Cinema series brings flashbacks

DECENT EARNER: A film starring Barbara Windsor (left) - most recently seen in Eastenders - and Diana Dors produced the biggest payout for one of the tray boys.

Memories of old theatres invoked by Wayne Shaw's series in the Chronicle about the cinema have been coming in to the newspaper.

Gay Manning of Wanganui says the Manning family had "quite an association with the beautiful Regent Theatre" - six of its members having worked there at one time or another during the 1950s, as either tray boys or Nibble Nook staff.

A Manning by marriage, Gay says she worked there in the early 1960s as a second job to pay for her wedding in 1963.

Her husband-to-be Bill started there as a "tray boy" around 1950 aged 10.

"Saturday nights were quite 'grand' occasions when the theatre would be a full house - most of the patrons filing out at halftime for a pre-rolled ice cream, an orange drink and sweets.

"Having previously prepared everything, we would be frantically busy for 20 minutes or so serving the several rows of queuing humanity and then the clean-up and restocking began."

She explains the tray boys ("I don't think any girls in those days") were paid on commission and went round the theatre with a tray on a leather strap selling to those who didn't want to leave their seats.

"My husband remembers his biggest payout was 1 and sixpence - the film being A Worm's Eye View starring Sid James, Barbara Windsor and Diana Dors."

Gay says the work was fun and pleasant, and it was sad when the theatre eventually closed and was later demolished.

Margaret Benefield shares her "best, also worst" old picture theatre memory. It dates back to the 1930s and Aramoho's old Duchess Theatre, aka the "Duck House", which later became the Plaza.

"The occasion was the finale of a Queen Carnival fundraiser for Aramoho School. A well-known lady of that era (Mrs Armstrong) did the costumes for the stage crowning productions. Some of her garments were quite old. I was to be a pageboy. Thus I held tightly a cushion upon which, hopefully, balanced the crown. Ah - the shining show highlight."

Margaret said all was going well until she had to turn her back on the audience and bow. "I was dressed in medieval style black bloomers. Fortunately my mum insisted I wear my own knickers under the black pants. Why? Because these old black pants split in two or three places as I bowed - my rear, of course, to the highly amused audience." She says laughter was not usually part of the "serious crowning of a queen".