Stories From the Flicks

An old friend of mine had a lot of fun as a boy playing piano for silent films on the Manly Ferry. What he thought was most fun was he was paid an ice cream per trip…or so he said.An elderly man told me how he went to the flicks every Saturday afternoon but was careful not to read his father’s Mirror newspaper during the week. He wanted to find out all about the week’s news from the newsreel.A story from a receptionist.  “I was a teenager and a boy the same age asked me to go with him to the flicks. I was so excited, I got all dressed up. He came to get me and we walked together to the pictures, got our tickets, and sat down together. He said he had to get something, went out, and got a bag of Fantales. He sat back down and ate the whole bag without offering me even one. It was my last outing with a boy for years.”Another story about the newsreels comes from a man who as a boy was desperate to go to the State Theatre. for a show. His father did a trade making him spend the morning watching the news in a nearby newsreel theatre with him before going to the fancy show.A lovely audience member complained our show was not real enough because we never started with the National Anthem as was always done when she was little. The real one, she said, not this dirt by-sea stuff. So now we do, although we have to name it the anthem of 1926 so it can be legally performed. God Save the King of courseAn audience member stood up and told us the story of an aunt who was an usherette in the Crystal Palace Sydney for the first showing of The Son of The Sheik. Everyone was in love with Rudolph Valentino at the time and it was all very exciting. She had to dress up as Vilma Banky and stand in the back of a Model T Ford with her boss dressed up as the Sheik and be driven up and down George St. before the shows.A story by me. My father as a special treat, used to take me to Rockdale Odeon for a Saturday Matinee. It was so exciting, we used to sit in the circle and look down on the naughty boys below. It was very special, he bought me a Hoadley’s Crumble Bar plus an ice cream called a Neapolitan Wafer no choc tops then but this had vanilla, chocolate, AND strawberry ice cream. I remember seeing the Ten Commandments but really was far too young to get much out of it.My father was a Depression boy plus he was also a twin. Every Saturday they were given enough pennies to go the the pictures but unfortunately, his sister used to trick him out of his money so she could take her friend. He must have gone to some probably barefoot, he had no shoes for normal wear then. but he developed a love of Buster Keaton films which he passed down to me.