1952 Liverpool, England

Norma Winsland
Born: 1943
Liverpool, England
Interviewed on 1/27/2019
by Lucy McEwan

I used to go to a cinema in Old Swan every Saturday for the matinee. It was called The Premier. I used my pocket money to go with my friends. Only kids went to the matinee. I knew everyone in there because it was so local. You could go on your own without your mum or dad because it was only a ten-minute walk away and there was only one road to cross; it felt so grown-up.

It was cowboys and Indians every time. Sometimes it would be cowboys fighting cowboys and sometimes it would be cowboys fighting Indians. The goodies won every time. I used to sit there and really concentrate. You had to concentrate – the movies were exciting so no one messed around or talked to each other. All the films had sound, too. They were such good quality. The boys always used to scream and shout when the baddies were caught. I didn’t go there because of the boys, though. I wasn’t interested in them back then because I went to school with them – I was only young!

I don’t remember each of the films. It all rolls into one but it seems like I had been going for a long time. I remember they were all along the same lines – the cowboys chased people on their horses and then captured them. The cowboys always had nice girls or were trying to get nice girls. The Indians all had nice girls too – they would have long black hair and have lovely animal skin or leather dresses. The girls sometimes rode horses, too, but they would never shoot anyone!

After, I used to go home and tell my mum about who killed who and what happened – but I don’t think she was that bothered. Then, on Monday we would go into school and talk about who shot who and how the goodies won. The boys would always pretend to ride on horses and chase after each other whilst pretending to be the cowboys on the playground. Even (my brother) Freddie had a full cowboy costume complete with the hat and everything. Freddie started coming when he was a bit older with his friends. We would walk separately, though; he didn’t want to be seen with a girl.

My friends from primary school used to save me a spot in the queue. That was allowed because there weren’t any adults there. The adults probably had other things to be doing so they catered for the children in the matinees and catered for the adults in the evening. We queued up down an alleyway next to the cinema. When they opened the doors, we would all go rushing in.

There was about a hundred or so seats and they were all dark maroon and there was a dark patterned carpet. There were dark curtains on either side of the screen that would be pulled back before the film started. It looked like the Woolton Cinema (another picture house in Liverpool). That was built in 1927 and they must have been built at around the same time. They were built for the ordinary people, you know?

The cinema didn’t smell like popcorn like it does today. It smelled like dust! They didn’t sell popcorn, or sweets, or even drinks. But they always had an interval and the usher would roll the ice box down to the front and we would go down the aisle to buy an ice-lolly. They didn’t have fancy names – they weren’t posh ones or anything. They would always be red or orange and fruit-flavoured with a stick and a paper wrapper. They weren’t expensive either. They were about three pence. It was a sixpence to get into the film. But mind you, I only got a shilling pocket money a week! I don’t remember there being ushers. There was just someone in the ticket office and then someone selling ice-lollys.

The first film I specifically remember seeing was Mandy Miller, or Mandy. The cowboy film stars I had seen previously were all American. But Mandy was English, I think. I remember it so well as it was the first time that I went to an evening show and my mum and dad took me there. I was about nine years old. The film was so sad. It was about a little girl who was deaf when she was born. She also couldn’t speak, and her mum wanted her to go to the deaf school so that she could learn how to, but her father disagreed. I cried and cried. I remember my mum and dad didn’t cry at all – but I definitely wasn’t the only one in the cinema crying.

Mandy was just like any other child. She had long shoulder-ish-length hair and wore a pinafore and a jumper just like I did. It was so awful because it was the first time that I really got a reality shock. I had no idea that people went through these things; I didn’t know anyone who was deaf. It was shocking to me how different her life was because she couldn’t talk or hear anything.

Although I was crying, when my mother asked me if I enjoyed it, I just said “yes”. They probably thought I would like it because it was about a young girl not far from my age. I couldn’t sleep at all that night worrying about Mandy. Oh, it was probably a true story. I didn’t envy that Mandy at all – it was just so sad.

I don’t remember much else about the film – I just remember it being incredibly sad and that’s why it stuck in my mind.

I went once more in the evening when I was thirteen. Auntie Tish took me to see The Ten Commandments. She used to go every Wednesday in the evening with her friend and they would see whatever was on the screen. I think she only took me because she didn’t have anyone to go with that night.

The Premier wasn’t a big modern cinema like they used to have in town. The ones in town would show really popular films like Gone with the Wind and they had this one film with a huge gorilla. I think it was called King Kong. I only went to the fancy cinemas in town when I met Tommy (my husband) when I was about seventeen. We used to go and sit in the circle. You know, they had cinemas like theatres with floor seats and the circle up high. I remember we used to go on dates and sit in the middle of the circle. He would always need to go to the bathroom and everyone around me would grumble because they had to stand up to let him past. I was so embarrassed – I’ll never forget that.