Fred Foley remembers working as a projectionist at the Capital cinema

Resource Type: Audio | Posted on 25th July 2012 by Jenny Porter

Fred Foley remembers working as a projectionist at the Capital cinema, or the ‘Cappy’, while he was still at school.  He remembers the two big projection machines and how he was taught how to use it by the Chief Projectionist.

Interviewee: Fred Foley

Interviewee Gender: Male

Interview Transcript

Fred:  The other end of Overbury Street there was a Snooker Hall; have you heard about the Snooker Hall?

Jenny: No

Fred:  There was a Snooker Hall opposite the ‘Cappy’ pictures and just round the corner by Edge Hill Church Paddington another one of the picture houses called the ‘Paddy’ so the picture houses were the ‘Cappy’, the ‘Tunney’ and the ‘Paddy’.
(laughs)
And the Paddy was just like benches and you’d go in and you’d pay your money and you’d get shoved along the bench, and all the old…all the old..things you know used to be on there.  The road films they used to have all of them, what’s a name, ‘The Road to So and So..’ there used to be ‘The Road to Bali’ ‘The Road to… (indecipherable)

Jenny: Oh yeah…yeah…So when…you were telling me before you were a projectionist at the…

Fred: Oh yeah a projectionist at the

Jenny: ‘Cappy?

Fred: At the Cappy yeah, I was projectionist.  I was …I was only about fourteen I was still at school I was still studying for my GCSEs, it was GCE’s then, it’s GCSEs now, it was GCE them days…I was doing them and I started working as a projectionist in there and I had two machines and the chief projectionist started showing me the job and I learnt how to swap the machines over, I don’t know how they do it now, they had two machines, two meks they called it, machines and you’d have reels and the reels used to get delivered every week and you’d put the reel in wind it through start the machine and that’d run for about twenty minutes and you’d see in the right hand corner a light would flash you know a …thing…Do you know about this?

Jenny: yeah

Fred: The light would come on and you’d have a sec…er a minute to go so you’d start the other machine off and you’d have to do a swap then from one machine to the other machine, then take that film it and rewind it and any break or anything like that you’d have to cut it and splice it.

Tagged under: cinemas, overbury street, cinema, tunnel road picture house, capital picture house, the paddington, the cappy, the paddy, the tunney, snooker hall

Categorised under: Change & Communities