New Princes Cinema

Cinema story On Sunday 25 March 1928 a huge crowd had gathered on a hill in Stalybridge. The attraction was the promise of an aeroplane landing in a field above the town to deliver a can of film containing the First World War comedy drama “What Price Glory?” (a silent movie, but one which received notoriety after lip readers pointed out the foul language the actors were using!) It was a publicity stunt organised by the manager of the New Princes Cinema, Milton W Parker. Parker found a field for the plane to land, announced it to the world and 20,000 people turned up for the event,
The plane circled the field a few times. The conditions were not good. It was foggy and the surging crowd of people were oblivious to the danger an aircraft might pose. This limited space on an already tight landing. The pilot made a few attempts at landing, but pulled up quickly each time because of the crowd. A landing finally took place but the plane was sliding on the grass and heading towards the crowd. It was not going to stop in time. The pilot decided to abandon the landing and hit the gas. The crowd thought it was all part of the show and cheered throwing their hats in the air. Alas the cheering was short lived as the plane ran out of runway and careered into several children sat on a wall. A seven year old boy was killed. The publicity stunt was just that as the can of film turned out to be empty; Milton Parker later admitting the plan had always been for the movie to be delivered by road, old film being too flammable to risk carrying by aircraft.