ABC

At around the tender age of seven or eight my Mom obviously felt I could be trusted  enough to be out by myself and so I began my weekly visits to the Saturday Children’s  Matinees. These cheaply priced shows were always packed out, although I have no memory of how I arrived at the cinema, (I assume that Mom would have left me at the cinema entrance and then gone on to do her weekly shop, leaving me to make my own way home). You’ll notice that I said me, my brother only went a couple of times before saying he wasn’t interested any more…he was the sportsman and couldn’t sit still for more than fifteen minutes, while I would have gone two or three times a week! There were two cinemas that did the children’s Saturday shows in Wolverhampton, The Savoy/ABC and the Gaumont and for a time I used to alternate my weekly visits between them, eventually finding that I enjoyed the Saturdays at the ABC a great deal more. I can’t begin to tell you how much I enjoyed my visits to these film shows, along with the cartoons, the singalongs, the birthday presentations, and even a couple of live acts on stage at the Gaumont, it was rowdy at times, but always vastly entertaining. However, strangely enough only two films have stuck in my mind from those days. The first was a feature about some children who help an odd, but friendly little alien, who could turn into a flying saucer. And secondly a Gene Autry 12 part serial, called ‘The Phantom Empire’, it had a vast underground city, called Murania, robots galore and an evil queen, who had ambitions of conquering the “surface dwellers”. When I look back on it now, Gene seemed more concerned about getting back to the ranch in time to perform on his radio show than saving us mortals from the subterranean menace. Years later  I discovered that the feature was made by Children’s Film Foundation and was entitled ‘Supersonic Saucer’, it’s now playing regularly on Talking Pictures TV, in the UK. When I worked at Derann I would discover just how many films the CFF had produced, as they turned up with great regularity on 16mm and the popularity of the Saturday Matinees was brought home to me when we released a number of related adverts and logos on Super 8. In all honesty I don’t even recall how many years I went to the Saturday shows and the only other memory I have is that of walking home after the show and buying a ‘Puff-Puff’ cigarette, a child’s fake ‘ciggy’ that you had to puff through and powder would produce a smoke effect. Bet you can’t buy those now!! At around this time I was also tempted to try the junior group of the Scouts, the ‘Cubs’. I was given a small leaflet and several lengths of string and was told to take a seat in the corner and practice making knots! The leaflet gave careful instructions and illustration on several “important knots” which it said i would be using regularly. I never returned for a second visit. [I’ve added an assortment of early family photos of myself, along with my brother and my mother.