Airdrie & Coatbridge Advertiser
Cracking cartoons ushered in superb Saturday mornings
For many of us growing up in the golden days of the fifties and sixties, Saturday mornings couldn’t come quick enough.
If you were to walk down Graham Street in Airdrie early on a Saturday you would see a large crowd of youngsters queuing outside the Pavilion cinema in keen anticipation of the fabulous morning matinee run by the Rank chain of cinemas.
These picture shows were tailor made for the needs of children in the days decades before the advent of Saturday morning television, and today’s 24 hour kids’ network of excessive commercial TV played a significant role in our everyday lives.
To this very day local Airdrie resident Tom Devlin is as enthusiastic about the subject as ever.
He shared his memories with me, saying. “As a young lad in the sixties, my family lived in Plains. Saturday morning was magic as my brother Mark and I walked several miles to the Pavilion picture house in Airdrie with two shillings between us to enjoy a full morning’s entertainment of cartoons, comedies, the ongoing serials and a feature film.
“If a western was showing many of the kids would wear their cowboy and indian outfits which were all the rage at the time.
“During the winter the bad weather didn’t deter us and we often had to walk in heavy snow up to our knees; but it was well worth it.
“We didn’t have computer games and all the expensive technology that kids have today; we loved and cherished the pictures as that was our only source of entertainment.”
The admission price to the matinee was six-pence and after a scramble to get a good seat, the curtain would finally go up.
The programme always started with a cartoon, Woody Woodpecker and friends, together with a large variety of toons which were always popular favourites.
The Three Stooges, The Little Rascals and Laurel and Hardy were extremely well received by the young audience.
At intermission the excitement would reach a high level as the chief projectionist took to the stage to compere activities like the “go as you please” competitions and sing-a-longs.
If you could sing, recite a poem tell a few jokes or demonstrate your yo-yo or hula-hoop skills, or dance the Chubby Checker sensation The Twist (in 1960), you were in the running for a prize; usually a bag of sweets, toy or free pass to the pictures.
The compere was a dedicated professional who did the job with a mountain of enthusiasm and highly developed skills in showmanship – something totally lacking in the film industry today.
The excitement reached a high level when the time came for the weekly chapter of the great matinee serials.
The aim of the Children’s Film Foundation ( CFF) , formed and supported by The Rank Organisation, was to be a successful collaboration to produce professional productions of serials and feature films suitable for children that reflected morals, simple truths and values.
Five Clues To Fortune, Four Winds Island and the fabulous Famous Five serials based on characters created by British author Enid Blyton were huge hits; and the kids could not wait to see next week’s exciting chapter.
Many of the child stars who appeared in CFF productions went on to become major film and television stars, such as David Hemmings, Michael Crawford Dennis Waterman and Francesca Annis.
The morning programme concluded with a full length feature film, the Old Mother Riley, and westerns and bumper cartoon compilations were some of the other top drawer attractions that brought the curtain down until the following Saturday.
In 1967 the Pavilion was sold to the Classic chain of cinemas and renamed The Classic; this marked the final chapter in the morning matinee tradition.
The old picture house finally closed on September 27, 1973, to make way for the construction of Airdrie Sheriff Court.
Recent research has revealed that the fifties and sixties was the most creative time in the film industry, and was certainly a cut above today’s movie-going experience where after paying exorbitant prices for admission and refreshments from a candy bar the size of the Titanic, patrons are then conveyer-belted into a multiplex where the programme starts with more than 35 minutes of inane advertisements that have been assaulting your senses all week on television.
The demise of the morning matinee on Saturday was the end of an era that remains very much an integral part of the Monklands cultural heritage and cinematic history.
It was an event that brought a lot of inspiration, joy and happiness to many people and there can be no greater achievement in life than that.
But that’s not all folks! We will be back to take a look at the old Pavilion cinema in a future column.