Saturday Matinees at Hoyts Theatre Penshurst Street (1946 -1953)

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The Saturday afternoon children's matinees followed a tight schedule from which they never seemed to deviate. On the stage was a pianist who got us singing with popular songs like ‘Zippidee Doo Dah’ or ‘Open the Door, Richard’. Then he would vacate in a hurry to avoid a flying Jaffa or Milkshake toffee.

Everyone cheered when the lights went out but there were plaintive but ineffectual calls for silence when the first cartoon appeared, usually Mighty Mouse. This was followed by the British Pathe or Movietone news, sometimes leading with gruesome accounts of the hanging of Nazi war criminals. Immediately afterward came the B movie, usually a western or a slapstick comedy, often pre-war. A long intermission followed during which there was a rush to the lolly stall for a Hoadleys Violet Crumble Bar or a pack of Jaffa's chocolate balls encased in orange sugar. A great deal of shop-lifting went on during the riotous intermission and I wonder that the lolly stall made any profit at all.

After intermission came the costume competition where some very brave children appeared on the stage in Wild West costumes to be cheered or booed by the merciless audience. Somehow from all this, a winner was selected and left the stage with a cowboy pistol prize or, in the case of a girl, waving a Kewpie doll.

Then followed more cartoons, another dollop of newsreel footage and two serials. One, I remember, was called Undersea City, another The Shadow. The most exciting, in my opinion, was Batman and Robin. The racism in it makes me cringe now, but at the time I'm sure it went over our heads. Finally, we got to the main feature film: Rocketship XM, Treasure Island, The Boy with Green Hair or some such box office hit of the time.

After four hours entertainment for sixpence, we left the cinema with our ears ringing to the invariable ‘Doin’ the Hollywood Square Dance’.