CONFESSIONS OF A CINEMA EMPLOYEE

[Chris B]

HI All,
as everyone appeared to enjoy the article CONFESSIONS OF A CINEMA EMPLOYEE I decided to put fingers to keyboard again and write another episode entitled FURTHER CONFESSIONS ....... (not very imaginative I know)
so here goes with chapter one.

Further Confessions Of ------






Chapter one
A LIFE CHANGING DECISION.




The Sheldon Cinema had now gone from the face of the earth, and the Presto supermarket was in full swing on the site, we needed another supermarket in this area like a hole in the head.
Now Prior to the final demise of the cinema and during the redevelopment planning process the owners had met with a hostile reception at the initial public meetings, in the redevelopment plans they even offered to include a community center for use by the local population, all this for just a pepper corn rent, if the residents agreed to the proposals, also there was to be a supermarket with a new cinema on the top, plus a small hotel with a multi storey car park at the rear, this first plan was thrown out because the residents whose houses faced onto the car park could all be overlooked by motorists parking their cars. The second presentation which was sometime later had a revised plan a lower multi storey car park, community centre and a supermarket with new cinema on top, no hotel, now the attendance to this second meeting was somewhat less well attended, but never the less the plan was thrown out again. It was now many months down the line and a third and last revised plan and meeting took place, the number of residents in attendance this time was negligible, the plan comprised of just the supermarket and a surface car park, no community centre, no new cinema. The previous opposition had been defeated by the developers spinning the time out and the apathy of the local residents that had crept in during this long and protracted planning application. And so the plans were given the go ahead. Now the public had a supermarket and nothing else and I had a model cinema in the back garden.
The year was 1979 and there had been a change of management at the Co-operative Department store where I was still working and this had made the last two years in the job somewhat unpleasant, and it was at this time that I was informed that the Warwick Cinema in Acocks Green Birmingham needed a Manager so I decided to apply. I was selected for the job and gave in my notice at the Store; many of my colleagues expressed their fear for my future, because as a lot of them said “they’re closing a lot of cinemas down, you’ve got a good future and a job for life here” (ironically the Department Store closed down in 1985, job for life ?) I must admit that in the cold light of day I did have some doubts creep in as to whether I had made the right decision, The Co-op had given me the offer of rescinding my notice right up until my last day of employment there, but running a cinema was a job I had always wanted to do and at the age of 36 I thought that if I had dropped a clanger I could change direction before I was to old, these were the days when you still didn’t need a university degree to sweep the roads and you could finish on a Friday night and get another job on Monday. (How times have changed). I had during my time at the Sheldon applied for the managers job there when Charlie Aston was promoted to General manager, but I was told that although there was no problem with the fact that I could physically and mentally do the job, but at my age of 24 / 25 years old I was considered to young to take on the responsibility of a 1500 seat suburban cinema, so having made up my mind to take on the job at the Warwick I left the store, and I commenced the new job on a dark and cold Sunday February night in 1979.
Now there had been an occasion in the past when June (my wife) and I had been to the Warwick to see a film, it was “The Great Race” with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis and it was having a re run at the Warwick, we sat there and as you probably know the Tony Curtis character (The Great Leslie) was always dressed immaculately in white, not so this time, as he moved across the screen and as the camera panned up and down the Great Leslie was immaculately grey not white, this only happened on alternative reels and it was obvious that the mirror on the one projector was not aligned properly, so I went and complained and was assured that the matter would be remedied. I returned to my seat in the back row, and after what was some 10 or 15 minutes I heard a muttering and a mumbling behind me so I turned and looked up and this guy wearing glasses with lenses like the bottom of milk bottles who I later found out was the “Chief Projectionist” and I use the term loosely proceeded to ask “are you the person who’s complained about the film” ? “yes” I replied “what’s the matter with it then” ? and as it happened the problem machine was running at that moment, so I replied “if you can’t see what the problem is from here then there’s no chance of putting it right” and I left it at that. I was still at the Sheldon when this happened and I was telling the tale to the manager and he told me that the Westrex engineer had been called to the Warwick one night because of a problem and the place was in an uproar, he went up to the projection room and looked out of the porthole and the picture was all over the place and he put the matter right and then he tried to explain to this “Chief” what the problem was so that if it happened again he new what to do, the answer he got was “as long the film is feeding from here to here I’m not interested what is going on out there” pointing to the auditorium, so I didn’t know what to expect when I took over, fortunately to my relief this fellow had retired, but my joy was short lived, more on this later.
A brief history of the Warwick Cinema. The Warwick Cinema was built for a company of builders called Smith & Booth, it opened in 1929 as an atmospheric silent cinema on the stadium design, the front doors were recessed back from the building line, and in the arches that were formed very large lanterns hung down for night time illumination, the entrance foyer and waiting areas had large old fashioned fireplaces and suits of armour together with leather chairs and settees. The interior sidewalls were painted with open air scenes of Warwickshire looking out across the countryside through colonnades with ivy and vines growing up them, the back wall was made in imitation castle type building blocks carrying on from the foyer. Noel Wimperis and the Warwick Orchestra played mood music whilst the films were being shown and there was a brenograph installed which projected the sun and moon and stars on the vast vaulted ceiling, as the Warwick Super Cinema as it was called opened the small Picture Playhouse 5 minutes down the road closed. The cinema was converted to sound shortly after it opened, but because it was not designed for sound the acoustics were not very special, however it carried on until it changed hands in the 60s and it was bought by the Victoria Playhouse Group.


To Be continued

 

[G G Jean]

Thanks Chris I am saving that for later to read with a glass of red wine. Looking forward to it. Jean.

 

[Chris B]

Chapter 2

The Smallest Show On Earth




The new owners of The Warwick found like a good many others in the trade at this time that it was hard to make a large old cinema profitable, so they decided to knock out the screen end and gut the entire building right back to the projection room wall and put in a concrete raft which would be the ceiling of the twenty lane ten pin bowling alley in the stalls and also the floor of the new “intimate” four hundred and sixty two seat cinema up stairs, to achieve a stepped floor for the auditorium seating, girder work was installed on the floor, this was known as hedging your bets as if the cinema failed it was easy to unbolt the girders and you were back to a flat floor for putting the building to another use without major construction work. So it was in March 1964 that The Warwick reopened. Now what follows is a bit of background information about the new owners.
The Victoria Playhouse Group was started by Mr Albert Rogers; the company name was derived from the name of one of the cinemas he owned at the back of Ansells Brewery in Aston Birmingham, where incidentally the M5 now runs through. Albert Rogers was a small factory owner who like a number of other people in the early days of the movies saw the opportunity to diversify and more importantly make some money in a new industry, he started off with a small back street enterprise and as time went on he bought up several cinemas including The Warwick, The Solihull, The Broadway, The Savoy, The Victoria, The Mayfair, and to top off this expansion he even had The Bristol cinema built.
Now The Bristol was indeed a magnificent 1930s cinema in its day, it was situated on the Bristol Road just on the edge of Birmingham city centre, it had a lighthouse feature on the one corner which could be seen from some distance away, there was a large car park for the use of patrons, Albert’s son John was one of the first managers. The cinemas name was not derived from the road it stood on but from the interior nautical design, the doors were similar to that on a liner and the splay walls either side of the screen both had a large alcove in which was situated a replica of the Bristol sailing ship which when the house lights were illuminated the ships were also lit up. However it wasn’t long before the city centre cinemas started to starve The Bristol of current film releases and the owners sold it to the ABC circuit, in its later years it was notable as being one of the first cinemas in the country to show cinerama, next it was a Cannon and finally it was pulled down and a McDonalds had it for a hamburger joint.

After that bit of background information back to The Warwick, I had now had chance to assess the situation in which I found myself and it didn’t look very good, firstly I had to clear out the office which represented a tramps squat with boxes of papers and rubbish going back years so that I had a base to work from, next the pay desk and kiosk needed painting and cleaning so brush in hand during the mornings I started on improving place, then the auditorium walls had graffiti on them, this had occurred because the staff rotas prior to me taking over had left the auditorium without an usherette for some part of the day, so more painting, then there was another kiosk up in the cinema auditorium alongside the screen which hadn’t been used for years, re-opening this proved to be a money spinner as during the interval or between shows people didn’t want to be bothered going down stairs to the kiosk in the foyer. All in all it was very much like the Smallest Show on Earth even down to a member of the front of house staff being a loyal long standing employee of the previous manager who like old Mr Spencer had passed away, and of course she was the only one who “knows how this place runs,” and yes I did initially have a projectionist “who spent his time boozing away up there” but I’m afraid that unlike Mr Spencer I was not prepared to tolerate the situation as there was a lot of work to be done getting the place ship shape so in the fullness of time these people left of their own volition or were replaced with staff who wanted to work with me.


To Be Continued

 

[Chris B]

more pics relating to the article

 

[Chris B]

more pics

 

[Chris B]

Chapter 3


A NEW BROOM


With a new Chief Operator now on the strength and some new front of house staff I turned my attention to fine tuning the presentation, for a start the curtain and masking motors had only been fastened down with small rawl bolts and because they did not penetrate deep into the concrete floor they had started to come adrift and the floor surface was starting to crumble, and every time the button was pressed in the projection room to close the curtains the motor would jump up off the floor and come down with a clonk, some clown had tried to stop this happening by putting a bag of solid concrete on the back end but this didn’t work so a friend of mine got me some large rawl bolts and it took me ages to drill a good depth of hole in the solid concrete floor even with a masonry drill but eventually I got them fixed. One day I noticed that the film image was not on the screen properly and on going up to the projection room I discovered that the projectors also had not been fixed securely to the ground and as a consequence every time the top spool containing 6,000 feet of film was put on the projector the weight of it nudged the projector slightly over to the left and so the film ended up with a black line down one side of the screen and shining on the splay wall on the other side of the screen, so another set of rawl bolts deep into the floor to cure the problem. The newly appointed Chief who was formerly the Second projectionist and who had carried the former Chief throughout his bouts of drink affected duties was originally a Chief with the Essoldo circuit and he went on to their installation and repair side, so I was fortunate inasmuch as not only had I got an excellent Chief who was keen and enthusiastic but he was also first class on the engineering side of the business.
On the demise of the Essoldo cinemas he went into business together with his wife and they ran their own news agents and sweets and tobacconists shop but unfortunately the area where this was located was soon to be redeveloped and as a consequence the surrounding housing was being demolished and the residents who were their customers were being re-housed elsewhere, so despite their best efforts they had to close down. His next contact with the movie business came in the form of being a projectionist at one of the sex film clubs that had started to spring up, and in this matter Birmingham was no different to any other large city so he used to set up the Elmo 1200 8mm machines and the dirty mac brigade trooped in and watched the porn films, apart from the boredom of the job you were always looking out for the blue light and listening for the siren as the local constabulary raided the place fairly frequently, and as well as confiscating the film and projectors the projectionist was also carted off to the local nick, only to return to the cinema a few hours later when the manager would open the store room and produce another Elmo, and from the locked safe another copy of the blue movie and off we’d go again. So having got fed up with this life when a vacancy for a second operator came up at the Warwick Alan got the job. His daughter was looking for work and I was in need of a cashier so I gave her the job, she was a very independent girl and had bags of confidence, I can always remember him telling me that this was because in her younger days she had been left to her own devices whilst he and his wife ran the business, and that to a degree he regretted this, as he had missed her growing up, he said he turned around one day and she had gone from being a little girl to being a young lady and he had missed the part in between.
With the help of a young chap who was a keep fit and karate exponent I started to sort out the local yobs who had not been kept in check owing to the previous Manager not being well during the previous year or so, it was a bit of an uphill battle initially but the message soon went round, basically the message was SIT UP, SHUT UP, AND WATCH THE FILM OR YOUR OUT!!!!! As time went on I started to get a better class of patronage, people stopped to talk to me in the foyer saying that they hadn't been to the place for sometime as you couldn't view a film in peace, they then became regular patrons. I had the exit doors alarmed so that a buzzer and light flashed in the paydesk this enabled the staff to head off the teenagers trying to get in the cinema for nothing. I settled into the day to day running of the cinema, staff rotas, banking the takings, getting the change, completing the wage book tax insurance etc and paying the wages, ordering the confectionery and ices. At this time I had a elderly morning handy man who was excellent, he used to repair the seats, paint the nosings on the steps, and generally keep the place ship shape, he used to arrive every morning without fail in his Rover 2000 and being small you could only see his trilby hat sticking up over the steering wheel, guess what he decided to retire, so I advertised in the local news agents for a replacement, this guy came along for an interview and I engaged him. The first job of any consequence that I gave him to do was to paint the ladies toilet floor with lino paint, so the following morning I went in and there was a smell of paint wafting down the staircase, I went into the toilets and he was just finishing, what greeted me was a sight, there was dabs of paint up the porcelaine toilets, the tiles and the bottom of the entrance doors, I said to him “what the hell is this mess” to which he replied “who do expect for £20 a week? Michael Angelo,” to which I replied “hand your keys in your finished.” In the end I paid one of the projectionists extra to come in and do the handy mans job as he wanted more money, so we were both happy.


To Be Continued

 

[Chris B]

Chapter 4

A Devastating Episode.




The Chief had really done a magnificent job getting the presentation and the plant and projection areas up to scratch, and things were ticking along nicely, but fate has the knack of creeping up on you and biting you on the bum. On one of the evening performances we were showing a scope film so at the end of the ads’ and trailers the screens side masking needed to be opened up before the curtains opened on the certificate of the feature, as the curtain opened it was obvious that we had a problem and one side of the masking had opened half cock, so the Chief had to go down and pull it open by hand, he came to me and explained that the steel cable had worn and finally snapped, and that he would be in early the next morning to replace the cabling in time for the matinee. He had basically finished the job when he had to go and sit down because he didn’t feel well, at this point my relief Manager who was in the Bowling Alley decided to go up to the cinema and see how the job was going, on entering the auditorium he saw the Chief sitting in the front row and he asked him what was the matter, he then decided to go to the bar and get him a brandy, by the time he returned the Chief had taken a turn for the worse, so he went to phone for an ambulance and unfortunately the Chief died on the way to hospital of a heart attack. I literally couldn’t believe it when I received the phone call at home, I honestly thought that when I arrived for the afternoon show he would be there and that I’d had a terrible bad dream, but I am afraid that it was fact and poor old Alan had passed on to the big projection room in the sky. The second projectionist hadn’t had much experience so I had to advertise for another Chief and the guy I got was a bit of a strange character but he had been in business a number of years, however because of the decline and subsequent cinema closures over the years it was nigh on impossible to check references, so I employed this guy who its got to be said initially was very conscientious, but unfortunately he took a shine to the cashier and started to spend more time propping up the pay desk than putting on the film, so after a short but painful period with him, where at one stage he slit his wrists and other equally stupid stunts, he was to find his actions ultimately were to cost both himself and the cashier their jobs. I then engaged another experienced projectionist who started off on efficiently, but as time rolled on he wanted me to change the staff rotas so that he could have every Sunday off instead of alternate Sundays with the second, he also asked for other modifications to be made to the rotas so that he could get to his part time projection job at the Midlands Arts Centre, I felt like asking him when he could come and we open the cinema to suit him. Needless to say I didn't agree to these requests and the situation was getting untenable when one night in his haste to catch his bus he didn't check the auditorium / toilets properly and somone got locked in. As luck would have it I had gone into the bowling alley to see my friend the manager there, as I came out and was passing the cinema front doors this couple were banging on the glass, so I let them out with profuse apologies and some complimentary tickets. Needless to say when the Chief came in the next day he was on the carpet. The following week he gave his notice as he had found another projection job more in keeping with his personal requirements. I was going on holiday the following week so I had make arrangements to cover the job, the second by this time had got sufficient knowledge to take on the position of Chief so he agreed to work the week and have a couple of evenings off when the part time relief came on duty at 6.30pm. On more cheerful note the newly promoted Chief who was a bit of a teddy boy and a bit of lad with the girls used to go out on to the walkway that was outside the projection box to have a fag and watch, as he put it “the totty going past or waiting at the bus stop, I could always tell when he was out there because you would see all these girls looking up and shouting and waving towards the top of the building, all good clean fun.
A couple of days later the outgoing Chief phoned to say that he wouldn't be taking the new job and wanted his job back, “sorry” |I said “but the vacancy has been filled.” He did envoke the union to fight his case but it availed him of nothing. It was at this stage that the old Chief from the Sheldon found himself out of work again with yet another closure so he came to see me for the position of second, and although we hadn’t got on to well at the Sheldon I told him what the ground rules were and he agreed to accept them, and from that time on I can honestly say that he was a man of his word and you couldn’t have wished for a more conscientious and loyal employee. The only problem he had was that he had never worked on the cinemeccanica equipment with 6,000 foot spools and Xenon lamps, but I assured him that it was one of the easiest shows to run and we were off and running on a new chapter where everything was ticking over nicely ..... For the moment. The Chief from the Sheldon had been working in cinemas all his life, infact as a lad he started as a pageboy with his tray of cigarettes and matches in the foyer of a large cinema, as he got older he gravitated to the projection side of the business and this is where he spent the rest of his working life, if you asked him what was his favourite film he would shrug his shoulders and say he didn't really know, also he hadn't got a favourite projector he liked to work on, he worked full time with me until he was seventy and then he went part time. Some time after all this had happened the young fellow I had promoted to Chief got involved with a group of idiots who convinced him that playing around with the girls in the park etc' was preferable to working full time, he started by taking time off and phoning in sick etc' so to cut a long story short I arranged for him to be totally unemployed so he could play with his friends. I then promoted the former Chief from the Sheldon and as the opening times had been reduced slightly I managed to cover the job with a full time Chief and a couple of part timers.




To Be Continued

 

[Chris B]

Chapter5


GoodTimes.




By now things were shaping up and I had got a good staff and the business was on the increase, some of the films I can recall that we had queues around the building for were “GHOSTBUSTERS” I can remember that on the Saturday afternoon matinee, there were that many children who had mates of mates and so on come and join them at the front of the queue that by the time we were ready to open the front doors and the display frame that was between them was bending inwards under the sheer numbers and weight of all the children that had amassed. I had to take emergency action and phone next door to the bowling alley for reinforcements, I literally couldn't open the doors with the weight of children, also I needed to stop them all surging forward when I opened the doors as some of the smaller children were crushed up against the glass and could hardly breath and someone might be killed. Once this problem had been resolved I had to keep three of the four front doors locked and stand with my back up against the open one so that people could only pass one at a time, as I hadn't had time to go up to the office and get my overcoat and it was in the winter I consequently caught a cold for my pains. The comment I made at the time was “you’d think these kids had never seen a film before.” The amount of sweets and ices that were consumed was phenomenal after each performance the kiosk looked as though it had been attacked by a plague of locusts, but it was great business. The next memorable film was “CROCODILE DUNDEE”again the queues were around the building, and it is funny thing the way peoples minds work, as we were filling up the seats when we were down to the last fifty I would go along the queue and when I arrived at approximately the fiftieth person, someone who’s face I could recognise when they appeared at the pay desk I would put out my arm and say “all of you past here, it is doubtful if you will get in for this performance,” and they would all try their hardest to shuffle up close to get past my arm because in their mind this would get them a seat. (Don’t ask). Another incident with this film was that I had to query the age of a young girl who was accompanied by who I presume was her mother and didn’t look anywhere near the age required to be admitted, I ushered them to one side to explain the censorship details only to be told by the parent that the girl was with her and that she was quite happy for the child to view the film,to which I replied that in the privacy of her home that was her prerogative but here it was mine, she was not going to take no for an answer, and she couldn’t see why the child couldn’t come in, so in response to this I had to ask her if she would like the child to see how cocaine was taken and also items of a sexual nature ? To which she replied “Oh I didn’t know that there was anything like that in the film.” Amazing isn’t it, see all and see nothing. The next one that caused a similar problem was “FATAL ATTRACTION”with this one I had a similar situation to the last one, where I had to ask the doting parent of a ten year old “would she like her daughter to view bonking on the sink unit and a pet rabbit boiled in a stew pot complete with its fur on” and yes I got the same response as previous. Finally the film that was given a completelystupid certificate of twelve, and this was the first time that this new category had been used was “BATMAN” now I ask you a kidscomic book hero, but having said that it was very dark and gothic looking so I could understand it being given a twelve certificate,but naturally a lot of people thought it was going to be like the old Adam West T.V. Series, one man in particular springs to mind, the lad with him could not have been more that eight or nine, and I approached him to inform him of the problem, and it was amazing the amount of people who didn’t know that a cinema was exactly the same as a public house and that the manager was the licensee and could be in trouble if it was discovered that he had flagrantly disregarded the licensing requirements, however this guy on being told that he could not bring the nipper in to see the film proudly announced to all and sundry “that his kid had seen all the Nightmare On ElmStreet films at home on video” to which I gave the standard reply,and added that I didn’t like having to be the moral guidance for everyone else’s children, but unfortunately it was my job.


The owners had the place re-seated and a basic redecoration done, a small amount of re-carpeting and we ticked along nicely. Just up the road stood the Westley Arms pub, and the owner / Manager decided to have a youth night on Mondays, it was for teenagers and only soft drinks were to be consumed, but when they turned out at about 9-30pm older people in the shopping centre area used to be some what afraid by the sheer numbers of youths and girls marching and shouting down the road, some of course would make a bee line for the cinema and bowling alley and bang on the doors and make a general nuisance of themselves, therefore a friend of mine who used to help out with some part time projection work and security and I had to man the front of house to repel borders. On this one occasion a large group of lads marched past the front of the cinema and then turned sharp right and continued to march down the short private road leading to the car park at the side and rear of the building, so the security guy and I promptly left the building to see what was happening, they had all gathered in a circle in the middle of the cars and apparently there was to be a fight organised between a couple of these idiots, so me having a voice that you can hear at the end of the playing field shouted “Oi you lot, just bugger off quick NOW !!!!!” or words to that effect. The noise died down and they all turned and in ranks they marched past us giving the Nazi salute and shouting “zieg heil, zeig heil” it was all I could do not to burst out laughing.At one time I had the Police ask me if they could have stake out on the flat roof behind the sign so that they could observe some drug dealing being carried out on the car park. One of the staff I employed as relief Manageress / Cashier was a young blonde lady only five feet nothing and complete with mini skirt and stiletto heels (no comments please) at the end of business on the evening we had to write down the days takings on a slip of paper and take it round to the bowling alley and put it in the General Managers office which was situated through a door way half way down the side of the bowling lanes, so one day my colleague the Bowling Alley Manager said to me,“there is a bit of a problem with your relief Manageress, I have had a complaint from the league bowlers” (the league bowlers take the game very seriously) so naturally I looked a bit quizical and wanted to know why, he said “when she comes round here at night with the takings slip, and when she walks she wiggles, and when she wiggles she distracts the bowlers,” I said you've got to be joking,” but in fact it was true, and from then on we had to start putting the information slip in a envelope and placing it in the mail box on the front of the building where the General Manager could get it from when he collected the post on his arrival in the morning. If I sit and think about things there are probably one or two other items I could tell you about but some would not be all that entertaining, so I will leave this chapter as is for the time being.


ToBe continued.

 

[Chris B]

Chapter 6
All Good Things Come To An End.






I had been managing the cinema for a little over ten years now, and like every other job I had established a day to day routine, in fact to quote the owners son, he maintained that I had got the cinema running very much on its own, as I said to him surely the art of good management was ensuring that the staff carried out their allotted tasks, and my job was to take responsibility and ensure that they did in fact carry out the jobs that they were paid to do, not to do their jobs for them. By this time all of the original staff had left and for many of the years I had a couple of glamour girls on the front of house in the pay desk and kiosk, when people used to say to me“you've got a couple of crackers there” I always replied “well you've heard of Charlie's Angels, well these are Bryan’s Beauties.”There was one occasion when the kiosk girl arrived with a black eye, she said she had walked into a door but I had reasons to suspect that wasn't quite true, however at the same time I had been bitten on my finger by a cat and the bite had become infected, I had to attend the hospital for treatment and I ended up with arm in a sling, so there I sat in the pay desk to relieve the cashier for a break, and next door to me in the kiosk sat the kiosk girl with a black eye, she looked at me and said “Mr Bryan if anybody looks in here and sees us two they will think that this is a right rough place,” and we both had a good laugh. By this time there had been a multiplex cinema built out at Monkspath and initially it didn't have much effect on the Warwick, the first casualty was to be the Solihull Cinema, this was closed and sold to the Royal Bank of Scotland, needless to say it stood on prime site in Solihull High Street, so you are talking about a very valuable site. Eventually we had a run of films that did not attract the public, so the business started to suffer, so much so some weeks I hardly took enough at the box office to pay the wages. After the Solihull Cinema closed which was only a couple of miles down the road from the Warwick you would have thought that the patrons from there would have travelled to Acocks Green, but it is a well known fact that when a local cinema closes only a small percentage travel to another venue, the vast majority lose the cinema going habit, when I stop to think about the number of cinemas that had closed in a small radius around Acocks Green The Warwick should have been full to the gunnel’s every day the seating capacity was only 462. Over the past few years the cinemas that had closed were the SHELDON, ALDELPHI, OLTON, TIVOLI, ODEON SHIRLEY, and probably one or two more if I were to think about it.


It was obvious that the cinema couldn't carry on this way much longer, then just before Christmas 1991 came the inevitable phone call from the owners son who by this time had taken on a lot of the running of the business, I was requested to go to the head office, and yes you have guessed it the end of the road was in sight, the closure of the cinema was to take place within a couple of weeks and in its place he proposed to open a Laserquest gaming arena. I then had the painful job of making redundant and paying off all my loyal staff just before Christmas, the reason for not retaining any of them was because he wanted to project a younger image to go with this arcade game, I didn't say anything at the time but I was not impressed with this way of treating people, some of whom had worked for the company for a number of years. Initially I was invited to stay on and manage the new enterprise when it opened in the new year which I did as there was nothing better to do at the time. Once closure had taken place I was employed stripping out the seating and stacking them ready for buyers to collect, I also had to be available to enable the building to be open for collection of the projection equipment that been sold together with other items no longer required. I can tell you now that this was one of the worst periods of my life, watching everything that had been a big part of my life in what I can only say was not just only a job but a paid hobby, this was all being ripped out and sold off. During the ensuing weeks I helped the builders when they needed to know anything about the electrics in the building etc, I ran errands to town picking up people from the railway station who were helping with the project and collecting plans and drawings from the architects offices etc, also I helped in the bowling alley but it wasn't my bag.


The owners son then took me on a trip to see how this laser caper worked, I tried to appear enthusiastic, but as a good many of my friends and relatives said they could never imagine me as a gaming arcade manager. The work rolled on and because of various changes that “young sir” made which drove the builders mad the project fell behind, I had to carpet and paint my own new office as the old one was now part of the entrance to the new venue, so that I could interview new staff, he wanted all young kids employed for this youthful appearance he wanted to project, but my attitude was all kids together will play together, I wanted some older people on board so that we had a good mix, he wanted to discuss with me what ice cream we should sell, like I hadn't sold gallons of the stuff over the last ten years, this was the first of a long line of problems that reared their ugly head, and to cut a long story short we ended up like two broken bottles on a conveyor belt. I had a few words with him over the fact that half of the “young” staff he had insisted that I engaged hadn't turned up for the opening day, I had installed and programmed up all the new cash registers in the cafe and at the booking desk, I had given out the job descriptions to the various staff that had arrived and when the Assistant Manager came on duty I was told by “young sir” that I could go, and that I was redundant because my contract said cinema Manager and the cinema was closed so I was redundant.


After a couple of weeks in between looking for work I built a shed in my garden out of some of the wood I had had from the cinema strip out, and finally I managed to get a job back at the Co-Op from where I had originally come, thankfully someone there remembered me and recognised my worth, as I had tried video shops,cleaning companies, the civilian side of the police, Showcase Cinemas, but when the person interviewing you is about 25 years old and by this time I was 49 then you don't stand a chance, and the world had changed greatly, you could no longer leave a job on a Friday and get another job on a Monday, I must admit it was quite a blow to my system but at least I had a job so that I could carry on paying my way, and yes before you ask, just when “young sir” thought it was safe to go back into the water and hire a new Manager for the Laserquest I slapped him with a industrial tribunal case which I conducted on my own behalf and which I won with a slight reduction in the amount that I was awarded as I was truthful about some of the disagreements we had had, his solicitor was an animal he tried to intimidate me in the waiting area whilst we were waiting for the case to be tried, but I am made of sterner stuff and he made no impression on me, so I paid for my new double glazed windows for my house with the amount that I was awarded by the industrial tribunal, and eventually the job at the Co-Op went on to better things and wages eventually were more than the cinema job without the unsocial hours, albeit it wasn't quite so interesting as the cinema business, but overall I enjoyed it apart from the long 30 mile journey to get there and back.


The End.

 

[mike mcclelland]

Hi Chris, What a fantastic article. Brings back good memories of The Warwick. Thank you for allowing me to fulfill a boyhood ambition, when you let me work up in the projection room with Ray Harris, before you closed. That will always mean a lot to me. The Warwick was a good place to be, the rest of the Staff that worked under you were brilliant. Jan, I believe was working in Argos, Acocks Green and Gillian was working at Solihull Hospital last time I heard. I haven't heard anything of Ray Harris since the night we closed, but I'm sure that Reg had told me that Pat, the other Operator, passed away some time ago

 

[G G Jean]

Chris I hope you turn all this into a book as it is fascinating?. Jean.