User:RUSTYTHESPIAN

THE EARLY HISTORY OF AN ACTOR MANAGER

NOW WE ARE FIVE! Ah well here goes! The old Grand Theatre in Newcastle upon Tyne plays a very large part in my early years (you will find I go on a bit about the place!) My Dad owned the Grand and my first recollection of it was at pantomime time, Dads Chorus Mistress said I could dance on with the other little children in the juvenile chorus. I had been in most of the dressing rooms that day and as my Dad was there I had been treated to a few potato chips in one room some fudge in another and a bit of cake in another and a sip of stout................and so on. Being full of excitement and food I linked arms with the other children and danced on to the stage to a packed house! And as we danced along behind the Principle Boy doing her opening song I WAS SICK as I went past her! And I can still remember as it all trickled down her legs what she said 'you little s**t wait till I get hold of you!!' But being a true trooper she never lost the smile on her face as she carried on for the crowd who were by now in hysterics..................... Moving on 3 years. I got thrown out one night, as I was bored I went off to explore under the stage an area known as the SUMP and guess what? I found an old peddle harmonium. So I had to try it out didn't I? And guess what it still worked and made this awful wailing noise..........the Stage Manager came down and dragged me up to back stage by my hair and sent me packing home with death threats if I ever came back! What must have been strange to the audience was the fact that a death scene was being played out on the stage...............I thought I had made a significant contribution to the mood of the piece. Now aged 12 sitting in one of the boxes front of house and falling head over heels with the B*****l Twins as they were called as they did a tassel dance, when your 12 that is 'gob smacking' how did they get them to change direction?? They looked so beautiful. You forget that as you gaze through the proscenium arch to the stage you are looking at a fantasy. So when I went back stage in the interval they were standing there old and tired in thread bare costumes and caked makeup and they were so small and strange and one had a little round Elastoplast’s on her bum!! So that was the end of that romance!

IT’S PANTO TIME!!!!!

You ever been to a panto? Oh yes you have!!! Remember! You go into a large packed hot old theatre full of sticky shouting children and adults trying to look as if they are not enjoying themselves. The house lights dim and the orchestra comes out into the orchestra pit and they settle down resplendent in Dinner Suits that have seen better days and tune up the instruments and sit waiting for the Conductor. Right! Now let me fill you in with what happens on this cold December night’s production of DICK WHITTINGTON many years ago when theatre and panto was still in its heyday. The theatre is now hushed and if you look at the stage you can see the stage lights under the hem of the stage curtain and shadowy feet moving into position ready for ‘Overture and Beginners’ as its called. The Conductor in his best white tie and tails climbs up onto his rostrum shuffles his music, coughs and raises his baton taps it on the music stand light and off we go! The curtains open and there before us is the full chorus line singing and dancing while the Principal Boy makes her way down to the footlights and smiling at the audience slaps her thigh and asks if all the boys and girls are pleased to see them? YES! They all shout…………except for one little chap in the front row who is sick! Not just sick BUT SICK! All over the orchestra….well that was the end of that. How can you continue when all the vomit is dripping of the piano keys violins and some of the orchestra could not see out of their glasses, so the curtains close and the orchestra members go off to change and the cleaners come on and wash down the band parts and seats and instruments. Then off we go again! The orchestra comes back looking decidedly unhappy in polo neck sweaters and sports coats and one in a raincoat! Overture and Beginners….this time all goes well………….until (remember we are doing Dick Whittington) the scene in front of the large fire in the Baronial Hall Kitchen and the Principle Girl is sitting on a chair with the Cat (another girl in a cat skin) draped across her lap. The next line as she stroked the cat was ‘Alas poor pussy no Dick to night!’ and that was about the end of the panto 2,000 odd Mums and Dads were in hysterical laughter while the kids wanted to know what they were laughing at! Every time we tried to bring back order some one corpsed or giggled and off they all went again! Now that was a night to remember!!!!!!!………… NB Back in those days the Lord Chamberlains office was responsible for censorship of all scripts before they went into production and any lines he did not like had a blue pencil drawn through the offending passage and that was that! But he had missed that line. It’s worth knowing that’s how Jack Warner got to be called Blue pencil Warner long before he became 'Dixon of Dock Green'.

SUMMER HOLIDAYS IN THE WAR

I have just spent a very pleasant time looking though some photos on FLICKR, my! It did bring back memories, Alnemouth in the war time Dad used to run 16MM mobile cinema in the church hall and I saw Charles Loughton in Henry the Eighth there in a very early black and white film. We used to stay at the Schooner Hotel. I found an incendiary bomb on the sands and took it back to the hotel into the dinning room God! You should have seen them shift when I said 'Mummy Mummy look what I found!!!' a very old Colonel took it from me and clipped me round the head and dashed off!!.... Jumping from concrete tank trap to tank trap up the estuary......., pulling ourselves across the river hand over hand on the anti tank and boat steel hawser........ Asking Mother ‘what was that small balloon with a knot tied in it on the dray hatch outside the hotel??!!!’ Clip bang wallop!! Well I did not know what it was!.............. Gazing in the newsagent’s window and asking her what the word f..k meant and getting my head smashed into the shop window and I can still see it vibrating with the force of my head hitting it!! Well I did not know what it meant! Did I? The wonderful hot happy summer holidays staying at Fairbairn’s Farm at Lesbury. Rowing on the river at Walkworth on the day six girls scrambled into a boat when only four should have been in it, and got drowned when there boat keeled over, I saw the police dragging them out of the river with grappling hooks. At the age of twelve that was when I had my first glass of beer when I got back to the hotel, they said it would settle me! Argyle Street getting bombed! And the gasometer went up! Learning to play golf at Alnemouth Golf club and driving off with a cut down driver that the Pro' had made me and laying my Mother out 'cos she stood too close behind me. Revenge!!!! I broke her false teeth........................then I was sent off to boarding school in Hexham. She was hard work and quite terrifying my Mother, used to wash all her money and hang it up to dry in the bathroom! She also had a scent spray (remember glass with a rubber ball pump?) that she would spray the seats in a car or tram before she would sit down. I got hit one day very unfairly I thought. I had found a jar of Ponds Vanishing Cream and taking it at face value! I took my kit off and covered myself in it. And went down stairs stark naked and into the lounge where she was playing Whist with her cronies. I was horrified that they could all see me!! How could that be??? I could start on Ashington and the cream buns for tea at Uncle Harry and Aunty May’s house when he got home from the pit........

Memories of First Dates

When I was young and very green! (Yes that is me at 16!!) No let’s say not worldly wise! Even know I could die with embarrassment looking back on my attempts to emulate the big screen stars. My Dad owned a lot of cinemas and naturally I spent a lot of time in them, so learning how it was done (kissing that is!) The first kiss I had makes me still cringe, I spent 2 minutes kissing her bottom lip and chin before I realized I was in the wrong place, the next one I kissed I thought she was going to be ill when lips glued together she opened her mouth I panicked and ran off as I had never heard of 'French kissing'. Or, how about sitting in the Circle back row of the local cinema kissing...we had had lots of sweets and ice cream and I had smoked a lot of Woodbine cigarettes and I was sick all over the back of this chap in front of us, he went mad! turning around and grabbing me round the neck of my polo neck sweater and lifting me up into the path of the projected film and gave me what for while my little head was stuck in the window and 1,500 people in the audience were shouting and stamping on the floor as all they could see was the outline of my head on the screen and not Roy Rogers! Never did see her again.......... Or what about the sophisticated one in the Tea Rooms on a Saturday morning, sitting opposite each other and I did the full bit of lighting two cigarettes together as seen on the big screen and starting to give her the one on the left when it got stuck on my bottom lip and my fingers slipped and traveled down the cigarette and pulled the hot glowing end off and it flew across the table and went down her cleavage, God did she move! and I had was a bleeding lip with bits of blood stained cigarette paper still glued to my lip and two burnt fingers. Never did see her again.............. Or the infamous Saturday at the Oxford Galleries Ballroom dance leaning over the balcony with a rather large busted girl I had just had a dance with and as he left breast rested on my arm we kissed and I sneezed and brought my hand up to cover my mouth (as you do) and trapped her breast in the crook of my arm squeezing it very hard, she screamed and all the people on the dance floor looked up in horror!!! I was mortified and yes you have guessed it! I never did see her again....... You never forget the pleasures and pain of youth do you? And I don't mind anyone knowing who I am for they will be sure to know who they were.

THE SATURDAY MORNING MATINEE

Of course you remember it……… well most of us do!!! It all seems so long ago now! but its beginning to drift up from the fog of ‘times gone by’ Hot and damp and steaming gently in the heat of the old Globe cinema at Gosforth, (you sold more drinks and ice cream if you kept it very hot!) from the rain sitting there with our knees under chins and feet on the seat with sweaters pulled up to our eyes and pulled down over our knees so we looked like rows of strange beasts so God help the ice cream girls! There must be about 1000 screaming children rooting for Roy Rogers and Trigger and hell bent on making as much noise as possible! But they never noticed that Roy’s hat never fell off in a fight and that he had more lipstick on than Dale Evans his love interest. They would never imagine that poor old Trigger would end up being stuffed and mounted on a plinth out side Roy’s ranch. Hand up if you remember ‘The Perils of Pauline’ and you must remember ‘Flash Gordon and the Clay Men’ then there was ‘Zorro’ now there was a force to be reckoned with! We all wanted to be Zorro! After the show there we were galloping up the road on imaginary horses with our Navy blue school raincoats over our shoulders buttoned at the neck so it looked like Zorro’s cloak, with home made eye masks covering most of our faces, brandishing our home made swords with bits of chalk tied to the tip zizz zizz at any stray dog or any imaginary enemy who came across our path! We left Zorro’s mark Z on any door or wall we passed! Zizz zizz and the deed was done and off we went to find another enemy to fight! I suppose we could all go on for a very long time rekindling our childhood memories of the Saturday matinees we lived for as in many cases the highlight of our week. So how strange that many years later I found myself the manager of a little cine variety hall in Felling near Gateshead and yes you guessed it! I ran a matinee for the kids, but! They nearly pulled the place apart! Why? Because I was showing the same films that I used to watch when I was small, I had not understood that times had moved on, we did not have TV in my young days and now there was so much more in ways of entertaining and filling there time that it must have been boring for them. So we hit on the idea of showing nothing but 10 cartoons and it worked! 3 minutes of cartoon then cheering and hooting for the next one! When the twist came out with Chubby Checker’s ‘Twisting the night Away’ I decided to run a little competition each week six kids up on the stage in a line with me standing behind doing the patter and introductions, signal to the projectionist to play the music and off they went twisting away like little good ‘uns! Then stop the music and I would go along behind them and put my hand on each head and the one that got the loudest applause was the winner, and he got two free seats to next weeks matinee and a box of sweets and off they went and back to the cartoons…………….. OK! All went well ‘till I noticed that one little lad wearing an open duffle coat and Wellingtons was the winner for six weeks on the trot! Then I noticed that all the usherettes were hanging off a radiator at the back of the stalls killing themselves laughing with tears streaming down their faces at the antics on the stage, so when it was all over I went up to them and asked what they were laughing at and one of them said “Eeee Mister don’t you know? The little lad in the duffle coat has his willy out!! And the kids love him!!” so that was the end of that idea! But I did go on to greater things…………

ON BEING A CINEMA & THEATRE MANAGER Having written the last blog on Children’s Matinees so many memories flitted through my brain so I had to write them down! And no doubt I shall add to them over the weeks. Going back to the old Corona at Felling, I just remembered that I was very young fresh out of the Navy and full of my own importance! And didn’t know anything! My first day there was hard to forget, I went into the stalls and walked down towards the stage and this cleaner called Annie came out of the toilet she had been cleaning and shouted at me to get off her still wet mopped floor down the isle she came running at me waving her dirty wet mop at me and I shouted “But I am the manager!” “So bloody what?” she shouted back. So I got out of there quickly back to my tatty little office and hid till she had gone! Good start to my first day! That evening standing on the front of house steps with the doorman (who was an ex policeman and very big with it!!) in the late evening sun I told him that I wanted the house lights to come up when the intervals were on. So off he went muttering to himself, and from then on for over two weeks the audience dropped of to a trickle. One night I was bemoaning the fact that there was no one in the hall and he said “Well you silly bugger! It’s all your fault!” “Why?” I asked “Well no bugger comes here with his own wife! And they don’t want to be lit up by you!! So put the bloody lights out!” and I did and within a week we were back to packed houses! I was told to put the ‘house full’ and ‘queue here’ signs out on the pavement if we were empty inside and we would get a good second house! I was told to always put the heating up high 20 minutes before the ice cream girls went out to sell, now that could double your sales!!! The other thing was that if it was a children’s show you put lollies and cheep choc bars on the trays. The same applied to sweets! Children wanted gob stoppers and wine gums and so on…….If it was a posh show or film then it would be exotic tubs and Parfaits. ALWAYS stand on the front of house and say “Good Evening” and “Goodnight” and raise your Dun’s Dutt to them. You are expected to handle any emergency such as fights ‘cos some one is in with someone else’s wife! Or you get a lot of epileptic fits in cinemas as the film goes though the projector at 24 frames per second that’s near enough to trigger the alpha rhythms in the brain, nothing clears the auditorium faster than a seizure! And can you deliver babies??? Well you had better get the hang of it! I have delivered six in my time! The times I have worked late into the night looking for point one of a penny on the Children’s Film Production Levy!! for the daily returns to head office. One year the panto’ we were doing went very wrong! Ebenazer was being played by an old unhappy Shakespearian actor who felt he was slumming! During the interval he was sipping stout in his dressing room when he keeled over and died!! Well as they say the show must go on……so the principle girl was pushed out in front of the curtains and said to 1.500 people in the panto audience “Ladies and Gentlemen Boys and Girls I have a very sad announcement to make, during the interval Ebenazer has had a heart attach and died”………………and being panto 1500 voices cried out “oh no he hasn’t!” So you try and get past that one! We had a traveling Circus one week and can you imagine what it was like trying to cope with the elephant after it put its right front foot through the stage? Down at the footlights we could not close the curtains as it was in the way and the noise!! As it peed all over the place and its finale was to have a crap! Bye now the audience was in total hysterics but the stage hands got it free and off we went with the show! Then there was this act with dancing ducks wheeled out on a steel table dancing away to great applauses, back stage later I lent on the table and burnt my hand on it, no wonder they danced. I could go on and on……..so many tales to tell, some very funny some very sad……

My life carries on from there with many tales to tell, but the early days make a wonderful snapshot of that period in time.

RUSTYTHESPIAN 08/09/08