By Godfrey Chin
The final demise of Plaza Cinema when the roof fell in on June 10 merits a nostalgic journey down memory lane as a tribute to this magnificent Movie Palace.
Before Plaza, there was the London cinema at Camp Street, when every opportune empty rum bottle sale, raising 4 cents, was spent at matinee in the pit. Otherwise we were straying in the city, walking from home to sea wall to backdam. Before attaining double figures age, we knew every bearing fruit tree in town. The London Cave, a huge ficus tree on the western end of the Promenade Gardens was our haven. Forty Foot, Punt Trench, Lama and every canal after a rainstorm, our private swimming pool. The Colgrain Pool was a no-no and a small fee was charged at the GFC Pool. Luckhoo Pool was opened in the early sixties.
I mention this as pocket money was a stranger in WWII days. When on the first Saturday in May 1947, my mother gave me a ticket for the YMCA May Day Fair, my 4 cents spending money, was better spent in the London pit, watching Mickey Rooney in Killer McCoy, doubled with Henry Fonda Drums along the Mohawk. And on returning home, my vivid descriptions of the intricate plaiting of the Maypole, matched any political candidate’s election promises.
Action serial cliffhangers were small-boy favourites, and the chapterplays at London included Buster Crabbe’s Sea Hound ; Herman Brix’s (strong) Hawk of the Wilderness; Linda Stirling’s Zorro’s Black Whip; Johnny Mack Brown’s Oregon Trail and Wild Bill Elliott’s Overland Mail. The furthest we reached in the house section, was the outside wide staircase lobby to view the posters of coming attractions. Musicals and dramas then were infradig for small boys.
The London Cinema was built around 1913, and sound was installed in1930. Some of the big movie hits shown there included Tarzan the Apeman in 1932, and King Kong in 1933.
Plaza replaced London in 1951, and was the first to introduce a single lower tier for house and pit, and the luxury of individual chairs must have resulted in the name change to ‘stalls.’ Shamefaced, we entered the pit when the lights were off, or otherwise eyes right to the screen. When the show was over, we jumped the low divider partition, to exit reverently through the house, which was also called the dress circle.
Two huge art-deco archers in pastel green and pink stood either side of the stage targeting the screen, on which Dennis Morgan’s Painting the Clouds with Sunshine, was the first release. Memorable was Gene Nelson dancing the latest mambo craze on a floor that was lighted from below at each step. Travolta did that in 1978 in Saturday Night Fever and the Belvedere’s nightclub disco floors follow the pattern.
The next Plaza release was Ingrid Bergman’s Under Capricorn and with their third release, Errol Flynn’s Adventures of Don Juan, which ran for two weeks, Plaza heralded our three decades of the Golden Age of movies in Guyana.
Disney’s third full-length cartoon feature, Cinderella, was a hit and their ‘True Life Adventure’ series Living Desert, Vanishing Prairie, Seal Island increased our appreciation for nature’s environment. Other RKO releases were Disney’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea and also Danny Kaye as Hans Christian Andersen.
Plaza gave us the first Technicolor comedies of Abbott and Costello in Jack and the Beanstalk and later the same year, Meet Captain Kidd.
Cecil B. De Mille’s Samson and Delilah was a successful precursor to his The Ten Commandments which came five years later at Astor, and spawned other religious films shown at Plaza including The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima in 1952, and Anthony Quinn in Barabbas.
The local religious groups, however, protested vehemently the release of the graphic details, depicting the dangers of social diseases in Mum and Dad, even though shown to segregated audiences. Plaza followed up with another explicit Marriage Manual, and by the time Brigitte Bardot’s And God created Woman was released, the towel was discarded, and nudity was commonplace on and off the silver screen. At this time the 1963 British scandal of the Profumo-Christine Keeler Affair As we reached the restless teenage years, the uncertainties of youth were reflected in three James Dean classics there – Rebel without a Cause, East of Eden and Giant. High-school incivility was highlighted when a young Sydney Poitier threatened his teacher, Glenn Ford, with a knife in Blackboard Jungle – a forecast of the anarchy and hooliganism in today’s schools. Dustin Hoffman as The Graduate in 1967, created a stir in the social circles, as did Simon and Garfunkel’s musical score.
Blackboard Jungle, introduced the world to rock and roll, with its electrifying opening title hit, and following the movie of the same title, Rock around the Clock, with the Platters rendition of Great Pretender /Only You, every Guyanese youth was ‘zooting and sooring.’
Plaza gave us classic exciting adventures, including Burt Lancaster and mute Nick Cravat in Flame and the Arrow followed by an adventurous fun-romp Crimson Pirate. Later came Gregory Peck in Captain Horatio Hornblower and Moby Dick, while Orca with Richard Harris completed the whale adventures.
Plaza released several Academy Award Best Pictures from Columbia Studios, including Marty in 1955, In the Heat of the Night, Ordinary People and Kramer vs Kramer.
My favourite action flick there was Alan Ladd as Jim Bowie in Iron Mistress. The duel, sword versus knife, in the darkened room, ignited with flashes of lightning from the overhead skylight was action ‘fuh so.’ John Wayne’s Hondo and Operation Pacific and the hits of Gary Cooper including Fountainhead and Bright Leaf made Plaza very popular.
Thank heavens by 1956 when Warner Bros sold their entire classic movie library prior to 1949 to United Artists, Plaza had already re-released their all time favourites, including, I was a Fugitive from the Chain Gang, Mildred Pierce, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Johnny Belinda, Sea Hawk, Destination Tokyo, Air Force, to name a few.
When wide screen was introduced in 1954 in BG, Plaza was the first to show a re-released Hitchcock thriller, Spellbound, and also the first 3Dimension movie in BG, Fort Ti with George Montgomery. 3D justified my frequent habitat in the pit, a ringside seat when knives, spears, flaming arrows, tomahawks, furniture, a coal pot, chewed tobacco spit, intended for a rattlesnake in Charge of Feather Creek were hurled at the ‘ducking’ spectators wearing their 3D glasses
In The Maze, another 3D horror thriller, the monster, a huge 4 ft frog, fell off a ledge into your lap in the finale, and boiling candle wax doused a shrieking audience in House of Wax. Thank heavens, they showed the flat version of the popular Hitchcock’s Dial M For Murder, or theatre goers would have been wounded when Grace Kelly stabbed the villain with a pair of scissors.
3D served a purpose. It taught us young Guyanese to ‘dodge and duck’ bill collectors, ex-girlfriends, chores, responsibilities and politicians to ‘hem and haw.’ Plaza’s first Cinemascope was released Xmas, 1954, with King Richard and The Crusaders with Lawrence Harvey and Rex Harrison as Saladin.
Other classic horror thrillers popular in its time, were The Thing and Horror of Dracula with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. Plaza’s comedy relief fare was Peter Sellers’ Pink Panther series and his classic The Party.
Doris Day became popular with a string of musicals including On Moonlight Bay and Look for the Silver Lining, before her Academy Award winner secret love in Calamity Jane. Crime does not pay, was a lesson gleaned from James Cagney Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye and White Heat, plus Bogart’s gangster hits as High Sierra, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Drug addiction was first depicted in Otto Preminger’s Man with the Golden Arm, and the plight of the Jews Leon Uris’s Exodus with Paul Newman. Warner Pathe News with its signature fowlcock clarion kept us abreast with world news, while the latest world boxing matches with Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, etc, would be released two weeks after with a Tarzan feature plus a Leon Errol two-reel Comedy. In 1955 Plaza showed the first Tarzan adventure, Hidden Jungle, when a muscular Gordon Scott took over from Weismuller’s successor Lex Barker!
Plaza was the only cinema not flanked by a cake-shop parlour. Any refreshment was collected from Castro’s Pastry Parlour in Middle Street, opposite Christ Church School, or Ramsome’s Parlour, next to the rum shop obliquely opposite. The rum shop became Bostwick’s Drug Store later. Shanta’s Roti Take-Out was at New Market Street, while in that same decade we watched early morning the PNC headquarters destroyed by fire – next to Plaza. In the early seventies the International Bar was a successful annual charity fundraiser at Colgrain House opposite.
An oddity of the cinemas was the stacking of patrons’ bicycles at shows, and to collect your wheels after the show was an exercise equal to the previous baggage claim at the airport. Push and shove was the order of the day. I lost three bicycles at the Plaza, and was convinced there was a thriving chop-shop business underground.
But in spite of all the hassles, movies were our best entertainment source, and the Plaza did enrich our cinema experience, apart from adding to our maturation.
