Wartime

The Memories of Patricia Campbell Lyons who worked at the Rembrandt during the war. Originally published in The Epsom & Ewell Herald in July 1997.

"I trained there eventually becoming fully qualified. Mr. Lock our taskmaster, viewed his new recruits with trepidation — four nervous girls, some not even mechanically-minded! What an excellent teacher Mr. Lock was. Thanks to his tuition I became a reliable operator. I even mastered working the [lighting for the] curtains, then run by six levers that provided changing colour in the soft fabric. I adjusted the music which entertained the audience during intervals — and all this in between working sight and sound on my machine.

I was the only one to survive the hours of hard work. One by one the others left. Maintaining the two “monsters” that projected the films onto the large screen, stripping them down in the morning and learning how to “lace up” footage and light the positive and negative carbons that provided light, rewinding and filing and repairing torn film with acetone were all part of my task.

I can only surmise that in this 1943 photograph of Mrs Long, the manageress and "Bill" the chief projectionist, we are seeing the "Mr Lock" who is referred to in the text.

Two male projectionists who later disappeared into the army completed the staff. We had three shows a day ending at 11 each evening. Sometimes I would even be summoned to the box office to dispense tickets during the cashier’s tea break, this chore, on show behind a glass fronted kiosk, was one I loathed. Rationing then meant chocolate was a luxury and customers would rush to the poorly stocked kiosk to fight for even a small bar.

As a member of the “fire party’ on Sunday mornings I took part in fire drill, battling with a hose and sand bucket. Three nights a week for the princely sum of two and sixpence per night I had to go on duty. I used to sleep on the settee by the circle near the cafe. I would wait for the air raid siren to blast my eardrums. Then I and a fellow worker would patrol the building, amid the sound of “ack ack” fire and bombs dropping. The sky over London was bathed in a red glow with searchlights stabbing the sky. Enemy bombers droned overhead. I am afraid being a brave coward was not much consolation. I trembled like a leaf every time there was an explosion. We would retire to the kitchen part of the cinema cafe, gas masks and tin hats put to one side. We would devour weak (rationed) tea and “cart grease” margarine sandwiches with relish. Dozens of cockroaches would scamper for cover directly we drew the blackout curtains and turned on the lights. They were probably as hungry as us!

Then came the day, a lovely sunny afternoon, when we put up a “raid in progress” notice. It was extremely frightening high up in the operating box beneath the camouflaged roof listening to the bombers overhead. That afternoon they were particularly near, zooming and diving amid gunfire. Suddenly the whole building shook as bombs fell. The nearby railway line to Clapham Junction was an excellent guide for the enemy pilots.

It was the only time the audience disappeared into the foyer, even though they would have been safer under their seats as chandeliers swung overhead. As the bombardment continued we left the box to join the crowds in the carpeted foyer. We could see planes dog fighting our boys overhead, outlined against the bright blue sky. Around us, smoke rising upwards, there was an acrid smell in the air where houses in Seaforth Gardens had been hit. The little shoe shop at Ewell Court we knew so well had been demolished. Eventually we returned to our eyrie to replace “raid in progress” with “all clear.”

This was just part of the Blitz we were subjected to almost daily. Even during the occasional Sunday concerts when Richard Tauber, Jack Hylton or the London Philharmonic Orchestra or others delighted the audiences the dreaded siren would go."

The cinema stood as strong as an oak throughout the war years. I enjoyed my time there, working with wonderful people and the memories still linger on of the servicemen and women on leave who swarmed into the cinema. Assignations with usherettes were made and sometimes these led to marriage. We provided happiness for a lot of people tucked away high up in the old building, taking them into a make-believe world for a few hours away from the horrors of war.

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Reproduced from the autobiography of the playwrite John Osbourne.

The Rembrandt Cinema in Ewell was almost always full every evening during the war. On Fridays and Saturdays there was certain to be a queue. A Bette Davis film was almost impossible to get into all the week. Even Grandma Osborne was known to leave her Warwick Deeping for the afternoon and walk a hundred unaided yards to the Rembrandt to see Now Voyager or Mr Skeffington.

I can only remember one occasion when the Rembrandt was almost empty the whole week-apart from Mondays, which were unpopular. The word of mouth about the film showing around Ewell and Stoneleigh was resentful and indignant. In the Parades and saloon bars, there was talk of Speaking to the Manager, even of Writing to the Film People themselves. Later in the week, undeterred by those who said we were wasting our pocket money, Mickey and I went to see Citizen Kane. We came out afterwards from looming Gothic darkness into the bright Kingston Road, silent, uncomprehending and deeply depressed. At tea the Walls asked if we had tummy ache. It had been nothing, even for two such eleven-year-olds as we were, to giggle about.

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