Harborne Picture House

Great little Cinema. Fine picture and sound. In the 40’s a staff member would walk down the aisle and sit on a stool at the bottom of the screen waiting to close the curtains as ‘The End’ title appeared. Waited there during the interval until the Censors credit appeared and then opened them and disappeared up the aisle. Always a 3 hour programme. Doors either side of the screen made proper ‘Cinemascope’ impossible. They installed a much larger 4x3 and when a ‘scope’ film was showing masking descended leaving a letter box picture at the bottom. This was smaller than the normal films! Films ran Mon to Wed and Thurs to Sat with old and sometimes ancient films shown on Sunday for one day. The Saturday morning children’s club was something to see. Cinema was packed for just 6d (2 1/2p) Always started with a sing song with words on the screen (hands knees and bumps-a-daisy…Underneath the spreading Chestnut tree etc) and then the club song: ‘We come along on Saturday morning’ sung on record by Tommy Handley, a famous radio comedian. Two hours of noisy fun with Tarzan, The 3 Stooges and Laurel and Hardy. It finished when the Royalty (just down the street) opened their ABC minors club in competition. The ‘Old Harborne’ (as we knew it) lost it’s audience. The cinema had no proscemium arch and curtains hung from a track fixed to the ceiling. Sounds primitive but it was neat and adequate. It closed in 1957 with John Mills in ‘Town on Trial’. How I wished I’d taken a photo of the inside before it closed. Happy memories of queues in the rain and great films seen with my mom and sister.