I started in Glasgow, for no other reason than I had to start somewhere

Standing on the roof of Green's Playhouse, Europe's largest cinema, an earnest Glaswegian and I look over Glasgow. In an effort to focus on something unique and wonderful about the the home town, he said "With all those domes you might think it was Constantinople." (You, might, of course, but you don't.)
Instead of insisting on a bowing acquaintance with Constantinople, Glasgow could boast about her cinemas. For here in Glasgow is every type - from the largest in Europe to the smallest and smelliest in the British Isles. And in Glasgow every kind of cinema experiment is being made.
Green's Playhouse, for instance, has undertaken the experiment of concentrating a number of entertainments in one building.

Golf at the Cinema

You can spend the entire day at Green's, starting with a game of golf on the roof and ending up in the cinema or ballroom.

To what extend does Glasgow respond? Do people want their amusement in layers like a club sandwich?
I talked to a woman selling vegetables at a street stall. She told me that, instead of going to her local cinema, she came in every week with the "bairns" to Green's, because "the bairns enjoy themselves more in a crowd." The crowd fever is one reason at least why big cinemas will always be popular.
I went to the Great Man himself, Mr. H. J. Green, owner of the Playhouse.
Green's Playhouse
(as the Apollo, in 1980)

"Of course my cinema is a success," said Mr Green. "The bigger the cinema the greater the success. And the reason - because people know they can get in - no-one is wasting time by coming to my cinema because they know there will be room for them. And there's another reason: the big cinema will always attract because it can give better value for money. Overhead expenses are minimised, and so we can afford to give the best pictures, good musical interludes, at a price at which small cinemas cannot possibly compete."
Mr Green also talked of the cinema of the future.


 
 


Filmgoing by Air

"In this amusement business the public demands progressive change. From silent to talking pictures, from black-and-white to colour photography, from small downtown 300-seaters to 4,000 seaters. Car parks, cafes, dance halls, these things will all become part and parcel of the cinema of the future.

My new cinema at Ayr, besides having a car park, will have a flat roof on which gyroplanes may land. It is my belief that the cinema is definitely establishing itself as the centre of social life in every town in England.
Green's Playhouse, Ayr
(2004)

I left the Great Green Man confident in the future of the big super cinema; yet a few minutes more of Glasgow showed me that the small wayside movie house, with its old-fashioned projectors, hard seats and primitive ventilation is going to be a stubborn little animal to uproot from the public's affection.

Perhaps the strongest argument against the bigger cinemas is the Black Cat Picture House, which I stumbled across in Parkhead, a slum area of Glasgow.
A tiny building. There is a black cat painted on the wall above the entrance. A solitary lamp over the doorway illuminates one word, "Pictures."

In a miniature vestibule there was a box-office, but no list of prices. "How much?" I asked. The girl looked surprised. "Threepence," she said, "for any seat anywhere. You must be a stranger here."
Black Cat Picture House
(2004)

A curtain divided the foyer from the auditorium - a plain room with brick walls tarred over and flickering gas jets as lights. At the entrance a man was shaking hands with an old lady. How was Tom? Was his arm really broken? Later on I talked to this man. He is Mr Sowerby, the manager; he knows everyone who comes to his cinema, can tell you the life history of most of them, and shakes hands with each person as they come in.
It was like jumping back five years of a lifetime to watch 'The Girl of the Night' unwind its eight reels in complete silence, the only accompaniment being the whir of the projection motors from the back. At the six-thirty performance, however, I learnt there is music - a panatrope accompaniment by Mrs Sowerby.


 
 


Same Seat for Ten Years

This cinema on a warm summer afternoon was nearly three-quarters full. That is, in proportion to its size, there were more people here than in the Playhouse.
"They come here like they go to church," Mr Sowerby told me, "regularly, once or twice a week. Some of them have their own particular seats, and if they can't get them very often come in later. I know one or two who have been coming here for ten years to exactly the same seat - the same day and practically at the same time."
This is, I believe, the only cinema in Glasgow which gives a performance at ten in the morning. This is to suit the night-shift men.
Perhaps the strangest thing of all about the Black Cat is that it is owned by an Oxford undergraduate, Angus Pickard, whose pride it is, and who goes to infinite pains to secure the best of the old silents - "Way Down East," "Seventh Heaven," "What Price Glory" and other old classics.
The intimate atmosphere, its very strong individuality, I feel, is the reason for the persistence of the Black Cat Picture House in the face of big sound-equipped rivals in the same neighbourhood.


Cranstons's
(2005)
Regent
(1980)
La Scala
(2005)
Picture House
(2004)

How strong was this feeling of individuality I only realised when I came back down again to the main streets of Glasgow. Down Renfield Street and Sauchiehall Street, Cranston's, the Regent, La Scala, the Picture House seemed to possess not one grain of originality among them. They all seemed pale imitations of Green's Playhouse, and in other ways seemed to make it a point of resembling one another as far as possible.

It was at the New Savoy and the Picture House that I first ran up against the problem of British films. "Canaries Sometimes Sing" was showing at the New Savoy, and "Bed and Breakfast" at the Picture House. The fact that these were British pictures was not advertised, nor were the displays advertising these pictures exactly glaring. I found poor houses in both cinemas.
"Nobody liking your pictures?" I asked an attendant.
"It's a sair thing," said Mac, "but they wullna' tak' to British pictures. if the obsairve the wee word 'British' on yon door they're awa'."
A Very High Circuit Official (I can't give his name, but he gets ten thousand a year) told me that I should find British pictures popular in the Provinces, because the American accent was practically unintelligible to some English audiences. But in Scotland, where the Sassenach twang is as offensive to the Scot as American, American pictures are far more popular. The reason being, if we've got the listen to anything but Gaelic let it be in American pictures where the story at least has punch.


 
 


At Bargain Prices

Accustomed to sacrificing three-and-six for a poor seat in London cinemas, it seemed incredible to me that I could get a really good seat for a shilling in any Glasgow cinema, and that the highest price demanded anywhere is three shillings.
But this is not all.
A Mr John MacAlister (may his tribe increase) is busy building cinemas over his native land in which the very most the spendthrift Scot will be able to squander on a double-feature, musical interlude, three-hour movie programme is sixpence.

I went to the Astoria, Possil Road, to make sure of those facts. John MacAlister has done the job thoroughly - to avoid any temptation the "automatickets" in the box office don't register a higher figure than sixpence. In the afternoon you can go anywhere in the stalls or "area" for threepence, and 6d. in the balcony. Evening prices are 4d., 5d., and 6d.

Nor has Mr MacAlister provided anything second-rate in the way of cinema at these amazing prices. The Astoria is as luxuriously fitted out as any of our West End London cinemas.
I wish Mr MacAlister would come down south awhile.
Astoria
(1980)

A Twopenny Cinema

But in Scotland threepence is threepence for a' that, and some of these kilty lads will go anywhere to save a penny. At all events, the Queen's Theatre, Watson Street, undercuts admission fees at the Astoria. The Queen's advertise pictures and variety for the sum of twopence.
So far I have not found Britain's ideal cinema, but I have learnt one thing at least - that creating the ideal cinema is by no means the easy enterprise that we outside the cinema world would believe it is.
The cinema manager has far more problems to contend with in his endeavours to please the public than I ever dreamed.
When I continue my exploration of the cinema through Britain next week I shall have more respect for the 4,500 cinema managers, each one of whom is sincerely trying to create in his own hall Britain's ideal cinema.

(Next week: "In Sedate Edinburgh.")

<
Index >