“I remember the club song which went like this: “To the Ode – Odeon we have come…”
When we were all younger, we used to go to the Odeon cinema for the the Saturday Morning Club. We would pay our 6(d) pence to go in, buy our sweets and walk into the main auditorium were a man played the organ.
Cinema was very much a part of Derek’s life, becoming a manager and meeting his wife at the cinema. One memory was when Fulham Football team visited one of the cinemas he managed, before playing Liverpool the next day.
In the early days of cinema films for children would often be of American origin and sometimes just be adult films which had been edited until British films especially made for the child audience came along following concerns about the effects of film on the young audience.
Children’s Cinema shows and matinees hoped to develop young cinema goers into life long film and cinema fans