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covered my bedroom window. pens, a blotter to rock back and forward
I collected carbon butts. Many were over some freshly written document to
the old black carbons, and some were dry the ink, a carousel with rubber
copper coated. Either way I would stamps hanging from it, and a metal
come home with black hands. I would stand with a steel spike to skewer
get into trouble for using them to draw papers. There were wooden filing
on the concrete in the back yard. cabinets, and shelving with partitions
Another item I would collect were for folders and posters. Hanging on the
old records from the theatre. They were walls were clipboards and higher up
the 10inch and 12inch 78-rpm records. were photos, posters and a floor plan of
Many were aluminium covered with the theatre.
bakelite. We had hundreds of them. At As in so many of the old theatres
home we had a wind-up gramophone. I the ladies had their toilets inside the
would play records for hours over and building, but the gents was outside,
over again, driving my parents mad. down beyond the stage, near the back
In the theatre office I particularly fence.
remember the telephone. This was the One thing still has me puzzled. By
candlestick-type with the receiver law, every theatre had to have two
hanging on the side via a cradle and the RIVOLI CAM is visible on this film carry bag means of escape from the projection
rotary dial on the base. What was room. From my recollection I can only
different about this one was that it was with some controls on the front sitting ever remember the one entrance. ★
attached to a pantograph arrangement, on the desk, and a small earpiece
fixed with a hinge to the wall above the hanging on a hook to allow a third Don't Miss:
desk. It could be used at the desk when person to listen in. I have never seen The Next Exciting Episode of:
folded up or extended to an such an arrangement again. Through the Porthole at this
extraordinary length to reach over to The office seemed to be what one CinemaRecord, next issue.
the ticket seller at the ticket counter would expect in any business; a green
when needed. There was a wooden box blotter with leather corners, ink and nib

Forgotten

The show has started, the pictures I mean,
The overture’s played, and there on the screen
See the stars and cast and the author pass through,
Assistants, directors, photographers too.
There’s only one man that we’ve missed -
And I mean he’s too busy to care that he’s not on the screen,
That’s the man operating the picture machine.

But the stars would not twinkle, the cast matter not,
Scenario be worthless, unheeded the plot,
And we’d all be sad with no place to go
Were the man in the booth taken out of the show.
For mid whirring motors and spluttering arc
Is a real producer, I rise to remark,
For the guy we owe most, though he never is seen
Is the man operating the picture machine.

You may think of the stars that appear on the screen,
But the heroes, alas and alack
Are the men, all alone, who conduct the machines,
In the hot little box at the back.

This anonymous tribute to projectionists was circulated at an industry luncheon in 1939.
It is reproduced here by courtesy of Alan Windley.

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