The Man Who Saves Cinemas

Hoylake, a dignified seaside town at the sandy west end of the Wirral Peninsula, once boasted a particularly fine cinema, the Winter Gardens. Charles Morris was seven-years-years old when, with his parents, he first set foot in it. It was 1958 and the animated film being shown, The Lady and the Tramp, had already become a well-loved Disney classic.

With the vivid clarity of Hollywood technicolour, he remembers everything about the occasion. To echo one of the film’s most delightful musical numbers it was Charles’s Bella Notte, ‘the beautiful night when the heavens are right’ and a magical spell is woven.

He was in love with cinema, hooked for life. After this first taste, it was difficult to keep him from hanging around on the prom outside the venerable building converted for use as a silent cinema in 1931. “I started to cultivate the staff,” he remembers, “began helping out, mending seats, making myself useful doing odd jobs.” By the time he was ten he was assisting in the projection room, learning how to change the reels of 35 mm film every twenty minutes.

He was in love with cinema, hooked for life

Christmas Eve 1963 is the night he cherishes most of all. “I ran my first film, completely unassisted.” His voice still carries a boyish sense of wonder. “Even though the projectionist was somewhere in the house he never came in and just let me get on with it!”

Unfortunately, his memories are not all sunnily nostalgic and darker dates are imprinted on his mind. By the late-1950s audiences were declining and the cinema closed on 3rd January 1959. It re-opened in May 1960 only to be threatened with closure again nine months later. “I was most anxious that it should be kept open and I took a great interest in developments.”

He remembers hand-painting a series of advertising posters to display. A petition organised by a member of staff attracted a large number of signatures and fortunately the cinema was saved. He little realised at the time but this was the first of many endangered cinemas that he would make it his life’s work to save.

Fast forward to the early 1980s and we find Charles, an electronic engineer for the Ministry of Defence, still keeping his hand in as a projectionist by taking part-time jobs in the local cinema of whichever town his work took him. While holidaying in the Yorkshire Dales, he spotted an opportunity to show films in the Victoria Hall, Settle, and surprisingly turned a small profit. “The seed of an idea started to germinate.”

He is eternally grateful to his wife, Judy, for encouraging him soon afterwards to acquire his very own picture house. “She could see my passion for cinema, knew how much it meant to me.” An opportunity had arisen in the Calder Valley town of Elland to lease The Rex, one of the oldest purpose-built cinemas in the country. Sadly fallen on hard times, it had closed after an unsuccessful spell as a bingo hall.

In partnership with Peter Berry, a former manager of the Rex, Charles and Judy took on the tremendous task of renovating a building which had stood empty for three years and been vandalised. “Everything needed redoing,” he recalls, “and we did every job ourselves – except laying the carpets on the 70 by 30 square-foot floor.” He took particular pride and pleasure in personally adding the finishing touch, installing the projection equipment.

The cinema was not an immediate success, however, and barely broke even in the first three months. It took enormous determination to succeed and many hours distributing publicity material to raise public awareness. Ironically it was the power of television, a medium that was inflicting most damage on cinema, that gave The Rex the much needed boost.

After a local television channel featured it in a news items on the 75th anniversary of the cinema, audiences started arriving in huge numbers to see the ultimate escapist film of its day, Shirley Valentine. “Suddenly, we were packed to the rafters and after this kick start, we went from strength to strength.” Based on the screenplay by Lancashire playwright Willie Russell about a bored Liverpudlian housewife who finds fulfilment on holiday in Greece, it proved a perennial local favourite and over the years had ten separate runs. “We owe a lot to Shirley!”

Audiences started arriving in huge numbers to see the ultimate escapist film of its day, Shirley Valentine. “Suddenly, we were packed to the rafters and after this kick start, we went from strength to strength”

One inspired period touch was to bring back organ music. Once a popular interval feature, it had virtually disappeared from cinemas but in 16-year-old local schoolgirl, Belinda Abbiss, he found someone with the perfect musical touch. It was a real coup to also be able to call on the occasional services of the legendary Arnold Loxham, who for more than fifty years thrilled audiences on the mighty Wurlitzer of the Bradford Gaumont.

This was only the beginning. He next took the Royalty Cinema in Bowness on a 25-year lease with no break. “It was a risk,” he reflects,“ but one worth taking, even though it was all crazy for the first few years.” It meant that he had to give up his job and spend many hours commuting between Elland and the Lake District, where he and Judy now decided to make their home.

The travelling was even harder for his wife who continued as Head of Maths at Oldham Hulme Girls’ Grammar. It was only in 1996 when they decided to rescue the Picture House, Keighley, that she retired from teaching and ‘threw herself ’ into helping him full-time. “By now a pattern was developing,” Charles considers. “We could see what needed doing to each, sense what type of films would have local appeal, knew how to make it work.”

But it was far from plain sailing when two years later they acquired the Skipton Plaza. “It was a bit of a challenge,” he concedes, “it was an old building in need of a lot of work, but eventually we turned it round.”

They began to set their sights on having a business nearer their home. The closed ABC cinema Regal in Lancaster was their next project, in 2003. “We reopened it as the Regal and were welcomed with open arms – and had three and a half glorious years there until a newly-built multiplex in town killed us.”

In 2005 they took over the Cottage Road Cinema in Leeds which was on the point of closure and the following year added the beautiful Art Deco Roxy, in Ulverston, to their stable.

Charles can now reflect on a 65-year connection with cinema and with enormous pride on the cinemas he has saved and which are beginning to flourish again after the lean lockdown times.

He occasionally returns to Hoylake, always deeply saddened to see that the Winter Gardens is no more. He had saved it in 1973 with a petition of 8,500 signatures to prevent it from becoming a bingo hall and it lasted another two decades or more before finally closing its doors in 1995. Four years later it was demolished to make way for a block of flats.

He has now gone 17 years without adding any more. “We said some time ago six is enough,” Charles says. “Any more would need a much bigger set-up with greater demands on the profits.”

So that is definitely the last? “Well, I’d certainly consider any approach if a cinema might otherwise go under.” He smiles. “I always did like a new project.” If there is such a thing as a born cinema projectionist, it is surely Charles Morris.

NorthernLife July/Aug 23