BS: Saturday Morning Matinee

Subject: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 12:50 AM

Some unashamedly nostalgic bullshit... Yesterday I was telling my eleven year old son about the Saturday morning cinema matinees, which I had attended as a kid. You would be there with hundreds of other pre-pubescent little treasures. Some smarmy old git, looking a bit like the nasty uncle from "Tommy" would try to lead the singing of a dreadful ditty, which opened "Here come we all on Saturday morning/Greeting everybody with a smile". Then you had to stand up for the national anthem and after that the films would start. There were a couple of cartoons, then a serial (I can recall "Ali and the Talking Camel" was one of them). Then the main feature - often a terrible B movie - would follow. Brave cavalrymen would arrive at the last second to deliver heroic wagon trains from dastardly Indians. (The "history" was abominable, but the entertainment was perfect). Lassie would save the US army - or whatever. Bad boys got slugged on the kisser and had wonderfully bad names, like Bitter Creek...
Can you share your memories or remind me of things I have forgotten?

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 02:42 AM

My Saturday mornings were spent in front of cartoons on TV. Bullwinkle, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Archie, Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes, Underdog, Fat Albert, etc. Then we'd (sibs and neighbourhood kids) tear out of the house with allowance in hand to either the nearby 711 or Pinewood Grocery for sweets, with weekend chores and school work duties niggling at the back of our innocent little heads until late Sunday afternoon when we would all scramble to get the work done.

I asked TSO. He does not remember the cinema experience you describe. He is nearly 60.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 03:51 AM

Australia.

I went to a few Saturday Matinees. Got one out of the house for a couple of hours.

I seem to remember that mostly occurred on the weekends that my Travelling Representative father was home on weekends, leaving both adults alone in the house........

Tarzan Movies, Flash Gordon and the Men from Mars Serials, oh and rolling Jaffas down the wooden floor, where it would go 'roll roll clunk, roll roll clunk, roll roll clunk' as it dropped down the level of each seat row on the wooden floor.

alanabit - you can't have forgotten the Jaffas!

Will think of more later... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Sandra in Sydney
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 05:19 AM

Eric Bogle's 'Front Row Cowboy'

my local movie palace - The Roxy, Parramatta

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: GRex
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 05:20 AM

I was a regular attender at my local Saturday morning 'Tuppenny Rush'. That's two pence in old money.

My favourite film cowboys were Tom Mix and Buck Jones.

Ah, happy days.

             GRex

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 06:46 AM

Tarzan movies I can remember and I have vague memories of a series about spacemen. I can't recall the rolling Jaffas Foolestroupe. Maybe my memory needs jogging some more. Great memories though. Keep them coming!

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 06:50 AM

Then there was the infamous National Anthem 'chuck stuff over the edge of the Stalls in the dark' ploy that took place as you sat down after the anthem as the lights went out for the movie to start... ;-0

What? Me Sir, No Sir!...

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: kendall
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 07:03 AM

I lived 5 miles from a theater and the admission was 10 cents. Didn't see many films until later in life when the car was invented.
We did have an old battery powered radio and some of the programs were better than the films. Tom Mix,Terry and the Pirates, Lorenzo Jones, Superman, The Green Hornet, Gang Busters and Jack Armstrong, the all American boy. (What rubbish!) and the Jack Benny program.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: jacqui.c
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 07:53 AM

The local fleapit was about a five minute walk from our house and so, in the 50s, Saturday morning pictures was a regular event. My brother and I had sixpence pocket money - enough for twopence for the cinema, twopence for sweets and twopence each to buy The Beano and The Dandy, which we would read cover to cover and then swap.

We had Uncle Bob, the local policeman, who would come on at half time and give road safety lectures. There would also be a prize for someone he saw demonstrating very good road sense. I won an autograph book one week for that.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Will Fly
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 07:55 AM

The Picture House, Horwich (Lancashire) - manager, Mr. Rimmer - the years(s), between 1951 and 1957. Picture the scene...

A shouting, chattering, crowd of kids in for the Saturday kids' showing. The lights go down and it might be a "Flash Gordon" or "Superman" serial, with a cartoon and usually a Western such as Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger or The Cisco Kid. Bits of gum wrappers, lollipop sticks and similar raining down from the kids in the balcony on to the kids below - until an attendant came up and stopped us, often with a clip round the ear. A huge storm of whistling and booing if there was a screen kiss.

The last film, lights up, a stampede out, and a crowd of excited kids running home, playing groups, all pretending to be the heroes they'd just been watching... simple and uncomplicated days, what?

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 11:35 AM

Ah perfect Will! That is just how I remember it.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 11:35 AM

Albeit a few years later, of course...

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: SINSULL
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 12:03 PM

The Itch was the local theater next door to the local butcher shop. Two clear memories: first the butcher's kittens walking over my feet as I screamed during The Blob. Second: the day the local bad boys set fire to a girl's hair. Gum on and under the seats; popcorn thrown at the screen which had a tear in it.
The movies were usually B horror movies, a cartoon and a western. Sometimes they combined the horror movie and the western with cowboys lassoing dinosaurs. Pure crap but it got us out of the house.
Somewhere I have a ticket stub -$.14 + $.01 Tax.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: alanabit
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 04:05 PM

I reckon I must be even younger than some of the other posters here, because by the time I got to see the Saturday morning matinee, the entrance price had leapt up to sixpence. Still, I can't remember any other time in my life when I was entertained so well for so little expense.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: frogprince
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 04:21 PM

Gamble Rogers had a yarn about two ten year old buddies at the Saturday matinee, one of the funniest things I have ever heard on a record. The boys soaked a tub of popcorn with water, and threw the stuff off the balcony while making barfing sounds. All too believable.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Apr 10 - 05:41 PM

I seem to remember that a shilling would get entry, and (well maybe 2 shillings all up) at interval, a drink, a choc coated ice cream in a squarish edible cup, and maybe some lollies. Some drinks were bottled, like coke, but you could also get paper cups with lids and straws.

I grew up in Bundaberg. The theatre with the matinees was eventually stripped and all the theatre stuff sold off, and turned into a furniture display shop.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Leadfingers
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 11:05 AM

ABC Adelphi Haymills , Birmingham , for the ABC Minors on a Saturday morning ! A Ha'peenny bus ride each way ( We walked and had an extra penny for sweets )
Tuppence admission , tha Minors Song to the tune of Blaze away , the
Serial , ALLWAYS a Cliffhanger at the end to get us back next week .
I think after I was eleven I had outgrown it , especially as we moved Oop North to Blackpool in 1953 and I got into Autograph hunting !

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Dave Roberts
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 11:25 AM

Even Middlewich had its cinema - The Alhambra - now a chinese restaurant, but instantly recognisable as an old picture house, and it's nice that the name has been retained.
I went to the Saturday morning matinees a few times (the cinema closed circa 1963)and remember seeing The Three Stooges which, even then, I thought desperately unfunny.
Another great song about the saturday matinees is Bernard Wrigley's 'Saturday Cowboys'.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 11:43 AM

Saturday morning at the "Fleapit" (nobody seems to remember its real name. I think it might have been "The Regal"), in Portobello Road, Notting Hill, London. Between 1948 and 1954.

"Two penn'orth of laugh and scratch", a bag of cherries from the market barrow outside (you ate the cherries and spat the pips at the screen, where they would stick, giving an interesting texture to the picture).

A seedy looking bloke in a jacket that was an obvious hand-me-down from someone much more prosperour, and very much larger.

He was Uncle somebody or other, and used to make announcements, lead a bit of community song, and leave one step ahead of a swarm of missiles, mosty salted peanuts. They were so smothered in salt you could only eat about half a packet, so the rest were for throwing.

Seat mountings so rickety that you could throw yourself back in your seat at one end of the row, and shoot the poor little sod at the other end straight at the front of the stage. End seats were at a premium, and frequently fought over, usually resulting in both contestants being thrown out.

PROGRAM:-

Two cartoons

A Pathe Childrens Newsreel

A serial with cliffhanger endings which were totally unsurvivable (of course the hero always survived......by cheating).

And "THE FEATURE" Always over fifteen years old, with more splices than the oldest mainbrace in the fleet. Usually at least one complete scene had been lost, which was probably beneficial, as it exercised our imaginations, coming up with a theory about what happened during the missing bit.

Once every three months or so we had A COLOUR FILM. These were mostly even older, and usually they were westerns, or Foreign Legion, which actually made little difference. The story was the same:-

Evil Indians (Arabs) being naughty.
Gallant cowboys (Legionaires) holed up under siege.
Pretty Officer's lady (Mademoiselle), and common Saloon Girl (Belly Dancing Arab Girl), who sniped at each other and made bandages out of their petticoats (We never did understand why they were there), before becoming true friends in adversity.
They would fight off two or three attacks, and lose several men, without ever reloading (oh how we craved possession of one of those guns), then, just as they were about to be overrun, in came the Cavalry, bugles blaring, gumns blazing, and the villains were cut down.
The chief villain takes off, hotly pursued by the hero at a pace which, in real life, would cause their horses to spontaneously combust.
Villain tries to ambush hero, and they fight, on the edge of a cliff with a thirty foot drop. Villain overstretches and takes the dive, and he must be very fragile becuse it kills him.

Everybody gathers at the fort, and the two women wonder which of them the hero will choose, but "A man's gotta........" Well you know the rest.

It's off into the sunset, and I always thought "That man's a fool. It'll be dark in ten minutes and he's sure to ride over a cliff.


Then we all leapt to our feet, and ran like hell to get out before the National Anthem could force us to stand stll for an interminable half minute.

Out through the foyer, and blinking into the bright light outside.

Back to reality, and a whole desperate week to wait before finding out just how that fool in the serial manage to survive being locked in an office safe with two hundred rattlesnakes, and you know what?.....We really Cared!

Don T.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: LilyFestre
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 12:06 PM

When I first saw the title of the thread, I immediately thought of Saturday mornings spent in front of the television...early morning cartoons and then around 11:00am, some really cheesy B monster movie....loved every one of them!!! My favorite was "The Fall of the House of Usher." Funny you should bring this up as DH and I were talking about it just the other day....wishing they still had those cheesy monster movies on!!!

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: paula t
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 12:39 PM

I have to admit that when I was little, we couldn't afford weekly cinema trips.I didn't feel deprived though, because none of my friends could afford it either, and we lived a long way from town.

I went to the cinema for the first time as a Birthday treat from my Grandma.Bambi was the most wonderful thing I had ever seen!The colours, the music! It broke my heart.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 12:46 PM

Ah yes
We are the boys and girls well known
as Minors of the ABC
And every Saturday we line up
To see the films we like
And shout aloud with glee
We love to laugh and have a singsong
Such a happy crowd are we
We're all pals together
The minors of the ABC

3d at the ABC in George Lane.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: alanabit
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 03:14 PM

Keep the memories coming folks. Great post Don. I was chuckling all the way through. I had forgotten just how horrid we really were and just how bad the films were. Keep them coming...

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 07:29 PM

Sometime in the 70s - when an adult - when they used to still show 'shorts' at some cinemas, I saw a fall about funny parody of the 'black hat - white hat' cowboy movies.

Silent - part of the fun - and it took several minutes before one realised that something was missing - THE HORSES! The whole thing was done with stop motion for any scene involving horses - including the stage coach - but you could clearly see the hoof mark tracks!

Don't remember the title, sorry - would love to find it...

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 08:26 PM

Saturday morning after 1954 (when we got a television) we'd spend watching "Big Top" (a circus program), "Winky Dink" (put plastic on the screen by the magic of static electricity and then draw on it), and others. During the shows my mother was baking cookies and cakes.

The the afternoon we went to the movies at The Family Theatre, seven whole blocks from home! I think it cost a dime to get in; popcorn and such we couldn't afford so we'd bring gum or candies in our pockets. The movies have been discussed: Tarzan, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, The Lone Ranger, Range Rider, and such-like fare. Once in a great while there would be a Flash Gordon or other rocketeer movie, but mostly cowboys.

A cartoon of course started it all: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and the rest resonated through my childhood. Then a short: I remember one (in color!) on the Battle of Gettysburg. This was followed by the "coming attractions" and plugs to go buy popcorn and things, as well as some ads for local stores.

Then came the main feature, with cowboys, Indians, heroes, villains, soldiers, and more ammunition fired off than all of World Wars I and II combined -- and never a need to reload! Unless, of course, the Indians were attacking the fort/homestead/wagon train and someone said, "I've only got a couple more bullets left" which made everyone else realize that hey! we're running out of ammo! It was at this point, when the honor of the women and the lives of heroes were at stake, that the cavalry arrived.

Then the serial, with the heroine facing A Fate Worse Than Death every weekend (as if we knew what THAT meant!) as she tries to save the old homestead from foreclosure OR Flash Gordon battled Ming the Merciless OR Tom Corbett, Space Cadet....

So the questions as we left the theatre were deep and profound: Who was better, Roy? Gene? Hopalong? If Flash Gordon were to fight Tom Mix, who would win? And what about Tarzan -- what WAS his relationship with Cheetah before he met Jane? Well, maybe not the last one....

Walking home from a Downtown Movie Theater once my brother and I were scared out of our shoes when, as we were passing the Police Station, we were called inside! Since we hadn't been caught at anything we were worried -- until it turned out to be our Uncle Ed, who bought us each a Coke (six cents!) and showed us around the Cop Shop. Seeing AND TOUCHING! a real Tommy Gun was a lot more exciting than any movie -- I couldn't tell you what the movie had been to save my life.

Now later, when I started going to movies at night, well, I shall be a gentleman and a gentleman doesn't discuss what went on between him and the young lady accompanying him. I leave THAT to your imaginations.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Sorcha
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 08:41 PM

Ah yes....Saturday mornings in front of the tv with cartoons while my Mom braided my hair. TIGHT french braids. After I was a bit older and demanded that my hair be cut, Saturday AM was reserved for skip diving in the business district. Hey, I got Alices Restaurant that way!

Saturday afternoon was the matinee, we walked.

On the way home a stop at the old fashioned feed store was mandantory. Wooden, oiled floor, and wooden cabinets with drawers for the garden vegetable seeds, huge bins of corn and wheat. The main attraction at the feed store (other than the smell) was the African Green parrot, Polly. OF COURSE Polly talked and we were allowed to feed her a cracker too.

The last time I was home, the feed store AND the parrot were still there. (How long do parrots live anyway?) The theater has long since gone.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 09:04 PM

Ah - I see now - TV did not really have any serious cultural impact in Australia till the mid sixties, and even less in 'country' areas which happened still later the further out in the country one went, unlike perhaps in other nations.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 09:23 PM

Of course Saturday afternoon horse oprys in North America.

My experiences were in northern New Mexico, where we all bought a nickel's worth of piñons (pine nuts) in the shell, and spit the shells on the floor. The shell edges were hard and sharp so anyone coming barefoot was guaranteed sore or bleeding feet.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 11:53 PM

Alan - great thread.

This is the gist of the blurb from my new CD Sidekicks & Sagebrush.

As a kid growing up in Belfast, Saturdays would find me and my friends at the Arcadian Picture-house, or maybe the Clonard or the Diamond (which we also called "Lourdes" because you could go in crippled and come out walking - with fleas!), for a serial, a B-Western, a Three Stooges short and a cartoon all for sixpence - about a nickel.
For our parents it was a bargain for a couple of hours of peace and quiet.

But in the movie-house all was not peace and quiet. Far from it.
The shows were interactive before anyone knew what interactive meant.
If the villain was sneaking up behind an unsuspecting Roy or Gene we'd scream at the top of our lungs "Look out! He's behind you!"

And when good ol' Roy or Gene was fighting the bad guys, we'd start fighting and wrestling too, until an usher with his ever-present flashlight came and broke it up.
But when he walked away we'd be at it again, especially if thee was a love scene with kissing between the hero and the damsel in distress.

But it was OK for a hero to kiss his horse!

And when we got out, we'd all gallop home shooting at each other with our index fingers and spanking ourselves on the rump to get our imaginary horses to go faster.

My CD is a tip o' the Stetson to the singing cowboys – Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Rex Allen, Tex Ritter, Eddie Dean; and the non-singing ones like Hopalong Cassidy, the Durango Kid and Lash LaRue; and their sidekicks – the Andys ~ Devine and Clyde; the Fuzzys ~ Knight and St. John; Smiley "Frog" Burnette; and of course the inimitable King of the Sidekicks ~ George "Gabby" Hayes.
And to their musical groups - particularly Bob Nolan and the Sons Of The Pioneers (who occasionally doubled as sidekicks), for their dazzling harmonies and instrumentation, and for all the classic Western songs like Tumbling Tumbleweeds, Cool Water and Way Out There.

Also to Foy Willing And The Riders Of The Purple Sage, to Spade Cooley and to some talented groups performing that music today, such as Riders In The Sky with their great yodeler Ranger Doug (the idol of American youth!), and their very own sidekick – Sidemeat. Or the Sons Of The San Joaquin, or Prickly Pair… I could go on, but you'd be reading this all day.

So return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when the daring and resourceful cowboys of the silver screen – and their sidekicks – galloped on their gallant steeds into our hearts and memories

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 20 Apr 10 - 11:54 PM

BTW, I think I've just made this a musical thread, so up above the line it goes....

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 12:38 AM

"If the villain was sneaking up behind an unsuspecting Roy or Gene we'd scream at the top of our lungs "Look out! He's behind you!"

Aha! Good old British Panto!

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Rowan
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 01:41 AM

Our local film theatre was at the top of Bastings St (the hill was a steep climb for bikes with no gears and was the venue of the Billy Cart Derbies) and the events were just as D(W)T described them. Except that the matinees were all on Saturday afternoons. I was completely unaware of this anachronism until I started studying French, when it bothered me a little. Rolling Jaffas down the floor, checking out the cartoons on the Minties' wrappers or the gossip on the FanTales' wrappers.

But there were also the special events films, often held at the local Rechabites Hall or the parish hall, where we'd be treated to Fatty Arbuckle, Abbott & Costello (the actors, not the politicians); I never worked out the reasons behind those events.

Little slabs of icecream between wafers were my favourites.

And all that ended when I started playing team sports on Saturday afternoons. The cinema (as it later became) was stripped and taken over by something else (and the Rechabites Hall no longer exists, although it lasted long enough to show the Whipple (Whittle?) Family do their whip-cracking and magic shows. We had to go to the Westgarth Theatre if we wanted to see a film, after then. And TV killed that off in about 1958; The Long Long Trailer was the last film I saw there and put me off caravans for life.

Where would we be without nostalgia?

Cheers, Rowan

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 01:53 AM

Foolstroupe, I think that's where we learned it.
Oh no, you didn't!
Oh yes, we did!

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 01:57 AM

Another memory....sometimes we actually paid with jam-jars to get in to the movies.
There was still a glass shortage in the post-war years, and so for the cheap movies they owners would let us pay with jam-jars on which they made a profit when they sold them to the glass factories.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 02:07 AM

Slight thread drift from Saturday mornings, but one night at the local fleapit which showed third- and fourth-run movies, some local wag smuggled in 9 or 10 pigeons and let them loose during the climactic scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds".

I wasn't there, but from reports, hilarity and pandemonium ensued.

I wonder would all the hijinks mentioned earlier in various posts work in today's Multiplex giant-screen tilt-seat movie houses?

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 01:30 PM

By the way, the old Family Theatre is now long gone, torn down and replaced by a parking lot. Many youthful hours were lost there, along with the occasional girlish innocence.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Crow Sister (off with the fairies)
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 01:49 PM

Don T: "A serial with cliffhanger endings which were totally unsurvivable (of course the hero always survived......by cheating)."

Super memories DonT!
When I was a kid in the late Seventies they played this on BBC2: King of the Rocket Men!
I watched it because it was about the same time as Monkey Magic
(No-body in their thirties will fail to remember this. Definitive highlight of every Seventies child's week!)

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 02:12 PM

I never had any Saturday Morning Matinee experience as a kid. I'm not even sure whether our local cinemas had them.

What I do remember as a kid was going to "the tenpenny place" - a high gallery in an old music hall which had been converted into a cinema. Quite excitig, with a steep row of benches rather than seats, and you felt if you got too excited you might fall over the edge.

The other thing was in those days cinemas had "continuous performance", so you could stay and watch the film through again - or come in half-way through a film, and then watch it from the beginning to work out how the story actually went. Sometimes you'd find out that the people you thought were the baddies were the goodies, and so forth. A whole diffeent way of seeing films.

And of course they also used to have double features, with a B movie. You got value for your money in those days, especially if you had only paid tenpence to get in. Ten old pence that was - 5p in modern money.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 05:46 PM

Actually, I can't now be sure whether the Matinees in Bundaberg were morning or afternoon. At the time, shop workers regularly did Saturday mornings.

I was reminded of the Brisbane 'Newsreels cinemas'. My mum took me a couple of times while waiting for doctor's appointments, etc.

They were downstairs in Queen Street, there was at least one. Small, max probably of about 100 people. The main attraction was the Newsreels. The Aussie ones, which also ran at normal picture shows, gave local news, the Foreign ones did overseas news. Before TV, they were the only way one could see moving pictures of news events.

Program ran continuously (don't know between what hours), newsreels, shorts such as 3 stooges, maybe a cartoon. It was a nice place to catch up on news, have a quiet warm spot in bad weather.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Ebbie
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 05:52 PM

Seamus, you may be about the same age as a Juneau friend of mine- he is in awe of Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers. He grew up on the Colorado prairie, has played in bands since he was 13 years old, collects old songs and has literally hundreds of them printed out and will make music any time, any where.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 06:51 PM

Ebbie - I always thought that Bob Nolan should have been a hero with his own movies, but apparently he resisted the studios' efforts in that direction.
He was quite content being a sidekick and a musician.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: frogprince
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 09:05 PM

I never got in on the Saturday matinees as a kid; our farm was too far from no where. About the first I ever got to any super-cheap double features was years later, at an old theater in Waukegan, IL.
They ran everything from some first great older movies (I first saw "Hud" there) to "D" or "F" stuff. A friend and I sat through "Battle Beyond the Sun" there one night. It was re-edited from a Russian made Sci-Fi. You can buy a copy online for 25 cents, which I would consider way too much. There are a couple of reviews online too, giving it 2 or 2 1/2 stars. I couldn't possibly give it one star; 1/2 star would be stretching it. The plot was barely discernable, the editing was hopeless, and the special effects included non-animated monsters pasted up from colored paper being flopped against each other from off camera. The current online info says that Francis Ford Cuppola acquired the Russian film, reworked it, and put it out under a pseudonym.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: frogprince
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 09:07 PM

...first rate older movies...

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Wesley S
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 11:02 PM

When we bought bags of popcorn there would be a number written on the bag so there could be a raffle for prizes. I don't remember winning anything......

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: catspaw49
Date: 21 Apr 10 - 11:29 PM

In 1955 I was six years old and by then probably half or so of the homes in the small east Ohio town where I was born had TV sets. The State Theater was 15 cents for kids. It was the best of all worlds. Older serials of Sci-Fi and westerns plus newer productions were happening both on TV and at the movies. Growing up back then in place like that gave us a freedom with safety that few kids have today. It also gave us a wealth of "Imagination Games" where we were the cowboys or the bad guys or whatever we wanted to play.

When we played cowboys there were never any Indians. Just good guys and bad guys. And when did we play? Saturdays gave us a wealth of new material and new ideas that we went right outside and enacted. From Bob Steele to Tim McCoy to Johnny Mack Brown, we had the movie cowboys in abundance. Of course to really play you needed a few things like six shooters and rifles and maybe a hat.....but that wasn't required.

The TV had brought some of the movie cowboys into our homes so we also had Roy and Gene and Rex Allen plus Hoppalong Cassidy and the Cisco Kid. They were all brought to us by the good folks who wanted our parent's money for more gear just like today. Even allowing for inflation and everything else, cap guns were a lot cheaper than today's computer games.

The Saturday Matinee also often had the the REAL movies currently showing, especially the cowboy kind. So we got to meet Jimmy Stewart, Audie Murphy, Alan Ladd, and John Wayne which gave us even more material. If you weren't influenced in your playing by this, you were brain dead. You wore your gun higher or lower or really low, or backwards and you drew crossbody.......because whatever it was, it was cool. Of course learning to die or be wounded was another skill.

LOL......I could write a hundred pages...........Every once in awhile I drag up another of those memories and I would like to go back and relive just one of those days again. I loved my childhood and the simpler world we had then. We might have worried about the bomb but we didn't worry about much else..........and I can see those kids.......Mark, Joey, Riley Mike, Jimmy, and I can see the hedges and houses and hear the shouts of
"Gotcha" and "No, you didn't," ............

Wanna' talk about who was better? Flash Gordon, Captain Video, of Captain Midnight and his Secret Squadron?   Maybe another time.......


Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: alanabit
Date: 22 Apr 10 - 12:39 AM

Great post Spaw. Keep em coming folks!

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Ebbie
Date: 22 Apr 10 - 12:55 AM

Spaw, I once met a tall, goodlooking Sioux and I told him that I and my brothers went through an Indian obsession. Exaggerating just a bit, I said, Put it this way: when we played Cowboys and Indians, the Indians won.

He thought for a minute then he said, We just played Indians and Indians.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: Allan C.
Date: 22 Apr 10 - 06:08 AM

During many of my elementary school years, I lived just a few blocks from the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. Going to the Saturday afternoon matinee was as natural to me as going to school. In fact, my school was just a few doors down from the theater.

Somewhere near the end of the school year the students of the school were given the opportunity to buy a summer's supply of movie tickets. It was quite a deal over the usual 50 cents admission price and so I somehow convinced my parents to buy them. The tickets were not only good for the matinee, but for any show, anytime. It was by way of these tickets that I got to see such wonderful films as "Old Yeller", "Spiral Staircase", and even "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". (Films weren't rated in those days, and, looking back, there really wasn't much reason to do so by the time the Hollywood censors were done with them.)

I still love films. I had the good fortune of seeing some of the best (and worst) when they first hit the big screen. I wouldn't trade those times for anything. I nearly always left the theater feeling so good, so energized, that I could not help myself but to break into a run and run all the way home.

BTW,I swear that I never did it; but whenever the film broke and that bright light hit the screen until the projectionist got his/her act together, someone would invariably sail a flattened popcorn box through the beam. The intensity of the light reflected by the box was nearly blinding, but impossible to keep one's eyes from seeing.

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: kendall
Date: 22 Apr 10 - 06:55 AM

This reminds me of a skit with Art Kearney and Jacqui Gleason in the Honeymooners. They were in a row about "Cowboys" one said "Hoot Gibson could outdraw Tom Mix any day".

Subject: RE: BS: Saturday Morning Matinee
From: kendall
Date: 22 Apr 10 - 06:59 AM

I loved to hear the Sons of the Pioneers. ...you may think a certain place has got me, and from there I never will go; but you son of a gun I'll bet a hundred to one I'll grab my saddle horn and go o o o o, I'll grab my saddle horn and go o o. The harmonies were great.

By the way, I have Seamus' CD and it is a keeper.