The other lesson he taught me was ‘Never be slowed down by a cup of tea.’ What this meant in practice was learning how to drink a cup of tea while it was still scalding hot, never wasting valuable time waiting for it to cool down.
Among the Gaumont State’s wondrous new technical amenities was the ‘rising mike’ system, a set of microphones positioned at various places underneath the stage floor. Operated by remote control, each of them could rise silently into view through a small hidden trapdoor to whatever heights had been preselected, then just as silently slide down out of sight again, leaving the floor of the stage as flat and smooth as before.
Soon enough, that inconspicuousness was to provide its own hazards. I recall one of the big dance bands that played a week there when I was a stagehand. For reasons I never discovered, the bubbly blonde vocalist who was one of the band’s main attractions missed the rehearsal call on Monday morning and arrived only just in time for the opening show in the afternoon.
She bounded on stage for her first number dressed in a long, full skirt and, smiling radiantly, stood directly over the little trap door through which the rising mike slid upwards …
In 1939 the next Royal Command Performance was due to take place in November and, for the first time, the Hyams brothers were being given a chance to produce it.
Their plans for it were typically ambitious. It would be staged at the Gaumont State and, with the intention of bringing Hollywood to Kilburn, Eddie Cantor would be flown over to compère a bill that would include Shirley Temple, a song-and-dance duet by Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney, comedy from Laurel and Hardy and a sketch by the cast of MGM’s enormously successful series of Andy Hardy films. In addition, there would be lavish numbers from four West End musicals and contributions from whoever was topping the bill at the Palladium.
For the finale, we would see Deanna Durbin, alone on a darkened stage and lit only by a pin-spot, singing ‘Ave Maria’, while 400 choirboys, each bearing a lighted candle, would descend from the upper circle to the stage on specially built ramps attached to the side walls of the vast auditorium.
That was the scene I was looking forward to most. But then, along came 3 September …
The Trocadero, Elephant & Castle, where I graduated to Assistant Manager in 1940, had one of the most elaborate interiors in the Hyams brothers’ cinema chain. The auditorium, seating 3,500, was resplendently Italianate, sumptuously decorated, the marble columns and pink mirrors extending to the waiting rooms and loos.
On the second Sunday after I arrived, the General Manager left me in sole charge, a responsibility I shouldered fairly adequately until we came to the stage show.
Sunday nights were Amateur Talent Night and by the second performance, it was plain that things were slipping beyond my control.
On the stage, a thin blonde girl was trying to get through ‘Alice Blue Gown’, to the accompaniment of Bobby Pagan at the organ, but the audience was becoming restive. As I watched helplessly from the back of the stalls, the whistles and barracking grew louder and the girl’s voice was becoming ever more quavery.
How it would have ended I don’t know, but I suddenly became aware that a bulky figure in a heavy overcoat and with a pushed-back black Homburg on his head was standing beside me. It was Mr Phil. ‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’
I could only gesture, ‘I’m sorry. They just won’t – I don’t quite –’
But he was gone, striding down the aisle towards the steps that led up to the side of the stage. Mounting them, he came to the mike and motioned to the girl and Bobby for silence. As the noise from the audience died away, he stood centre-stage and, taking off his black Homburg, addressed them. ‘You all know who I am.’
Indeed they did. Mr Phil often took the opportunity to talk to an audience from the stage and sometimes he would stop by the sixpenny queue to solicit their opinions individually. Tonight, they gave him an encouraging round of applause. He stilled them.
‘I want to tell you something that happened here a few years back. I dropped into the Troc, as I often do, but this time I came in through the stage door. And as I came up the steps, I heard the sound of sobbing coming from one of the dressing rooms. I went to investigate and there sat a young girl crying her eyes out. I said, “What’s the matter?” and she said, “It’s them. That audience. I can’t do it. I just can’t face them. I’m sorry.”
‘So I said to her, “Listen. I’ll tell you about the Elephant & Castle audiences. Yes, they’re hard. They’re the toughest audience in the country. But let me assure you of one thing. However hard they are, they’re fair. They’ll give you a chance. Will you take my word?”
‘She nodded and, sure enough, she went on. And, ladies and gentlemen, may I tell you that girl’s name? That girl’s name was Gracie Fields.’
There was a respectful silence. Then from the audience came a yell of appreciation and a storm of applause. Mr Phil nodded to the girl, gave Bobby the go-ahead sign, descended the steps and rejoined me at the back of the stalls. The audience heard the girl out in a silence that was almost reverent and rewarded her with another vociferous round of applause.
When we had retired to the office to inspect the night’s takings, I ventured, ‘That was a wonderful story, Mr Phil. I’ll remember that.’
He gave me that sudden, unnerving grin. ‘Pack of lies.’
A prodigious amount of eating went on during the early evening programmes in thirties and forties suburban cinemas. Mothers with basketfuls of food would pick up their children from school and feed them their tea while they were all watching the movie. The consequent chomping, munching, slurping, rustling and muttered instructions was often so distracting to other patrons, someone at one of our weekly managers’ meetings suggested dividing the stalls into eating and non-eating areas, as some cinemas went on to do with smoking and non-smoking.
Nor did the families dutifully deposit their detritus in the rubbish bins provided, as happens (sometimes) with later generations. The result was that when the cleaners came in at the end of the day to vacuum the stalls’ carpeting, their first task was to pick up the overlay of eggshell, orange peel, apple cores, biscuit wrappers and the scattered assortment of bread crusts which, thanks to the surrounding darkness, children had found it so easy to leave uneaten. These were in addition to the ever-present topping of monkey nut shells, which always made walking between the empty rows sound like a giant eating celery.
It was, though, another measure of the way in which going to the pictures in those days was regarded as a family experience. Indeed, there were many mothers who used their local cinema as a crèche, a warm and safe place to deposit their young whenever there was a need to offload them for a few hours. I still treasure the memory of a small boy tugging at the sleeve of one of our tall Trocadero doormen to ask, ‘Please, Mister. Mum says what time is the big picture over three times?’
The great majority of men wore hats of one kind or another in those days, placing them carefully on their laps when they sat in the cinema. As it was also a time when cigarette smoking was soprevalent as to be practically compulsory, Frank Muir and I found great satisfaction many years later in combining the two habits for one of the many Sherlock Holmes pastiches we wrote back then.
‘Something else I observed,