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ABC Minors !!

S

Sid Walker

knowlegable brummie
Does anyone remember being a "ABC Minor" on a Saturday morning at the cinema at Six Ways. A serial, lots of cartoons,maybe the Three Stoogies,and no advertisments!!!! Memories indeed. :lol: :lol:
 
We are the boys and girls all known as..
Minors of the ABC...
And every Saturday all line up...
To see the films we like and shout aloud with glee..
We like to laugh and have our sing-song...
Such a happy crowd are wee..eeeee
We're all pals together...
We're Minors of the ABC.
 
Rod,
HaHa! I could see the ball bouncing along the words on the screen as I read that.
tigrou_bis.gif


Sid,
Have you still got your luminuos badge so we can see you in the dark?
 
:D I still have mine and also a special one put out in 1953 for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Chris :)
 
ABC Minors

We come along on Saturday morning

Greeting everybody with a smile.

We come along on Saturday morning

Knowing it's WELL WORTH WHILE!

As members of the Odeon Club

We all intend to be

Good Citizens when we grow up

And Champions of the Free!

We come along on Saturday morning!

Greeting everybody with a Smile

Smile!

SMILE!!

Greeting everybody with a smile."

That's what we sang, my brother and I at the Odeon Perry Barr when we went along on Saturday mornings. My mother, who liked us to do
things in the area of Witton and Perry Barr suggested we join this ABC Minors not the one at the Palace Cinema Erdington. I loved the walk along Birchfield Road past all the shops to get to the cinema sometimes
buying a cream bun to share with our few pennies from Baines' shop.

You received free entry to the cinema if it was your birthday and I can
remember having to sing "Abide With Me" on a Saturday morning when King George had died that week in February 1952.

The Odeon at Perry Barr was a very impressive cinema and I went
to films there on visits to Brum in the early l970's.
 
Because of the free entry for birthday boys and girls I told porkies to Uncle Len and claimed several every year. That's why I've aged so quickly.
giggle.gif
 
ABC Minors

Alas I don't have my badge mores the pity, just great memories of days gone by. I got caught once sneaking in,but I was too early before the doors opened,and was quickly thrown out. :(
 
At The Winson Green Picture Palace Saturday afternoon matinee (not ABC Minors) a couple of us would pay in and open the side emergency doors for the rest of the gang.
add12.gif
 
YES THE ABC MINORS AT THE ROBIN HOOD CINEMA ON STRATFORD ROAD IN HALL GREEN FLASH GORDEN ETC IN A BIG CLIFF HANGER BUT THE NEXT WEEK IT WAS ANOTHER FILM SO WE NEVER KNEW WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM.
JOHN EDWARD SWANSEA EX BRUMMIE
 
I did go to the ABC Minors at Robin Hood but I just don't seem to be able to place it was it at the Shirley Road End. There was also a cinema at the Olton Boulevard wasn't there?
 
I CAN'T REMBEMBER WHAT ROAD IT WAS ON THE CORNER OF IT WAS ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE OF THE ROAD I CAN REMEMBER ATCO MOWERS THEN A PUB HOUSES THEN SHOPS THERE WAS A PUBLIC LOO THEN MORE SHOPS THEN THE PICTURES AS FAR AS I KNOW IT BECAME ANOTHER SUPERMARKET SITE THE SAME AS THE RIALTO A BIT FURTHER BACK NEARER TO SPARKHILL NEXT TO THE DAIRY THEN BACK AGAIN WAS THE PICADILLY AND AROUND THE CORNER FROM THAT WAS THE CINEMA WHICH SHOWED INDIAN AND ETHNIC FILMS BACK IN THE 60'S BY THE NUMBER 8 BUS STOPS. THE ONE IN OLTON WAS NEXT TO THE GOLDEN ARROW LONG GONE I BELIEVE
JOHN EDWARD
 
HI ROD THANKS FOR THE BADGE I WISHED I STILL HAD MINE I AM TRYING TO REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE MINORS I SEEMED TO THINK YOU WENT ON TO JOIN ANOTHER CLUB STILL ON A SATURDAY BUT IT STARTED AFTER THE MINORS.HAPPY DAYS
JOHN EDWARD
 
RodBirch said:
Minors badge
Click to expand...

Yes, I had that badge too - used to occasionally go to the Orient at Six Ways for the minors matinee on Sat mornings.  This would be in the very early sixties when even then they would still show stuff like Old Mother Riley !!  Oh, daughter, daughter  .......! :2funny:
 
Its a bit rusty on the back, but for some reason the badge looks like its pink in the scan, when in fact its a orange colour really. :-\
 
Ive posted this before but maybe someone might read it and itll make me famous  :angel:

The Flix

Ive waited all week for Saturday
Were going to the flix for the matinee
Its off up the Orient for our Alan and me
A tanner each for the entrance fee
If you pay ninepence you can go upstairs
But well watch down below we have no cares
On the way in we buy our rocks
Shove an everlasting toffee down me socks
The music quiets, the lights go dim
John Waynes on later I dont know what film hes in
The curtains draw, its starting soon!
Pearl & Dean on first then a cartoon
Time for the Serial its Batman I think
Last week his car went over the brink
This week hes saved by his mate Robin
If hed died me and Alan would have ended up sobbing
Its the intermission the Choc Ices are here
Were first in the queue have no fear!
Us kids quickly quiet the big films coming on
This week hes a cowboy, we love Big John
He kills all the Injuns single handed
Rides off on his horse, our hero hes branded
The matinees over its time to get out
All us kids are excited weve started to shout
Its off down Newtown slapping me arse
Riding in the horse road no thought for the cars!
We act out the film, Im a Cavalry man
My dream is soon shattered, by the horn from a van
What a morning weve had our Alan and me
Cant wait for next Saturday and the matinee
(c)
Rod Birch 2003
 
You know Chris, I just love your badges. It's great that you loved them enough to take them out to NZ all those years ago.
 
I'm still waiting to hear if Postie's still glows in the dark ;) ;)
 
The Robin Hood was on the corner of Ingestre road and as you say its a super market now, but the little row of single story shops is still there.
 
hi rod top of the morning to you , i liked your article on the flix , and i liked the pics of your badges i remember when they first issued them out , but unfortuately i haven,t got them now , when iwas a kid and lived up cromwell terrace lichfield rd aston at 5/92 there were a big army of kids , it was like the movies crazy gang , and we would go down along the lichfield rd go to where the big family of the sargents lived and we would have a gang fight with them we would chase them up and down there entry and they would chase us back down , to ours but we was only seven or eight or nine years old ,, any way getting back to the badges , a kid by the name of morriss newman was the first kid up the terrace to get the badges , when he told us of his new addition , co,s he collected badges we asked where he got them from , and when he told us we all decided we want one , so all the kids asked there moms can they go to the picures , in the end we all got one we was all wearing them and feeling proud as punch, , i often wonder what ever happened to the family of cromwell terrace , names i can recall are jenny gough , morris newman katrina branston , she was the posh one peter sharpe , bryan haddock , he moved to alum rock way back in 1954 /55/ patty sheldon johny seabourne the trowman twin, s or brothers caral gammage , ray ,and terry jarratt, and of course my very best mate through and through was colin gaskin , he had two sisters name janet and sandra , whom i believe went to work at H P SAUCE on the day i went to join the army in the waiting area sitting oppersite me was a person i thought i knew, so i spoke out to him , i said you remind me of an old school friend and neibour and he said i was just thinking that myself and we introduced our selfs and god almighty it was him after all these years , he was going into the tank regiment , just like his father he had been an officier in there for years before he married his mother ,and i was going into the royal warick fusaliars , and iv,e never seen again after all these years, but getting back to the flicks ,rod , i got the badge and worn it , and lost it many years ago in my school days , and i was a real film buff, especialy for the western,s i take by what you are saying you was a big fan of the duke himself , big john wayne, i liked him , but my hero was and still a member of the club his roy rogers and trigger , i have got several annuals of the old books with roy and trigger , i was so obessed with him i used to go to the astoria on victoria rd , aston on a saturday morning and pay threepence for the mattee , and go back on the evening and pay a tanner for the evening show , and i would go along the rd to the aston cross pic, or to the aldephie on the aston cross ,which was turned into atv studios, when roy was being shown , there , i was just like any other kid whom ever came out of the pictures and reand act what i had seen, especialy being a cow boy we ,ve all been there my aunt maud smart used to work there in the fifties in the box office and she would smuggle me in under her coat , on the saturday afternoon, on the last occasion when i came out i pretentend to be roy rodgers on trigger , i came out of the pics house pretentending to hold the horses reins, and gallop along the road for afew yards and pretend i was talking to trigger ,, saying things like hang on trgger theres one of those dammed motor cars , which was in them days the old baby austin pulling out just out side woolworths , i said okay trigger letts go , but unfortunealy trigger and me got knocked down and it was a hit and run driver , and i ended up in the old general hospital, and they operated on me all night to save me with a blood transfusion and debating whether or not to amplitate my leg co,s the bone had smashed to a pulp, , and they decided to put a plate in there becos the bone had gone and i can walk on that , my grand father ernie jelf was in that hospital and in the same ward and the same bed on the previos day having his toes ampitated on his right foot, some of my family say i look like my grand father jelf, and i certainly look like my mother , whom was his only child, her name joyce ivvy beatrice jelf, sorry if i have gone off the tracks abit rod butits my part of the memories of the flicks ,and movies , and hero , s and of cours badges, his there any more fans of roy rodgers, out there , ? can i just mention to you rod , that when i was a big film buff ; my biggest favourite film of all time was april love starring pat boone , i used to pay half a crown at the crown picture house on ickneild port road lady wood and i went every afternoon and night showing of that film it must have been at least 200 hundred times, there rod , here his my hero the king of the wild west, and one of my favorite annuals 1552,, addios my friends , astonian ,;;;;



 
i used to go to the kingsway kings heath, remember / cpt marvel// gene autry// hopalong cassidy// tom mix// the serials,
we used to come home and argue who was going to be (if it was cowboys) gene autry or hopalong cassidy// or cpt marvel if we played marvel stuff

jake
 
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