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Edited from an article in the Epsom & Ewell Herald July 2002
After the war, most cinemas ran programmes for children on Saturday mornings and
some would walk from West Ewell to join the queue outside before 9.30am. At the
Rembrandt, the films shown were usually comedies (The Three Stooges, Abbott and
Costello, The Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy), westerns (Roy Rogers, The Lone
Ranger, Hopalong Cassidy) and long-running serials which went on for months (one
on the French Foreign Legion and another about the US Navy stand out in my
memory), together with one cartoon (often from Walt Disney) in colour each week.
The bright daylight outside came as a shock as we filed out around mid-day and
we would stagger down the road, blinking until we got accustomed to the light.
These popular shows continued for some years after the war, even though a boy
once took in an air-pistol and shot a hole in the screen and children in the
circle would bombard those in the stalls below with apple cores. Another
juvenile dodge was to go up the steps past the downstairs toilets and hold the
exit door open for friends to come in without paying. After a while the manager,
who must have dreaded Saturday mornings, got wise to this trick and sent an
usherette down to the front stalls to keep an eye on the side exits.
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