The aim of the Going to the Pictures Project has been to help preserve a part of our local cinema heritage by collecting and recording memories from people who used and worked in the local picture houses from the 1930′s to the 1960′s.
Local film maker Tim Brunsden has followed the Going to the Pictures project development and has created a documentary which tells the story of the project.
“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.
My first memory of the pictures is coming to the Plaza to see ‘Oliver’.
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.
My father did shift work, so every third week we would all go to the pictures either to the Regent, Plaza or the Corona…
In 1933/34 I went to “The Pictures” for the first time, but I was not impressed. The black and white film was very old and scratched; it looked like driving rain to me. A few years later I went again and paid a penny to get in with a penny for ice cream in the interval.
A couple’s first date at the opening of the Plaza Cinema in 1939.
The Plaza Cinema is one of only two remaining period cinemas in Liverpool