1937 Manchester, England
Interview with Audrey Meecham
Born in 1932
Northenden, Manchester England
September 19, 2019
By Elizabeth Ruddy
As your most ancient relation, I can probably claim to have seen all the earliest films! I remember Disney’s Snow White [1937] and Shirley Temple in The Bluebird [1940] which I think was based on a Maeterlinck story. Later came Bambi [1942] and buckets of tears.
I think the first movie (or film or picture, as we called them) I remember was Snow White. It was the first Disney full-length cartoon, though I may have seen some Mickey Mouse short features before them. I would have been at least four or five years old, so I must have been accompanied by my older brother and at least one grown-up. I remember I was terrified of the personified trees in the stormy forest. Fortunately, there were no long-lasting effects and I could soon walk by trees again without getting too scared! Dopey and Happy were my favorite dwarfs.
I also remember seeing The Reluctant Dragon [1941], although I probably didn’t know back then what “reluctant” meant. There was an introduction at the beginning showing how cartoons were animated: each scene was drawn painstakingly by hand. My brother, I remember, was really fascinated by the technique.
We always walked to the theater. It was certainly not worth taking the bus for a 10-15 minute walk. Our local cinema was the Forum Theatre. I didn’t realize there was a full stage behind those elaborate curtains until much later! This was in Northenden, Manchester in England (not “by-the-sea”!) in the early years of the second World War. Films at that time were a great escape from everything that was going on.
“Going to the pictures”, as we called it, was enough of a treat without candy or sweets (which were not encouraged by our parents anyway). But if it was a special occasion, there might be ice cream in the interval, served by an usherette with a tray and a torch. There was always a full programme: news, cartoons, advertising, the feature, and possibly even a second feature, usually a B-list movie.
I still love films to this day. We have a film club once a month here in Pott Shrigley in the school (which is also our village hall), and I’m looking forward to visiting a local cinema which has just re-opened after many years’ closure. We can even see some of the oldies on a TV channel called “Talking Pictures”. But nothing beats the thrill of going to the pictures like we used to.
Citations:
Snow White: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0029583/
Bluebird: https://www.moviepostershop.com/the-blue-bird-movie-poster-1940
Bambi: http://www.impawards.com/1942/bambi_ver5.html
The Reluctant Dragon: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0034091/
The Forum Cinema: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/22563/photos/201341
