Tuesday 15 December 2015

Former Regal projectionist speaks out!


I recently heard from Michael Beeny, who used to work at the Regal in the 1980s as a projectionist. Below are his memories of working there, along with a photo he was kind enough to send. Many thanks to Mike for allowing me to share them here. Bonus points to anyone who can identify which film posters are on display outside!


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The cinema itself was quite a plain looking unit with nothing special in the auditorium. Plain walls with two exits to the right, which led into George (Randall)'s garden. He hated people taking a short cut through it!

The heating never really worked that well; in winter it could be really cold. The radiators were supplemented with two noisy fan heaters wired to the radiator pipes - would be quite illegal these days (and probably then also!)

The picture and sound were however quite good; mono of course.

Originally all the seats were the same: small and quite hard. Later, half of the auditorium's seats were replaced with top of the range cinema seats, which were really very nice. This led to a price rise of 10 pence for the new seats. So we now had two admission prices of 40p and 30p, and somehow we had to make sure people sat in the right price area. You can imagine the problems policing that one!

George did NOT like afternoon matinees; his one exception to this was the school holidays. We would have a Disney show on Tuesdays at 2.30pm. This was always packed to capacity and beyond! After all the seats were sold we would let in up to 50 extra kids free, but they had to sit on the floor - again very illegal (even then), blocking aisles and fire exits, but everyone was happy.

In one such show (full of course), I was upstairs projecting the film and a tremendous rain storm flooded the gutter that ran past the projection box, and water began to flood in. As the floor was below the other areas, it soon started to fill with water. I got soaked as the water poured in. The show must go on, however, so I had to cover the sound rack with plastic. I ended up without my shirt and trousers and ran the remaining 20 minutes of the film in my underwear. By the end there was 3 inches of water on the floor - how I wasn't electrocuted I shall never know! No-one in the cinema had any idea of the drama in the projection box. I did get paid an extra £10 that week, which was quite a lot in those days.

At that time I was the only projectionist, so special shows fell on my shoulders. This was normally not a problem, but the special shows for schools were a problem because I was still at school! I had to suddenly become "ill" so I could have the day off in order to screen the film. I just had to keep out of sight when the teachers were about!

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