ED PAGE AT THE MOVIES

Rickmansworth station in Hertfordshire is busy. Always has been. Originally the furthest extent of “Metroland”, a new suburbia stretching 17 miles to the north of London, progressing gradually in the 1930s to become, according to contemporary estate agent advertising, an affordable paradise for those who worked in London…but wanted to live in the country.

Metroland was anywhere served by the Metropolitan railway, but really began at Harrow on the Hill, where the fast and slow lines from Baker Street forked in one direction to Uxbridge, and in the other to Watford, Rickmansworth and eventually, with steam locomotive to Chesham and Aylesbury.

John Betjeman set it all to poetry, and eventually created a Television documentary recording the gradual growth of Metroland through North Harrow, Pinner, Northwood Hills, Northwood, Moor Park, to Rickmansworth, Croxley Green and Watford..

(Available on DVD)

The Metropolitan line ran electric trains out of Baker Street, and Diesel Electric locos from Aldgate. Steam Expresses on the Great Central out of Marylebone shared the track, The Master Cutler, The South Yorkshireman and others heading north for Leicester and Sheffield all came through Rickmansworth.

Three electric trains, two diesel electrics in each direction every hour, plus several steam expresses made Rickmansworth station a great venue for watching trains.

Those from Aldgate were diesel electric powered as far as Rickmansworth, but then a steam loco was connected to take the train further north. So in addition to trains passing through, there was the added bonus of the activity from shunting steam engines and diesel electric locos in the sidings.

Very active. Something passing every six minutes of so. Great for train spotters.

Lousy for cinema goers.

Situated parallel to, and about 25 metres from the railway embankment, about ¼ mile from the station, was the Rickmansworth Picture House, a privately owned cinema, struggling to survive without the financial support enjoyed by the ODEON, Gaumont and Essoldo cinema chains. By 1950 it was already a “flea pit” cinema, poorly sited immediately alongside an extremely busy railway line and shunting yard, poorly maintained, clean-ish but rather uncomfortable.

It was in this cinema that in 1946 mum and dad took my sister and me to the movies for the first time. We saw Pinnochio. I clearly remember a packed cinema and lousy seats down the front and to the right hand side. I don't remember how I felt about the movie but I do remember the occasion and to this day when movie going I always aim to get a central seat.

I was six years old then but it was a few years later that I became old enough to start regular and independent movie going. (Mum paid, I went independently). One Saturday I decided to go to the Kids morning picture show in Rickmansworth. I didn't know where in Rickmansworth which had two cinemas but I assumed it would be the Picture House. I thought the ODEON, one mile further on in the middle of town (and a long way from the railway) would be just too classy to cater for kids. So I caught the bus from Croxley Green, my home village, to Rickmansworth, a mile distant. I got off at the Picture House and found it deserted. No kids.

I just sort of wandered around as you do for a few minutes, found a church hall and thought in my innocence that it might be in there. Then a girl came up to me and asked if I was going to the Saturday morning pictures (now there's a nice invite that never repeated itself). I said yes and she told me it was at the ODEON and you queued round the back on the cinder car park. She took me there. That was my first date and the beginning of independent movie going. I was 10. I recall vividly the thrilling “independent” feeling of spending pocket money in this way.

We paid 6d for downstairs and 9d for upstairs and saw cartoons, a half hour serial film called “Dusty Bates” starring Anthony Newley in which he played the hero “boy wonder” role. We sang songs, saw a full-length kids movie, and were entertained by “Uncle Stanley”. Brilliant. Two and a half hours of entertainment. Nice cinema. Warm. Comfy. Well maintained. Not a flea-pit. The man with the gong signified the start of the main movie.

J. Arthur Rank presents………………Fabulous!

The Picture House never showed new films. Always repeats that had already done the circuit. As kids we used it to see movies we'd missed. Every few minutes during the performance along came a train that shook the cinema as it decelerated into or accelerated from the station, rattling the roof and loose seats.

There was only one film I saw there where the location of the cinema actually enhanced the movie, which was much too adult for me anyway. The film was Brief Encounter, and the au revoir scene between Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson at the railway station was more realistic here than in any other cinema then or now.

The drama of that moment in the movie, plus the Rachmaninov 2 nd Piano Concerto soundtrack were immeasurably enhanced by the 5.20 from Baker Street, the up express to London, and steam and diesel electric locos entering and leaving the shunting yard, bringing to the Picture House a surround sound experience 30 years before the system was introduced to any other cinema in England.

At certain moments throughout any movie, engine smoke from the shunting yard, (a bizarre olfactory dimension that the cinema provided free for its sparse audiences), actually enhanced the cinematic experience, and brought a reality that has never since been equalled Hollywood.

In its twilight years, as a desperate attempt to encourage an audience, the cinema hired and displayed the car hero of “Genevieve” and displayed it in the front lobby where the tickets were sold for the movie of the same name.

Between 1946 and 1955 Watford had seven cinemas. The ODEON and Gaumont were of course dead classy especially the Gaumont. Both were up the posh end of town, had restaurants with waitresses dressed in black and white, and showed mainstream movies fresh from London where cinemas screened new movies before those in the provinces. Both were big, warm and spacious. Very impressive. Great double features….an A movie featuring established movie makers and stars, and a B feature often used as a means of developing talent in the movie industry.

On Sundays as a token to religious feelings all cinemas opened late afternoon and screened a programme different to the main weekly feature, and reduced the volume of sound by several decibels.

The Empire Cinema in Exchange Road was privately owned and was called a “repertory cinema” although it was years before I figured out why. It couldn't afford to hire new movies, so it showed the best of the old instead. The Empire showed the Genevieve/Doctor in the House double bill to packed houses at least eight times over the years. Clean and well run, it was the last old cinema to close its doors in Watford. Its programmes were well chosen and this was a popular and well attended cinema. I knew one of the usherettes and could often get in free. One day she fell out with the lady who worked in the ticket office (the manager's wife). When I turned up that day for the second time in a week to see The Cruel Sea she told me to clear off, which I did.

The Carlton cinema showed new films and repeat films. Strange place. It was round inside with an outer aisle that encircled the audience. Cold and draughty in winter with uncomfortable seats, hard and close together. Lit with dim glowing gas lamps with no screen curtain and a high domed ceiling. It looked as cold as it felt.

The seats were damaged in 1956 when the audience went beserk during a showing of “Blackboard Jungle influenced beyond endurance by the soundtrack of Bill Haley and the Comets singing “Rock around the clock” as the credits rolled.

Listening to that track now it is impossible to imagine how a middle aged and paunchy white Caucasian male with a kiss curl, singing music created by impoverished black musicians from the heart of Americas southern states could have such an effect on a cinema audience in Watford. At that time however songs like “How Much is that Doggy in the Window” and “Green Door” were high in the charts, so Rock and Roll, even that of Bill Haley was definitely different and people just wanted to dance…….and slash seats. As a result this cinema closed for a bit and installed several new seats which were just as close and uncomfortable.

The Regal in King Street was the exact opposite of the meaning of the word, but nevertheless had the first Cinemascope screen and stereophonic sound system in Watford, together with an iron bar up the back of every seat for maximum discomfort. It sold Eldorado ice cream. I saw the first Cinemascope movie “The Robe” starring Richard Burton at the Regal one wet Wednesday afternoon. Great movie, but enough said about the Regal.

Just into North Watford, alongside and slightly over the Euston to North of England LMS railway line, was the Plaza. This cinema, even in 1955 was disgusting. There were no usherettes. You had to be careful where you sat as many of the seats were missing. Most were ripped. The Plaza was noisy, cold, nearly always empty, and specialised in the cheapest possible double bills. ( Just William and the Bank Robbers and Old Mother Riley goes on Holiday starring Arthur Lucan and Kitty McShane spring to mind).

Yes, I actually went and saw this opposite of amazing double bill as an alternative to waiting four hours at Granny's house waiting for mum to return from London. Now, I'd settle for Granny's house.

Talking to a friend recently I learned that her parents had gone to the Plaza once because it was cheaper than all other cinemas and returned home with a flea infestation. A flea pit cinema with real fleas. What a marketing concept. The very antithesis of the Hollywood dream.

Further into North Watford, and a good bus ride from home was the North Watford ODEON. Three local ODEONS! Wow! Again, a classy cinema that showed movies that had been in the Watford ODEON the previous week. It also featured many well made horror movies of the time. These were“A” rated movies and juniors were barred unless they were accompanied by an adult. So we waited outside the cinema for an adult to turn up, asked them to “take us in” gave them our money, they bought the ticket and we parted company inside. You could do that in those days.

Now you would think that with four classy cinemas showing the latest movies within a couple of miles from home, that it would be “good films in ace cinemas” that would have captured my fondest memories. Indeed, the thousands of movies I must have seen since Pinnochio include a host of fantastic movies, well presented and viewed in excellent cinemas.

However, it is not these that have captured my heart in a lifetime of movie going. It's the B movies seen in z-rated cinemas that I remember with such fondness, almost a passion I suppose. I've seen hundreds of them for all sorts of reasons, often just to get out of the cold in the winters of 1961-3.

Produced directed and acted by no hopers showing little movie making skill but much enthusiasm, and a broad spectrum of subject matter.

HERBERT L STROCK ………presents!…. Monsters galore! The unfortunate results of nuclear tests! Space mysteries! Experiments by mad scientists searching for the serum of eternal youth! Hideously disfigured owners of burned down waxworks dipping dead people in wax! Person eating pod-monsters! Swamp things! Body-snatchers! Giant ants living in municipal sewers! Male flesh eating Amazon women! (Slave Brides of the Amazon), Jelly monsters! Incredible shrinking men! Etc! Etc!……… most of these, not all, were so perfectly inept (Plan Nine from Outer Space) that one wonders how the financers, producers, directors and actors, could have ever maintained the enthusiasm to start the movie let alone finish it and get it released . On the other hand, some were excellent and critically acclaimed (The Forbidden Planet).

It makes you wonder doesn't it after all the money my parents and the state spent on my education, what went wrong with my powers of selection.

Well, if you take a small six year old boy to see a movie that stars a boy made out of wood, with a father who pretends he's a real child, whose nose grows ever larger every time he tells a lie……………..

In the 1950s Croxley Green acquired a small village branch library, a single room about the size of a large lounge/dining room.

The librarian always made me welcome and answered the questions of a young lad with patience and kindness.

I visited often, and always headed for three books that contained haunting images that impressed me greatly. One written by a survivor of Belsen, another of ghost stories, and the third of pre-1950s cinema.

Five images in the book on cinema aroused my curiosity;

1. Illustrations from “the Kabinett of Dr. Caligari”, a surreal horror movie made in

Germany in 1919 with the theme of zombies and directed by Robert Wiene.

2. The Odessa Steps sequence from the film “The Battleship Potemkin”, a Russian made silent movie directed in 1925 by Sergei Eisenstein.

3. A shot of Bela Lugosi in suitably menacing pose from one of his many Dracula movies.

4. A scene from Nosferatu, a silent vampire movie made in Germany in 1922 in which Max Schreck played the lead role.

5. A scene from Fritz Lang's “Metropolis” another silent movie made in 1926 foretelling industry and “people engineering” in the year 2000.

These films seemed ancient to me then, but they were in fact quite recent at the time, with the oldest only 33 years old. About the age the first Star Wars movie is now.

Years later while on a cruise in the Black sea we stopped at Odessa, and whilst having breakfast on deck I could see the Odessa steps where Potemkin had been filmed, and experienced an immense feeling of fulfilment.

In Caligari a fairground showman uses a somnambulist (aka zombie) for the purposes of murder. Eventually the “showman” turns out to be the director of a lunatic asylum, and the whole story the waking delusion of a mad man. Sounds daft doesn't it? But at the time, German movies tended to reflect images of ordinary life, and the director Robert Wiene didn't want to do this. He believed the medium of cinema should be used to create a make believe world and this was the story he chose. The film with its surrealist sets and hypnotic silent acting was immensely influential on subsequent movies. It is available on DVD in World cinema sections of HMV stores. “The first hundred shocks are the hardest” said the New York evening Post in its review.

The book in the library showed a number of still shots from the film and it was the surrealistic sets and actors that captured my imagination. Still does.

The “Odessa Steps” sequence lasts for five minutes in Potemkin, and is considered to be an early masterpiece of creative editing. Innocent citizens run in panic from anti-revolutionary soldiers during the 1905 revolution. In their flight they have to negotiate the Odessa Steps and whilst so doing are mown down by the armed troops.

(Available on DVD.)

Bela Lugosi is considered by many to be the finest of all film Draculas, and in fact played the part so often he became type cast, at which point his Hollywood career nose-dived never, unlike Dracula, to rise again. For Lugosi, over-playing the part was much more effective than a wooden stake through the heart. Actually, Lugosi did, like his screen persona, rise from the dead. He starred in “Plan Nine from Outer Space” after he had died, a tremendous achievement if you think about it.

The silent/talkie movies in which he starred didn't hang around in getting to the point. Brisk they were. Seventy minutes and story told.

In modern times I suppose Christopher Lee's Dracula characterisation was superior, having the advantage of colour.

The “daddy of them all” in my view was Max Schreck who, playing Count Orlock (aka Dracula) in Nosferatu in 1922 was truly vile and again the art direction was frighteningly surreal. (Available on DVD).

Klaus Kinski played a pretty good vampire in “Salems Lot” which seemed to me to be largely based on Schreck's 1922 interpretation. His “keeper” was the superb James Mason, the embodiment of sophisticated menace.

Metropolis also contains much surreal and unforgettable imagery, in which a mad scientist creates a female Frankenstein creature to incite workers in an underground city to revolt etc. etc.

All everyday stuff really, and a fine incentive for a young lad to progress from book to screen as soon as possible.

My 1950's life opportunities built on these influences as I approached my teen-age years.

Dad worked for the LMS railway company, and this provided me with cheap travel by train to London, which was a frequent delight.

A ticket from Croxley Green to anywhere in Central London and return cost me 1 1/4p, ………3d in the money of the time. Big film adverts adorned the walls of all tube stations. The movies I really wanted to see all carried “A” or “X” rating, but of course an adult was needed to get into an “A” movie.