The Sunday Mail
Benny Leon
To my childish mind I thought that there must be some connection between the moving images on the silver screen and that moving beam of light. I remember dashing out of the cinema in fear during a Saturday morning matinee when a group of warriors armed with shields started throwing spears at the camera.
This fascination for images would continue throughout my life and, when I reached my teens, prompted me to become a photographer and, in my early twenties, to become a projectionist at the old Royalty Theatre, Gatooma (Kadoma).
When I was at boarding school at Milton High in Bulawayo, I took charge of the projector and showed films to the boarders. The highlight of our week as boarders was the Saturday morning and afternoon “flicks” in town. There being no other form of entertainment, the four cinemas in Bulawayo had full houses.
In the huge complex of the Palace Theatre, in Main Street, Bulawayo, was the holding centre for African Films Trust Ltd and African Theatres Trust Ltd, both owned by the South African Schlesinger organisation. (Isidore Schlesinger was the pioneer of film import and distribution to Southern Africa, setting up in 1913.)
Every fortnight, from this building, I would collect whatever film was handed out to me. I was not given a choice.
These were 16mm films duplicated from 35mm feature movies that had completed the countrywide cinema circuit.
I remember the Bob Hope comedies “Where There’s Life” and “Casanova’s Big Night”. Then there were Errol Flynn, Ronald Colman and David Niven in “Lives of a Bengal Lancer” (with Gunga Din thrown in), Laurence Olivier in “Henry V”, “Nicholas Nickleby” and “Oliver Twist” and Abbott and Costello in “Here Come the Co-eds”, just to mention a few.
The Palace Theatre was magnificent, with its stalls and raked gallery, and could seat one thousand patrons. The projection box was in the centre of the theatre between the two floors, so that the projectionist never saw the audience through the portholes.
It had two magnificent cream-coloured 35mm projectors which projected within a remarkably short distance a bright image onto a silver screen. The source of illumination for projecting was a carbon arc light burning and consuming electricity at 40 amperes.
It was normal to have two projectors for continuity. The 35mm films would arrive wrapped in newspaper in tin cans. Usually five to seven reels would comprise the programme and these would be wound onto reels and then threaded onto the projector.
When one reel came to an end the arc lights on the other projector were struck and the film would continue on that projector without a break. The key to continuity was the cue mark, a black or white dot, which appeared briefly in the top right hand corner of the screen.
This was the signal to start the loaded projector. Ten seconds later a second cue mark would appear and this was the signal to switch from one projector to the other. This was done at the flick of a switch and was hardly noticeable by the audience.
Cinema projectors showed an amazing 24 frames per second and used 45 feet of film per minute. The optical soundtrack was down the side of the frame. In the silent era frames were projected at 18 frames per second, but with the advent of “talking pictures” it was increased to 24 frames per second.
That is why the action in films made in the silent era was quick and jerky. They were being projected at a faster speed than that at which they were exposed.
A thin slit of light would be focused on the soundtrack and the varying intensity of light would activate a photo-electric cell, producing an electric current which would be amplified into sound. At first the soundtrack was recorded on huge bakelite records running at 78 revolutions per minute.
Getting it to synchronise with the moving picture on the screen was an exacting task. After the optical soundtrack came the 70mm film with four magnetic oxide strips giving a stereophonic effect. This was not a viable idea and did not last long. Today we have films with an optical and a digital soundtrack, the latter giving stereophonic sound.
In 1954 I watched the sinister Vincent Price in the horror movie “The House of Wax” at the Palace Theatre. It was in three dimensions. One wore special glasses with polarising filters. The two projectors were linked together and each projected an image — one for each eye. Without the glasses one saw two images. Each filter allowed one to see an image for each eye. The brain combined the two images and created a third dimensional effect.
At that time the African Films Trust Ltd were the sole distributors of films throughout the Rhodesias. Bulawayo and Salisbury (Harare) had four cinemas each owned and operated by this company. Gwelo (Gweru), Kadoma, Selukwe (Shurugwi), Kwekwe and Umtali (Mutare) had independent exhibitors. Jimmy Pereira would come in later in the 1960s with his chain of Rainbow Theatres.
The Royalty Theatre in Kadoma was third on the circuit after Salisbury and Bulawayo had exhibited the latest films.
The Royalty Theatre first opened its doors in 1919 and was known as the “Bioscope Hall”. The word “bio” covered the exhibition of lantern slides and the motion picture.
Later on the slides were a medium for advertisements and the audience would have to sit through a showing of twenty to thirty slides.
I recall Chhugan Kidia, always conscious of public relations, painstakingly writing in black Indian ink slides for forthcoming attractions and commercial ads, on a piece of two-inch square glass.
These were screened before the show commenced and during the interval. Later, with the advent of lithography, the slides were photographed from typewritten text and cut into squares, mounted between glass and then projected.
One must appreciate the change in cinema exhibition from those days to what we have now in 2013. Today no commercial slides are shown. After a series of trailers and commercials the main feature starts without an interval and “that’s your lot”.
In 1945 I attended a matinee with my uncle. At one point projection was stopped until all children aged under 12 had been removed from the cinema. I was allowed to stay with my uncle. A very graphic newsreel was then run, showing the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, which haunts me to this day.
In the 1950s and 1960s in the old Royalty we would start off with the African Mirror with an African warrior in a feathered head dress, bare-chested, beating out a rhythm on a drum.
It was reputed to be the oldest newsreel in the world. Then we had a “short” of travel interest, perhaps a short musical, then a Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny cartoon and, to the delight of the children, “The Three Stooges” who drew peals of laughter as they slapsticked their way through crazy situations.
To be continued…
After these “shorts” there was an interval. At the matinee the children would really become involved with the action on the screen and cheer on the cowboys, boo the baddies and encourage the heroes. The noise was sometimes deafening.
Our parents would give us half a crown (about £1,50 in today’s money) and that was enough for the afternoon. Admission to the movies was one shilling and the balance was spent on sweets and cold drinks at the tea room attached to the building. Admission for adults was 2s.6d at matinees and 3s.6d for the evening performance.
The Royalty Theatre was acquired by Joe Burke in 1925 and would remain in his family for the next 35 years. Joe Burke died in 1958 and it was taken over by his son David Burke who ran it until 1969.
The “bug-house”, as we called it, was unique. It was an oblong building with no frills. The box office was right at the front and the “foyer” was the pavement adjacent to the street. On a hot October night Joe Burke would draw open the curtains covering the doorway, take out a couple of deck chairs, and sit on the pavement to watch the film.
Passers-by in the street would stop out of curiosity and before long there was a crowd of people sitting on the pavement across the road, with their feet in the gutter, having a free viewing of the film. One could hear the soundtrack in the residential areas a few blocks away.
In May 1960, Princess Margaret married Antony Armstrong-Jones. David Burke, together with a Mr Chee (one of Zimbabwe’s first Chinese entrepreneurs, who ran the cinema in Gweru), rented the 20 minute colour newsreel of the Royal Wedding.
At the Royalty, the wedding was screened first and as it came to an end it was taken off the projector in its reel, loaded into one of two waiting cars, one driven by myself, and off we sped to Gweru. We arrived just in time to screen the newsreel at the end of Mr Chee’s regular programme.
The Royalty screened three movies a week. It was cinema history when Cecil B de Mille’s “The Ten Commandments” was scheduled to run for one whole week.
The nearest cinema to the Royalty was one operated by the Globe and Phoenix Mine in Kwekwe. David Burke placed an advert in the Midlands Observer. The following week the G&P Mine placed another advert announcing that the “Ten Commandments” would be arriving in Kwekwe soon.
I remember projecting this spectacular epic comprised of 10 reels. At the interval the incidental music was run off the soundtrack. Usually we would play 78rpm records and later the long playing vinyl records.
I had a Telefunken reel-to-reel tape-recorder and at home would record music from Mantovani, Ray Coniff or Percy Faith. I would hook up this machine to the system and during the interval play back the music.
The Royal Wedding was screened on a Monday night and the old Royalty had a full house. The feature programme was Walt Disney’s “Fantasia”, a classic animated cartoons feature, with Mickey Mouse as “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”. This was not everyone’s cup of tea and several people walked out.
Films were also dispatched from one town to another by quick and reliable passenger train. As soon as a film came off a projector it was rewound back into the metal cans in which it had arrived and placed into a metal container.
Peter the assistant would then take it to the railway station, on his bicycle, at about 10 pm and it would usually be dispatched to Kwekwe. The containers were not padlocked. On one occasion there was a complaint from an exhibitor that a reel was missing from the feature film. African Films Ltd naturally launched an enquiry. I don’t think that the missing reel was ever found and the matter remains a mystery.
In those days all cinemas were built to accommodate large audiences. The Palace in Harare could hold 900 people. The Prince’s Cinema, situated where the modern Meikles Hotel is today, could hold about 500 people.
Today cinemas are split into smaller rooms holding not more than 200 people. In a shopping mall one finds six to eight screens. The projection room is nothing but a concrete box holding one projector for each cinema.
In the old days the films would arrive in the usual manner and the whole programme was spliced together onto one reel three feet in diameter. One projectionist ran the whole show with a movie starting every fifteen minutes. Once the projectors were running he would sit down and have a cup of tea. Occasionally he would get up and walk around to see if all was well.
Breakdowns were extremely rare, but it was not always so with the old Royalty. It had a small projection room holding two noisy 35 mm projectors. Much heat came from the carbon arc lighting and one had trouble disposing of the carbon monoxide fumes.
On a Saturday matinee the windows had to be closed to prevent the sunlight from filtering into the auditorium. We got headaches from this gas. We complained several times to David Burke who eventually employed the services of a plumber to extend the funnels so that the gas would escape completely through the existing chimney in the roof.
Some modern projectors are now fitted with xenon lamps which burn at the same amperage and are obviously much cleaner, but still generate considerable heat. They have an anode and cathode and across this gap a bright light is produced.
At the Royalty the worm-gear moving the two carbons, [so that they burned at aconstant gap of one centimeter apart], would wear. It had to be turned by hand and required constant attention.
The current of 40 amps passing through this would burn the carbon rods and, if the gap became too wide, the light turned blue and would eventually go out, drawing yells from the audience below.
At night, in the summer, we would open the projection room windows and look down on the people having a free view of the film across the road with their feet in the gutter.
In Kadoma everyone knew everyone and, when breakdowns happened occasionally, they knew who to blame. One memorable film I remember projecting was “Ben Hur”. This was a lengthy movie of nine reels. The chariot race lasting eleven minutes is a classic in cinema history. Right in the middle of this was a change over from one projector to the other.
I was engrossed in watching this race and had not threaded up the other projector. I realised this just in time and hastily picked up the next reel from the bin and in double-quick time had the projector ready — thus avoiding a “breakdown” — and the chariot race continued uninterrupted. The Elvis Presley movies always attracted full houses and the film distributors demanded sixty-five percent of the box office takings from the exhibitors. I remember, in 1961, the screening of “The Guns of Navarone” a classic eight-reeler war movie starring Gregory Peck and David Niven. On the Saturday night the house was full with a large queue still at the door. David Burke sent for more seats from the Grand Hotel a short distance away. “Singing in the Rain” in 1952 also attracted full houses.
In 1957 the old Royalty showed its first Cinemascope movie “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” starring Howard Keel and Jane Powell. The screen had to be extended from 3:4 aspect ratio to a 1:3 ratio. This was done with strips of calico on either side of the screen. These areas did not reflect light as efficiently as the silver screen 3:4 section. It was some time before this was rectified with a new silver screen. Automatic push-button curtains were also installed. In the projection box the Royalty acquired two anamorphic lenses to screen the Cinemascope pictures.
In 1978 I moved to Harare, became involved with the Central African Zionist Office, and began projecting their Israeli films. With its head office in Bulawayo 16mm films were sent to me to be labelled and repaired. From a 16mm film catalogue I would select a programme of films that were screened at the Harry Margolis Hall.
We would insert an advertisement in the Herald and this would attract an audience of about one hundred people. With the advent of Independence in 1980 the ambassador of Palestine, Ali Halimeh objected to these films. (This was before VHS video tapes became a common media). One particular night with a popular programme, which included celebrity musicians in the Israeli symphony orchestra being screened, the small Braude Hall was packed with people. The PLO retaliated by placing flyers on the windscreens of motor cars parked outside the hall. The following day the president of the Zionist office in Harare received a phone call from a reporter at the Herald advising him that the Minister of Information had banned the acceptance of film adverts from the Zionist office.
At the time of writing (November 2013) the Levy brothers of Sam Levy’s Village are constructing a cinema complex of six screens with a food court. The smallest cinema will hold 75 seats and the largest 240 seats. It will be equipped and run by Ster-Kinekor of South Africa and is expected to open in December 2013. The projection of 35mm films will be replaced with 3D films on computer hard drives, slotted into a projector and programmed to run for the number of shows required daily. Premieres will coincide with those showing overseas. But, across the way, in Sam Levy’s Flea Market, there are stalls selling the latest pirated film releases on DVDs, at three dollars each.
In recent years two cinemas in the Avondale Shopping Centre owned by the late Jimmy Pereira have closed down. The Rainbow cinemas in Robert Mugabe Way housed in the old post office building have been taken over by Ster-Kinekor, which also runs six screens in a complex near the Eastgate Shopping Centre.
They also run the six cinemas in Westgate. In the Greenstone Mall, in South Africa, one man supervises eight projectors at one time.
Today people still go to the cinema, but not nearly as many as in the 1940s and 1950s. The digital age has robbed the cinema of its patrons with DVD’s carrying the latest releases. As a teenager it was an outing to go to a movie and everyone dressed up in evening gowns or jacket and tie. The magic and power of the cinema attracted audiences throughout the world and influenced their behaviour and dress.
In spite of plastic portable lightweight DVD’s, that magical beam of light will continue to be projected in years to come.
Writer’s Note: The first laws relating to the cinema in Southern Rhodesia appeared on September 20 1912. Because films were so flammable, unless the building was specifically licensed for cinematograph shows they could only be shown in public places with the permit/permission of a BSAP Officer, and on such conditions as he imposed.
(The owner of the premises in which the film was being shown had a duty to ascertain whether the exhibitor had a permit). The superintending official could stop the show at any time if he perceived a fire risk. The Administrator (at that time Milton) could arbitrarily prohibit the presentation of any moving picture exhibition that he found “objectionable”. (Censorship laws relating to moving pictures were not yet in place in Southern Rhodesia).
