R.A.F Christmas Island Astra Cinema

DavidSimpson on April 16, 2015 at 7:57 pm

Further to my ‘Overview’ comments, David Dearle has recently found, amongst his late mother’s personal effects, some letters that he wrote home from Christmas Island in 1959.

In particular, in this letter dated Friday 25th September (not long before he left that deployment in November 1959), he says “I saw the film "Tiger Bay” [J. Lee Thompson/1959] last night and it’s one of the best I’ve seen on the Island. The leading part is taken by a very smart girl of about 12 [who, of course, David now knows was Hayley Mills]. I don’t know whether I told you but I go to the pictures on Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday every week…in fact to every film that comes here! I’ve seen films that I wouldn’t dream of seeing if I was at home, everything from Westerns to Horror. We get them about six weeks after [his home town] Southend [in Essex] because by the time I get the ‘Southend Standard’, the films advertised are on here. Mind you we get a lot of old ones thrown in, like “The Sad Sack” [George Marshall/1957] which I saw years ago. Another annoying thing is that we invariably get colour films in black and white and, in a musical, that can ruin the whole impression of the picture."

My thanks to David for sharing this fascinating insight into the films on offer at the Astra. (Judging by his comment about colour films being screened in BW, presumably the Astra used 16mm projection, where the BW versions were much cheaper than the colour originals.)