when she was a child in the late '30s.
10:48 And I think it was tuppence to get in,
10:50 tuppence old money, which is about a penny,
10:52 less than a penny.
10:53 But you could also get in if you took
10:55 a large, clean jam jar, which sounds very odd-like,
10:59 but that would get you in, a clean jam jar.
11:02 And right next door to where me mam was born,
11:04 at the Wade Chaff was, Tony mentioned the corra.
11:08 So it was really very close to me mam's house,
11:10 so they were always in there.
11:11 And that was also a very cheap place.
11:13 I think it was tuppence to get in as well.
11:15 And she said whenever she thought of oranges,
11:17 she remembered the corra, 'cause they sold oranges
11:19 from a box at the door.
11:21 And they did have toilets, of course, at the corra,
11:24 not very nice outside ones,
11:25 but maybe it was a horror movie or something,
11:28 but some patrons didn't wait 'til they got to the toilet,
11:30 so you had to lift your feet up sometimes.
11:33 So the smell of wee and oranges
11:34 always brings memories of the corra back to her.
11:37 So on that happy note, I will say goodbye for now.
11:41 (gentle music)
11:44 (gentle music)
11:46 (gentle music)
11:49 (gentle music)
11:51 (gentle music)
11:54 (gentle music)
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