Look at the Stars: Life as an usherette in the 60s
“Look at the stars,” Hester said. She shone her torch up to the ceiling where lights sparkled against the deep blue. On the side walls were backlit Greek statues, each glowing in its niche. We were in the Circle at the Odeon Cinema, Edinburgh, in December 1968, early in my first afternoon shift as an usherette. No patrons sat in the Circle, where seats cost more, and in the Stalls below sat thrifty pensioners taking advantage of the heat and the low matinee prices.
“Look,” Hester continued, “at the ones which have died.” Sure enough, a number of the bulbs had gone. Whose job was it to get up there and replace them, I wondered.
Hester was one of the three full-time usherettes. She was well-spoken, and in her sixties. She had neatly permed grey hair – possibly a wig. Unfailingly polite to other staff and even the most off-hand of patrons, she had a dead-pan sense of humour, and exchanged a wink or a grimace after dealing with any awkward customer. She walked slowly. I thought initially this was because of her age, but she was probably tired. I learned that her husband had a long-term illness and before she worked the Odeon shift, she’d already spent four hours in a cleaning job. At that time, women who’d spent their lives looking after their families, were eligible for only a small pension, and couples were ill-equipped to handle financial emergencies before the husband reached 65.
The Edinburgh Odeon, 1970
Our film that week was a strange one for the cinema. It was ‘Fanny Hill’, a poorly dubbed version of the notorious ‘Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’. It didn’t have much afternoon – or indeed evening - appeal, although a few furtive lone customers in traditional dirty raincoats slipped over from their regular haunt in the Jacey Cinema further up the road, which specialised in “foreign films”.
I was a third-year student at Edinburgh University, starting a holiday job. The Odeon was the closest cinema to the university, but I’d been there only occasionally. In my first year it was still completing its 95-week run of ‘The Sound of Music’!
Madge, the longest serving full-timer, was often asked what it had been like seeing the same film every day for so long. “You can never get tired of a good picture,” she asserted. Madge was single, in her 50s, a native of Edinburgh, and an usherette all her working life. She was a small attractive woman who always wore lipstick. She had a longish bus journey to work from Pilton where she shared a council house with her sister. In her earlier days she was on duty in the St Andrew’s Cinema, another central Edinburgh cinema, when it burned down in 1952. She regaled us with this story when we underwent instruction in what to do if there was a fire. The Odeon’s protocol was that we would be alerted by the playing of ‘Three Blind Mice’. We were – in true Dad’s Army fashion – Not To Panic, but to take up positions in the aisles, and using our torches, usher the patrons out through the nearest exit. Awed, someone asked her if she’d done that when she heard the alarm. “Nae fear,” said Madge. “I turned roond and ran like hell!” She then worked at the Poole’s Synod Hall, a cinema in Castle Terrace. Originally a place of worship for United Presbyterians, it retained its name when taken over by the Poole family, who ran entertainment venues in the inter-war period. In 1962 she moved on again when Poole’s Synod Hall was demolished, leaving what became known as “the hole in the ground”, for years, the designated site for the (never built) opera house.
Madge and Hester showed me the tricks of the trade in using a torch! Now unknown in multiplexes, the torch was an essential item, heavy but rarely put down during a shift. At that time cinemas were moving from old-style continuous showings to double-bills, where there was a clear gap between the films. Seating was unreserved. Occasionally, there were single film showings, especially of musicals, which had a fixed start time, reserved seats and an “Intermission.” The expression “This is where we came in” derives from continuous showings. Most cinema goers would aim to get there for the start of the “big picture,” but queues meant that early arrivals sat through the last part of the supporting film first. Late-comers watched what remained of the main movie and the whole B movie before they saw the beginning. So the cinema saw a constant coming and going, often with whispered arguments as couples tried to agree if “this was where we came in.” Especially in the afternoons, people might turn up on spec to the cinema and happily start watching whatever stage the film had reached. A few might “forget” where they came in and sit on for an extra show. Usherettes were supposed to look out for them, though on winter afternoons turned a blind eye. So customers often came in and left in the dark. ‘Fanny Hill’ was part of a continuous show and I soon got used to what was required. Check the ticket and walk in front of the customer with the torch pointing down behind you to illuminate the steps. Once you reach a row where there are seats, point the torch towards the seats and wait till the customers sit down.
The Odeon was an enlightened cinema for its day, and we had to ask, “Smoking or non-smoking?” as there was a separate side for each. It seems impossible to imagine being in a cinema which allowed smoking at all, but for years after that most cinemas permitted smoking everywhere. I still smoked when I visited the Odeon with a group of friends to see ‘The Graduate’. I was impressed that a nearby filmgoer knew all the words to the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack. Otherwise all I recall was much offering round of fag packets and lighting up.
On busy nights, we had to keep our eyes open for spare seats and would sweep the torch along rows to identify them, sometimes asking people to move along so that we didn’t have too many singles to fill up. Rowdy customers could be silenced by shining the torch at them – though we usually left this to the full-timers or called in one of the doormen. The Odeon was fairly classy, so this didn’t happen often, although it had been a regular feature of the Saturday morning ABC Minors Club in Kirkcaldy in the 1950s.
The doormen, Andy and Bob, were postmen. Like Hester, they’d done a shift, in their case starting at 6am delivering mail, before they came on duty, mid to late afternoon during the week, and earlier at the weekends. Wearing a grander uniform than the women’s grey polyester outfits, they patrolled the foyer, and when we were busy, directed queues outside. The cinema sat 1800 and there were different prices, with Stalls seats being cheapest, then Circle, and for real exclusivity, there were six “Boxes,” individual cubicles seating four, slightly raised at the back of the Stalls. On one occasion, Andy told us that a famous Edinburgh footballer was with his girlfriend in one of the boxes. At the interval, he came out, looking for refreshments. An usherette approached with her tray, “Can I help you?” she enquired. “Gies twa o’ yer juices, hen!” said the sporting hero, and was correctly served with two cartons of orange squash.
Selling ice-cream and drinks was an important part of the job. It was organised in the small workroom containing freezers and fridges in the inner foyer. This was the domain of May, the head usherette, in charge of our day-to-day activities. A single parent in her early forties, she was hard-working and not afraid to speak her mind. She often called the other women “doll”. For example: “If you’re gaun to the shop, doll, could you fetch me a pint of milk?” The usual casual endearment in Scotland was “hen” for a woman, and “son”, usually for a young man addressed by an older person, but “doll” was heard a lot then. Picked up from the US movies, its use, certainly by women, seemed entirely without sexist connotations.
At the designated times, usherettes gathered in the workroom, put orange overalls over the grey dresses, and were loaded up with trays containing choc ices, tubs and drink cartons. The plastic tray was heavy, fixed by wide straps over the shoulders. They were set out for us on flat surfaces and taller women, like me, had to stoop to get the straps on comfortably. We had a float of coins and were told where to stand – Front Stalls middle aisle, Circle side aisle and so on. “Right, lassies, time to go,” said May, and we were off. Ice-cream and drinks were an important part of the revenue for cinemas, and at busy times, there might be as many as ten of us selling, some in the auditorium, some moving around the foyer.
Choc ices cost one shilling (5p) and tubs a bit more. I remember the price of the drinks cartons because of an awkward incident. They cost 1/3d (one shilling and threepence). One afternoon, when I came back from my sales round, my cash didn’t tally. May took me aside to explain that if the money wasn’t made up, it would have to come out of my wages. It was probably a few shillings, but a couple of the others had a well-tried solution. Prices of the items weren’t on display, so we told every customer what they cost. “Charge anybody who asks for drinks 1/6, and you’ll soon make it up.” When I looked dubious, I was reassured, “Who’s going to know?” I set off in trepidation in case I met a regular with an accurate recall of prices. I got through unscathed, and sure enough I was able to cover the deficit, but I felt guilty for some time.
Ice-cream sales took place during the intermission in the major presentations. Even now if I watch ‘Oliver’ or ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’ on TV, I know when the intermission is, as this was the scene playing as we made our stately progress, as if choreographed, down each aisle, ready to turn round and light up the trays when the house-lights went on. Much later I learned ‘Usherette’s Blues’, a comic song by Jeremy Nicholas. She sings “I missed the end,” because her duties have prevented her seeing the end of the film and speculates about what might have happened. “Did Julie Andrews sing another song? /And was Kirk Douglas crucified?” she asks. As we could wait to till the end, I didn’t feel that lack. What I never found out were the parts before and after the intermissions when we were preparing or cashing-up our trays. I remember Oliver running away, and Chitty flying up in the air, but would struggle to tell you why they did it!
So what about the films? I got the Odeon job because it was a convenient location, and, as a reluctant riser, I fancied a job starting at 1pm. I enjoyed films, but wasn’t star-struck, and rarely went to the cinema as a student. What we all liked about the job was the variety. There was a new film nearly every week, and we could see them free, so long as we didn’t mind watching them in bits! After the Fanny Hill film, the next week’s films were promoted as two “weepies,” and someone at Odeon HQ had the bright idea of pegging paper hankies on a washing-line in the foyer, puzzling the customers. The films from the 1950s were indeed melodramas, but I found myself enjoying them. Many years later I recognised a title. Now extolled as a classic in the Edinburgh Filmhouse programme was Douglas Sirk’s ‘Imitation of Life’.
The big movie for Christmas was ‘Oliver’! The Odeon was the first Edinburgh screen to show Carol Reed’s film and tickets had been on sale for some time. The songs were already familiar from the long theatre run. The cast combined popular entertainers, Harry Secombe and Ron Moody, great actors like Oliver Reed as Bill Sykes, a villainous dog and two heart-warming child actors. It was a sure-fire hit. The cinema was sold out for several weeks, including Christmas Day. There was reserved seating, so we were busy getting people to their designated seats before the film started and there was a big rush for ice-cream. It was a real pleasure to see so many people, enjoying themselves, and the cinema hushed for the tense last scenes with Bill Sykes and Nancy.
With this good experience, I was keen to return to the Odeon at Easter. They had another musical for the school holidays – ‘Chitty Chitty Bang Bang’, but before that was a James Bond double bill, ‘You Only Live Twice’ from 1967, shown with the first Bond, ‘Dr No’. I was too young to see ‘Dr No’ when it opened in 1962, regarded then as risque adult fare. I have little memory of ‘You Only Live Twice’, but I enjoyed the wit and bravado of the first film. I liked Bond’s raised eyebrow as he’s led past the stolen masterpiece, Goya’s Duke of Wellington on the wall of No’s hideaway. The calypso theme tune, ‘Underneath the Mango Tree’, proved memorable
‘Chitty’ lacked the universal appeal of ‘Oliver!’ - older patrons and couples were less likely to watch - but it attracted a family crowd. Dick van Dyke reprised his warped Cockney accent from ‘Mary Poppins’, and everyone loved the “more than spectacular” car! There are terrific songs, with clever lyrics. Although I found it fairly cloying at the time – Sarah Ann Howell’s character is called Truly Scrumptious - I enjoy singing along when it’s on TV.
Madge, Hester and May were still there, and I’d got to know the part-time staff, usually young unmarried women, who had a day job, but did a few evening shifts to save up for a holiday – or their wedding. There were two office-workers, who were somewhat suspicious of the students, exchanging knowing looks when we weren’t au fait with fashion trends or pop singers. My university course – medieval literature and Shakespeare that year – convinced them of my squareness!
A continued presence was the manageress, Mrs M. Unfailingly well-dressed, a widow in her forties, she was an unusual figure in the almost exclusively male cinema management of the period. Dealing mostly with accounts, she had an office, a large room up the stairs from the foyer. She left most of the routine management to May, but took an interest in staff welfare, keeping a kind eye on the older women. Recently I read a blog by a man who knew the Odeon well as a child when his mother worked in the box office. She was allowed to bring him to work in the school holidays, where he got to know the projectionists and the doormen. That was typical of Mrs M’s generosity.
Also almost unheard of in the 60s was the cinema’s employment of a woman projectionist. The projection room was unknown territory, and the staff there seemed a law to themselves, so I never found out her name. But she was a familiar sight lugging huge reels of film up the stairs.
Although the Odeon as part of a chain had to take what films it was given, there was leeway at local level about the length of runs. If a film was going well, it might be kept for another week. The 1960s saw a continued decline in cinema attendance from the high point of World War II when annual British cinema attendance topped one and half billion for three successive years. By 1968 this was around 250 million, and cinemas had to work hard to take the right decisions about films, ticket pricing and sales. The overall boss, Mr E, a remote man with a London accent, who popped in most weeks made the major decisions, but Mrs M had an important role.
During that Easter holidays I witnessed a shocking event. May took charge of the deliveries of ice-cream and drinks, and the van-man, Willie, was a frequent visitor to the workroom. Between them they decided how many boxes of each item they needed the following week, and when he remained while the rest of us were told, “Away you go, lassies, Willie and me have things to sort out,” we thought nothing about it. Innocently I wondered if they had a fancy for each other. We learned the truth suddenly, when May was summarily dismissed, leaving angry and tearful. She and Willie had been working a fiddle with the orders. Whether this had been suspected for a long time and a trap set to catch them out, or whether Mr E had walked in unexpectedly, I never discovered. But it was brutal. May and Willie lost their jobs, and two families their livelihoods. Mrs M might have put a good word in for May, but it was an instantly dismissible offence. In forty years of working, I never saw such a thing happen again.
Returning for my last session as an usherette in summer 1969 I was greeted by a white Volkswagen in the foyer, publicity for ‘The Love Bug’, another film about a magic car. The whistled theme tune sticks in my head but I remember nothing more. We also had ‘Carry on Camping’, for adult audiences before the school holidays. Coming from a family which regularly listened to ‘Round the Horne’, I appreciated the ‘Carry On’ humour. The best joke was the corniest, and I enjoyed the reaction in the cinema. Sid James and Charles Hawtry are standing at a gate and Hawtry rushes off past Bernard Bresslaw who asks, “Where’s ‘e gone?” “Orf for a pee” says James, laconically, to embarrassed titters from the audience. James steps away from the gate, revealing a sign reading “ASSES MUST BE SHOWN” – as Hawtry rushes back to affix the letter P! It always got a big laugh. The camp site, of course, turns out to be for nudists.
The summer’s musical was ‘The Jungle Book’, the cartoon version, with a lively score, featuring pastiches of popular musical styles. Even those brought up on Kipling’s stories, who were sceptical about an American Mowgli, were bowled over by its charm. It was a short musical, and became part of a double bill, preceded by the documentary about the Investiture of the Prince of Wales, which had taken place a month earlier. The ceremony was overseen by Lord Snowden who designed the new coronet (the old one having departed to France with the previous Prince of Wales in 1937) and other props and clothing, including his own MC’s costume, a sleek little number in forest-green doeskin. As a half-hour introduction before the musical, it served to settle the children, and give an excuse for an ice-cream round. Older matinee regulars enjoyed the spectacle. Two patrons surprised me and another usherette when they walked out past us after the investiture film, smiling graciously. My colleague, astonished that they weren’t getting their money’s worth, rushed to tell them there was another film. “Thet’s quite all right, dear,” one said in her best Morningside. “We only wanted to see Prince Charles.” When we told Bob, the doorman, he quipped, “You should of telt them that they might of seen Charlie but they missed the King o’ the Swingers.”
I have an odder “royal” recollection from a quiet afternoon when I joined Mrs M taking the tickets. We tried to ensure that no-one without a ticket slipped past to use the toilets – considerably plusher than public conveniences. An elderly gent, smartly dressed, nodded to us as he came out from the gents, and made his way towards the front door. Mrs M indicated that I was to say nothing. “He sometimes comes in, and we always let him,” she whispered. “You know they say he’s a descendant of Edward VII.” As I paused to do my sums, she continued seriously, “Not legitimate, you understand.” So some respect for royalty still flourished!
That summer saw changes in personnel. Mandy, a teenager, had joined the staff a few months earlier. She was pretty with long curly brown hair and a cheerful temperament. Though she was often excitable, it was difficult to dislike her and she soon became part of the gang. In July a graduate trainee manager arrived. With a brand-new maths degree from Edinburgh University, he was a product of one of Edinburgh’s fee-paying schools for boys. It was clear that after life on the playing fields of Stewarts-Melville and the Men’s Union Bar, he found this all-female environment an experience which quickly went to his head! The fancy-free usherettes decided that the posh lad didn’t have what it took, though were happy to engage in the obligatory teasing - apart from Mandy whose freshly mascara’d lashes batted becomingly whenever he approached. As he was ‘management’ we were supposed to call him Mr T, but he soon disclosed that he was Jamie. In a few blinks they were an item. Nowadays, even someone in lower management would be disciplined for getting involved with a junior member of staff. But then it simply provided scope for gossip, although I imagine that they were soon asked to refrain from the more blatant manifestations of their attachment, such as Mandy calling “Coo-ee, Darlin!” across the foyer.
In August the Odeon hosted a film premiere. Staff were lined up for “inspection” – uniform check, hair tied back, shoes polished and not too much make-up. Mrs M, Mr E and Jamie were all on their mettle, ready to greet the dignitaries. The Lord Provost was there, and the cast were awaited …
But what the film was, I can’t now remember! Did the stars all come out? Did Mandy marry her student prince?
Like the usherette with the blues, I fear I missed the end.
