Seventy-five years ago, at Christmas 1950, people all over the North East were able to go to the movies on the big day itself.
This highly unusual state-of-affairs, which was unique to the region, resulted from an agreement cinema workers had made with their employers three years before.
The larger circuits – such as the Odeon, the Gaumont and the Ritz – didn’t think much of it and decided to keep their doors shut. They had, after all, given the people of Tynemouth ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ in recent days, and the people of Gateshead ‘Double Indemnity.’
But the smaller chains – Black’s, Hinge’s, McHarg’s – and a host of independent halls would open for business at 5pm.
It had been a busy time for everyone. Staff had spent weeks collecting pennies at the Gaumont and the Palace picture houses in Sunderland, and those pennies would now fund a party for children from the Havelock Tower orphanage, the Cottage Homes on Hylton Road, and the Grindon Hall Sanatorium. Similar arrangements had been made in North Shields, and gifts donated by patrons could be glimpsed beneath the huge Christmas tree in the foyer of Newcastle’s Queen’s Hall.
An organ that came up out of the floor
Christmas Day dawned with fog and a hard frost. Snow from the past week was still lying in the streets, and news broke that the ancient Stone of Scone had been stolen from Westminster Abbey. But none of that could deter the Sunderland and Manchester United teams from taking to the pitch at Roker Park, or more than 40,000 fans from turning up to watch them play.
At the Theatre Royal on Bedford Street, as the final whistle blew, ‘Father of the Bride,’ a new romantic comedy starring Spencer Tracy and Elizabeth Taylor, was getting underway. And so was ‘The Clouded Yellow,’ at the nearby Regal.
That place had an Art Deco organ that came up out of the floor, together with a café and a roller-skating rink. The film, meanwhile, was part-mystery and part-melodrama. It starred Jean Simmons and Trevor Howard and had been shot in Newcastle several months before. Patrons who correctly identified all the locations, which included the Quayside, Central Station and Castle Keep, could enter a competition to win themselves a two-week holiday.
Bomba the Jungle Boy
Nor did the wintry weather deter people in Newcastle from turning out for ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears,’ the pantomime at the Palace Theatre on Newgate Street. And the Essoldo cinema was equally busy. A “Yuletide Melodies” concert had been held there on Christmas Eve, featuring Stan Dixon & The Essoldo Orchestra, together with the recently-formed Monkseaton Girls’ Choir. And on Christmas Day, the big film was ‘The Lost Volcano,’ a children’s adventure with Bomba the Jungle Boy.
Further up Westgate Road, an old Fred Astaire movie – ‘Top Hat’ – was showing at the Brighton Cinema. Fred’s latest movie, ‘Let’s Dance,’ could be seen at the Regal in Byker. And visitors to the Brinkburn there could enjoy ‘Duchess of Idaho,’ a pool-side romance starring swim-queen Esther Williams.
At the Gloria picture house in Walker, where blue neon lights made the place look like a waterfall at night, they were showing ‘Francis,’ a film about a talking mule. In Gosforth, meanwhile, at the Globe cinema, the Norwegian skate-queen Sonja Henie could be seen in a rink-side romance entitled ‘Katina.’ And both the Rialto in Benwell and the Ritz in Forest Hall had ‘The Corsican Brothers,’ an old swashbuckler in which Douglas Fairbanks Jr played wronged twins hell-bent on revenge.
Though it operated all over the country, the Essoldo chain still had a strong presence in the North East. It had, after all, been created there by Solomon Sheckman, a North Shields-born entrepreneur. And he ensured that on Christmas Day, cinema doors were open all the way from Catterick to Whitley Bay.
We spend most of the day at home
The doors of the Essoldo in Gateshead were particularly fine. Standing at the corner of High Street and Sunderland Road, and built in something resembling the Spanish style, this place had been a full-time picture house for only a few months, having operated as a variety theatre for a half-century before that. Its seasonal offering was ‘Treasure Island,’ Disney’s first all-live-action feature, which starred Robert Newton as Long John Silver.
In Blyth and Durham, meanwhile, the chain featured Abbott and Costello ‘In the Foreign Legion.’ And the Central Cinema in Blyth was showing both a western, ‘Comanche Territory,’ and a farce, ‘Louisa,’ which had future US President Ronald Reagan as its star.
Miss RM Nicholson was in charge there, and she was relaxed about having to forego her turkey sandwiches. “There has to be a certain amount of entertainment for the public on Christmas Day,” she told a local newspaper. “We spend most of the day at home, however, for performances don’t commence until tea-time.”
Elsewhere in Gateshead, the Bensham Picture House also had ‘Francis,’ the talking mule, while the Shipcote Hall had ‘Seven Days to Noon,’ an early atom bomb thriller produced by Alexander Korda, which was one of the very few British films doing the rounds.
But if home-grown films were scarce at Christmas 1950, Christmas films were even scarcer. The only one the people of the North East would get to see was ‘The Bishop’s Wife,’ a romantic fantasy starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young, and David Niven. The film had been chosen for a Royal Command Performance three years before, although anyone wanting to watch it now would have to wait until almost the New Year.
