When I was four-years-old we moved to Malta and ended up living in Birkirkara which is apparently the second biggest town on the island. According to the internet it currently boasts 24,356 inhabitants. In 1956 there was just me, my mum and dad, a thieving git of an islander who stole my cowboy outfit at Christmas, and a dead dog. My waking hours were spent in a small cinema in the town that had a roof which miraculously retracted during the evening to cool the place down. It was in this picture house that I embarked upon a lifelong passion and obsession for film which I have used over the years as a shield to protect me from the pandemonium and uncertainty of real life. And long may that continue.
Here are some of the movies I saw at the time that have remained permanently imprinted on my retina for over sixty years which means I can rewatch them anytime I want to. It’s also cheaper than buying the DVD.
As you can see John Wayne films were all the rage back in the 1950s and “The Searchers” was the best of them. The film made such an impact on me when I saw it in 1956 that I later sold off one of my children for medical experimentation in order to buy a genuine copy of the poster you see above. Don’t think badly of me though – I still call him every Christmas.
Steve Mayhew 