1950 Rotherham, England

Leslie Coburn

Born 01/29/1945

Rotherham, England

Interviewed on 01/24/2018

by Jodie Coburn

“Absolutely wonderful!” My grandfather gushes as I ask how he had enjoyed his first time at the movie theatre. It was really quite a treat hearing his voice dance as he recounted the Saturday mornings of his childhood spent at The Paragon, a one-room theatre that had once beckoned great swathes of young children, couples and old friends alike in the small, working-class town of Rotherham.

He describes the place in remarkable detail.

“It cost 3d (1 cent) to sit in the downstairs, and 6d to sit in the upstairs. There was an intermission where a lady would offer tubs of ice cream. We were only fortunate enough to get some when we went with our parents, they were expensive.” He remembers, laughing. “The manager of the theatre would make us sing along to the National Anthem before each film was shown, and if you weren’t singing loud enough the manager would come onstage and shout at you!”

A swarm of school friends would accompany my grandfather, then 5 years old, and his older brother, Colin, to the pictures each Saturday. The walk to the movie theatre would take somewhere around 15 minutes, and the gaggle of schoolboys would bustle excitedly, eagerly anticipating the next installment of The Roy Rogers Show.

My grandfather and his friends were enthralled by this American Western series, which details the adventures of the eponymous main character.

“Roy Rogers was a hero, someone to look up to. “ My grandfather is captivated, his eyes alight with child-like wonder. He is five years old again.

“Each episode started off with Roy Rogers sitting on his horse, Trigger, with a guitar in his hand. He would be plodding along, and then, all of sudden, the baddies would come out and attack! The film always finished on a cliff-hanger where Roy Rogers was in a spot of bother and you’d have to wait until next Saturday to find out what happened to him. I’d spend the next week thinking about how he could escape the trouble that he had gotten himself into.”

The other theatergoers were just as devoted to the escapades of Roy Rogers as my grandfather. “The cinema was noisy because the audience would cheer when Roy Rogers shot somebody.”

For my grandfather, the fun didn’t end with the closing of the curtains. When they returned home from The Paragon, my grandfather and his friends would re-enact the scenes that they had just seen.

“We had this piece of wood that was shaped like a gun and some wooden broom handles that were our horses.” The following afternoons would be spent by the boys straddling the broomstick like a horse, waving around their make shift guns and causing considerable ruckus.

“It was such a fun time, Roy Rogers was just excellent!”

It is clear that my grandfather has held these memories dear to him over the decades that have since elapsed from those precious weekends.