REX CINEMA

My mother was an Usherette for a while at the Rex. When I was a young child, she would let me in the back after everyone was seated, to watch films for free.

My first date was in the Rex, we were supposed to meet outside one saturday afternoon, but to be sure he was there I stayed on the bus till the next stop, looking as we drove past. Yes, he was there so I got off and walked back. Think I was 14 or 15. It was a sea picture (his choice) then he bought us sixpence worth of chips each after and he walked me home to Mount Pleasant.

I was the projectionist at the REX cinema in the late 1960s, I use to get 10 shillings a performance. The manager was Mr Bob Grover and assistant Manager was a Mr Lawrence. There was Mrs Terry at the kiosk box, also with Mrs Hill, let's not forget Mick who also showed you to your seats. The price of a ticket at the time was about 1/9 to sit down stairs and 3/6 up stairs. The projectors were x 2 BTH 'Supa' 35mm film projectors with optical sound, with a built in 90 watt valve sound amplifier system, this fed into a large bass bin behind the screen with a very large horn tweeter stacked on top of it. The light source was a carbon arc, if I got it right, it was a 49 volt DC source with two large rectifiers on the back wall of the projection room. I use to go up a flight of stairs at the rear of the Rex on a Sunday afternoon to spool up the films for the coming week. The films did not come on a spool as you might think so? it came in a large round tin with a plastic hub in the middle in which it had a key slot in it. This you had to be very careful with as you had to place the 2000 feet of film from the film tin on to a disc that laid back slightly (so it did not spill off) or you would be in BIG trouble. I then could wind it onto empty projector spools and place them into a fire proof film spool box. Each spool would last approx 22 minutes each, an average feature film would have about 5 or 6 spools of film, this you had to do a change over between one projector to the other. This was done by 'tab dots' on the top right hand side of the screen as the film emptied, some times if you missed to first dot! you got a blank screen with a countdown following. That was embarrassing for any projectionist to happen! Still, The good old days!

Unless I am mistaken, I can remember the cinema being called the "Cinema de Luxe"!!! before it became "The Rex". That would have been in the early 50's.