This is me in 1958 safely back in Blighty in Chatham, Kent, after spending two years in Malta. As you can see the Mediterranean diet did wonders for my teeth. Also, due to spending most of my waking hours in the sun I appear to have morphed from a stereotypical little English boy into a culturally appropriated Mexican kid called Pedro. You know the kind, the one you usually see in cowboy films hanging around town and waiting for the next stranger to appear so they can offer to look after his horse for a couple of pesos and a feel of his gun (although I might have misremembered that last bit).
Oh yes, I almost forgot. I Ieft for Malta as an only child and came back with a brother and a sister. I only asked my mum and dad for one of each but over time the family expanded to include six children, me, three brothers and two sisters. That’ll teach me to keep my stupid mouth shut.
There were two picture houses directly opposite each other on Chatham High Street, the ABC Regent, and the much bigger Ritz. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. It was at the Ritz that I discovered the delights of Saturday morning pictures where I got to see classic serials such as “Captain Marvel” and “King of the Rocket Men” whilst watching the same kid go up on the stage every week and claim a free ice lolly on account of it was his birthday yet again.
There were so many films to choose from at the time and I got to catch most of them, “going to the pictures” being at least a twice-weekly national event in those days seeing as television was still in its infancy. In real terms this meant that, in December 1958 for instance, I could see “Tom Thumb” at the Regent one week, in the process dreamily falling in love with the actress June Thorburn as the Forest Princess, and then in the same week pop across the road to the Ritz with my parents to take a look at “The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw”, a comedy Western starring Kenneth More and Jayne Mansfield. I must confess that the sight of Jayne’s pneumatic charms barely contained within the confines of a large Cinemascope screen meant I very quickly forgot about English rose Ms. Thorburn back over the road in the Regent like the fickle swine that I was.
My mum was a big Kenneth More fan so she took me to see “The Admirable Crichton” at the Ritz where I asked in a very loud voice to a crowded audience how come his legs had grown back after losing them in “Reach for the Sky”. That was still the level of my understanding as to how the mechanics of film worked. Give me a break though. I was only six. And an idiot.
Check the following link out for further info on the Chatham Ritz cinema:
Steve Mayhew 