Bringing the show to town

Before televisions, the cinema ruled supreme. o­ne man helped bring the Cornish cinema to life.

Patsy Parker recalls the life of her father EO Parker.

The powerful impact of film in the early 20th century is difficult to appreciate today, when our senses are constantly bombarded by the media. Back in the 1950s, even television, with its o­ne channel, was grey, and the brashness of commercial TV was not to reach Cornwall until 1961. The film medium was by far the boldest, loudest, most exciting experience available. This story is about o­ne of the people who worked in the early years of cinema, bringing to Cornwall the ultimate form of escapism.

Edward Oram Parker was a showman. He was born in 1894, in Kent; his family had a Cornish connection – his mother was a Callington woman. He inherited his considerable creative talents from his father Billy who, while running a barber shop, also professionally made and played many musical instruments and was a prolific landscape artist. From a young age, little Edward – and his brother Harold – were accompanying their father to concert performances, theatricals and churches playing a variety of instruments from the cornet to the ‘squeeze-box’.

Edward was a Merchant Navy bugler at 16, and by the 1920s was a professional orchestra musician. The ‘Cornish connection’ may have been what drew him westward, and before long he was conductor and violinist in municipal orchestras such as Torquay, and eventually in the Westcountry’s new and exciting ‘picture houses’. Those ‘kinema’ orchestras provided accompanying music for the thrills of the silent movies, but by the time the talkies arrived, Edward’s showman’s instinct had drawn him into the new medium as an exhibitor and, most importantly, a publicist.

Before his children (Max, Thelma and Patsy) were born, ‘EO’ Parker was advertising and promoting movies and variety theatre all over Cornwall. As well as devising and producing hundreds of publicity stunts, he applied his publicist’s skills to charity fundraising, and campaigns for industry-related causes such as the abolition of cinema tax and Sunday opening for cinemas. Having been raised as a performer, he understood the basic concept of the publicity stunt, unchanged to this day: it must grab public attention by being vivid, amusing and entertaining. By the late 1920s EO was managing the Pavilion and Victoria cinemas in Newquay, and its streets and beaches were the backdrop for EO’s weekly advertising campaigns, costing nothing but a little creative ingenuity and a willing participant. o­ne particular staff member, Basil, described by EO as “a dauntless and versatile street stuntman”, was a star performer for many years. Basil was an entertaining weekly spectacle for locals and visitors, wearing a variety of daft costumes, armed with crazy props and sometimes live animals.

Basil pushed a pram with a baby doll to advertise a film called It’s a Boy, while wearing a top hat, shoes with white spats, a frock coat and, as trousers, an old pair of EO’s pyjamas. Basil marched up and down outside the Penolver Hotel dressed as a giant gold coin to advertise Gold Diggers of 1933 and carrying a spade (showmanship doesn’t require subtlety). Basil trotted around Newquay in full female Chinese drag with a parasol, to promote Sunshine Susie, and was a Chinese mandarin with long moustaches for some forgotten old Fu Manchu film (Chinoiserie was popular in the ‘30s). He would wear a beard for o­ne stunt, or dress as a jockey, riding a live donkey, for another. He dressed as a Viennese officer; he filled o­ne end of a pantomime horse. He was a sailor with full attached battleship as he walked, to promote The Flag Lieutenant. The ‘battleship’ being mounted quite high around his waist, enabled him to work the Newquay beaches, paddle into the sea and be seen ‘afloat’ there. He dressed as an airman with a pair of cardboard wings attached to his back for The Lost Squadron. That stunt was a ‘tie-in’ with the introduction of scenic pleasure-flights at Newquay (cost to punters: 10/6).

Basil smeared his face with black grease and donned dirty overalls as an railway fireman to feature in o­ne of EO’s most spectacular early creations, built to publicise The Rome Express, a 1932 thriller starring Conrad Veidt. Out of cardboard and plywood, plus a two-wheel bogie and a car battery, EO and his helpers made an astonishing, fully mobile ‘steam’ engine. It weighed half a ton and was finished with high-gloss black and green. The star attraction at Newquay carnival, it drew the inevitable crowds of small boys. Local carnivals were fertile ground for publicity stunts. In the old days Cornish carnivals were exciting social events, like the medieval fairs from which they evolved, and the local ‘festivals’ of today. Your local seedsmen, printers, ironmongers or butchers competed for ‘best float’ prize and, of course, the cinemas had a field day. Basil and the Victoria cinema won carnival first prize that year.

It may have been Basil, or another of his fearless breed who, dressed as a cowboy, rode a real horse around Camborne and Redruth to promote o­ne of the ever-popular Westerns. EO had borrowed the horse from a Scorrier farmer, who reassured him: “E’s quiet as a babby”. The ubiquitous small boys crowded around the stuntman. Just minutes after o­ne had asked: “Are you a real cowboy, mister?” he was badly thrown by ‘Quiet as a Babby’, which made its own way home. With the help of Basil and many others, the aim was always achieved: local people looked, laughed – and queued at the box office.

By the 1940s, EO Parker’s ‘patch’ would extend as far west as Penzance, and as far north as Launceston. The movies were well into their heyday, and so was EO. There was still no TV screen in the corner of the living-room, and those decades were the peak era for cinema attendance. The King’s, Camborne, was EO’s office base, and the town boasted another cinema, the Scala. Truro had the Plaza; Redruth, the Regal and the little Gem. Penzance had the Savoy and the tiny Regal; Newquay, the Victoria and the Pavilion; Launceston, the Tower. The grandeur of these names indicates the ‘brand values’. So, too, do the staff uniforms. A 1929 picture of EO with his Newquay staff shows them dressed in a variety of peculiar outfits, some reminiscent of milkmen or bus conductors; some wearing perky little ‘Thunderbirds’ hats. EO, meanwhile, looks every inch the proud manager in his trademark bow tie. A few years later, cinema staff were being afforded the military dignity of gold epaulettes and generals’ hats; no-one found anything absurd in this. The sun had not yet set o­n the British empire. The concept was luxury and flawless presentation, a sense of occasion.

Film had long been a powerful propaganda medium, and in the late 1930s wartime films carried strong nationalistic messages. Patrons were likely to emerge from the cinema primed with patriotic pride. In 1939, Cornwall often saw recruitment rallies centered around local cinemas. A rally, in Redruth, saw the Territorials marching down Fore Street with stirring full band accompaniment, climaxing with an assembly outside the Regal. This tied in with a showing of George Formby’s film It’s in the Air, in which George infiltrates the RAF to deliver an important message, accompanied by his little ukelele and the hit song Our Sergeant Major. Those popular WW2 Formby and Gracie Fields
vehicles were simple, likeable and very persuasive, reminding us that we must all pull together and do our bit.

At the start of the war, the Home Office ordered the closure of all the country’s theatres, cinemas and dance halls ‘until further notice’. It was feared that air raids could cause evacuation problems: such places of public entertainment were then more packed with people than at any other time before or since. After o­nly a week, however, the ban was lifted by the Government. The insecure, depressed population of an austere, blacked-out country had never before so needed the emotion, laughter and escapism of the movies to boost its spirits.

During those 40 years, as well as creating outfits, building props, designing and painting posters, EO Parker used a succession of (now) classic cars to mobilise his stunts. His first car, which served him faithfully for at least 25 years, was a 10-horsepower black Singer, dating from the days when almost all cars were black. With a leaking roof and battered wings, this elderly workhorse was rolled out in a variety of disguises, and topped by a big old loudspeaker which relayed ‘music from the movies’. EO’s decades of resourcefulness with paint, cardboard, glue, wood, old pram wheels and bits and bobs had reached its peak of perfection by the early ’50s, when the Singer had some of her finest moments. Almost completely obscured, she chugged around the streets and lanes of Camborne and Redruth disguised as ‘Showboat’, a 19th-century paddle steamer, complete with balconies, funnels, and a prow with oil lamps. From somewhere beneath it all, the speaker blared out ‘Ole Man River’.

Camborne carnival regularly featured the old Singer, dressed up to the hilt complete with screeching amplifier, pulling a highly-decorated trailer with two or three good-humoured cinema folk, including maybe the ‘torchie’ and the ice-cream girl, waving to the crowd, dressed as pirates, cowgirls or other characters appropriate to a current film showing.

EO could have been a PR genius. His fertile imagination never missed an opportunity. o­n a balmy summer’s day in the late ‘50s, the Chancellor of the Exchequer Derick Heathcote-Amory was guest of honour at a Camborne garden fête. EO got busy with the white paint pot. That afternoon, strolling around, the Chancellor was politely shadowed by a cinema man dressed in cricket whites, beneath a huge black umbrella which demanded ‘Abolish Cinema Tax!’. EO was an energetic campaigner o­n this subject, blaming the punitive tax for the closure of the smaller cinemas. o­ne, the tiny Regal in Penzance, was adorned with EO’s dramatic poster epitaphs (“This is indeed a bloody business!”: Macbeth) just before the lights went down for ever. The abolition of the tax in 1960 more or less coincided with the new Gaming Act which allowed the opening of public bingo halls. Those too played their part in the cinemas’ decline; although in some cases the cinema reopened for bingo, which at least ensured that the old building stayed alive, and in a small Cornish town ‘the bingo’ was often as much of a social glue as the movies had been.

EO produced most of his advertising material at home. Living at Phillack, o­n Hayle Towans, was an advantage: the smallest posters were painted o­n the dining-room table, much to his wife’s exasperation; next size up was done in the shed; next size up, o­n the lawn; Sistine Chapel size (painted o­n canvas to hang across the front of a cinema) could be dragged across the lane o­nto the Towans, where EO was happy o­n the grass with pots, pencils, rulers and brushes. EO had a showman’s taste in colour; his aesthetic mindset was forever in cinema mode. Painting the house was a handy way to use up those leftover pots, originally used for posters or decorating a new kiosk. As a result the family home was often picked out with lurid gold or mauve.

Many of Cornwall’s empty cinemas have, indeed, ended up as bingo halls; some have been used as discos, surplus stores, or paintballing arcades, rather like the derelict Methodist chapels, another poignant feature of the Cornish landscape today. It was, finally, television that dealt the death-blow to the old-style cinemas. The patrons will never again queue twice around the block, as they did in Launceston for South Pacific. Now, we can buy films and watch them at home. It’s highly sophisticated and it means instant gratification; but as a sensory and social experience, it pales into nothingness compared to what we got from the rich, vibrant world of the cinema in its heyday.

EO Parker, accompanied by his beloved Homburg hat, has long gone to that great auditorium in the sky, and is very probably painting huge posters for the gates of heaven. Apparently they like a touch of gold up there.

If you would like to share any memories revived by this article, you can  email the author Patsy Parker

Cornish Cinemas now and then

Of the cinemas named in this article, three are still fulfilling their original function. The Savoy, Penzance, Regal, Redruth, and Plaza, Truro are going strong under the ownership of the Cornish company Merlin Cinemas. All were built in the art deco style of the ‘30s and ‘40s. During that era, cinemas were constructed with a designated cafe area, usually o­n the mezzanine floor and opening out o­nto the balcony which protruded above the main entrance doors. ‘Going to the pictures’ was an event, patrons dressed accordingly, and the gentle ritual of tea was enjoyed between performances.

The Regal’s cafe was furnished with gold-painted rattan chairs and glass-topped rattan tables of the ‘palm-court orchestra’ era. The cinema cafe practice died out and those areas were subsequently furnished with battered brown leather armchairs, or red leather sofas with curving chrome arms. The King’s, Camborne, which lives o­n as a Bingo hall, poignantly retains some of its original features notably the heavy bevelled-glass front doors, with handles of chrome and that particular flame-orange bakelite which echoed the colours of the foyer: red, orange and gold.

Market forces inevitably dictate society’s direction. It is difficult to feel affection for the Ranks, Odeons and other giants which have swallowed up virtually every little ‘indie’. It is surprising, however, that today Newquay, o­ne of the most popular Cornish holiday destinations, does not possess a working cinema, when Helston, St Ives, Falmouth and Wadebridge each have their own. Padstow has the little Cinedrome, exhibiting since 1924 – a wonderful record.

Bude has the tiny Rebel at Poundstock; built in 1988, it reflects some of the affection for exhibiting shown by EO. The creation of the Rebel was a true labour of love, the fulfilment of a dream by o­ne Peter Knight, aka The Mad Cornish Projectionist. Go to his fascinating website, www.madcornishprojectionist.co.uk, to experience the passion which can develop when the cinema is in your blood.