"X" certificate films and the under 16's.

[orpheum]

Now i am not certain on this.however the BBFc as was then were not in fact part of the law.Councils would give out a licence each year for the cinema tooperate.this was part of the safety requirements.Councils decided to bring censorship into the same question.So they could require that cinemas observed the certificates issue by the BBFC.If they did not then they could take away the licence.Of course some like the GLC issued certificates which over rode those issued by the BBFC eg "The Killing Of Sister George">I remember a big furore about a Czech film which showed a fully naked women at the time the BFC would not allow pubic hair to be shown.The NFT showed it without problem as it was a cinema club.I went to see it purely for research purposes of course.

[darrenburnfan]

name='CaptainWaggett' date='14 July 2010 - 03:20 PM' timestamp='1279117230' post='451855']DBF's original question is an interesting one. Clearly it's not quite like teenage supermarket staff who aren't meant to sell cigarettes or alcohol as there really wouldn't be much point in having a 15 year old projectionist who had to be blindfolded during The Quatermass Xperiment! Anyone know what the law was?

What we need on here, Captain, is a member who used to be a cinema manager in those days. He would certainly know the answer.

[Dame Starry]

name='darrenburnfan' date='13 July 2010 - 09:21 AM' timestamp='1279009294' post='451132']

As far as I know, if the police went into a cinema when an "X" film was showing and found anyone under 16 had been admitted, the cinema could lose its licence. So cinema managers and staff had to be very careful as to who they let in.

I certainly never saw any police in cinemas when I was watching 'X' certs before I was old enough. The cinema realising you were under-age was the only worry - which had gone by the time the lights went down.



Where I lived in those days, kids could buy cigarettes if the tobacconist knew your parents and was under the impression that was who they were for - of course, they often weren't...............

Cigarette vending machines were on the walls outside shops and available for anybody to use with the right coins after the shop shut. (AND they never got broken into - either for the money or the cigarettes!)



Perhaps it depended on where you lived at the time?

[panettone]

saw mary poppins at a late night showing once in the 60s does that count as an x movie mind you "The Boston Srangler" was on afterwards...............

[Steve Crook]

name='darrenburnfan' date='14 July 2010 - 03:33 PM' timestamp='1279117990' post='451860']

What we need on here, Captain, is a member who used to be a cinema manager in those days. He would certainly know the answer.

I'm not so sure they would know the answer. They should know how the law applied to that situation, but it is quite an unusual situation



Steve

[CaptainWaggett]

name='Steve Crook' date='15 July 2010 - 05:14 AM' timestamp='1279167262' post='452044']

I'm not so sure they would know the answer. They should know how the law applied to that situation, but it is quite an unusual situation



Steve

I'm not sure it is that unusual - in the 50s and 60s, 90% of young folk left school at 15 so there must have been 100s of of teenage cinema workers - think of The Family Way where presumably Hywel Bennett has been working in the cinema since he left school. Would a 16-year-old ticket seller have been expected to stop her friends from buying tickets for The Reptile, I wonder?



Some reminiscences of another teenage projectionist (who seems to be the same age as DBF). Denis Nordern was another boy cinema worker (though from an earlier generation

[will.15]

Her is another early 1960s movie dealing with a pedophile with a surprising sympathetic view you wouldn't see in any movie made today.



http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1920141081/

[CaptainWaggett]

name='will.15' date='15 July 2010 - 07:39 AM' timestamp='1279175991' post='452059']

Her is another early 1960s movie dealing with a pedophile with a surprising sympathetic view you wouldn't see in any movie made today.



http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1920141081/

Sounds very similar to the, also sympathetic, The Woodsman.

[darrenburnfan]

name='CaptainWaggett' date='15 July 2010 - 06:20 AM' timestamp='1279171230' post='452048']

I'm not sure it is that unusual - in the 50s and 60s, 90% of young folk left school at 15 so there must have been 100s of of teenage cinema workers - think of The Family Way where presumably Hywel Bennett has been working in the cinema since he left school. Would a 16-year-old ticket seller have been expected to stop her friends from buying tickets for The Reptile, I wonder?



Some reminiscences of another teenage projectionist (who seems to be the same age as DBF). Denis Nordern was another boy cinema worker (though from an earlier generation

Very interesting, Captain. Thanks for posting the links. Being a projectionist in those days was a very physically demanding and involved job, especially with regard to dragging the very heavy steel transit cases full of film up the stairs from the delivery bay to the projection and rewind rooms. And of, course, you weren't allowed to sit down during the whole of your shift, which could be nine hours on matinee days. You even had to have your meals standing up by one of the projectors, always on the alert for something going wrong (for a photo of the 16 years old me in the Plaza projection room in July, 1963, see the last page of the Sammy Going South thread on Your Favourite British Films). I remember when we were halfway through showing Spartacus on the last run on a Saturday night in July, 1963, the film transport lorry arrived early at about 9 pm when there was still over an hour of the film left to run. The driver parked up his Thames Trader lorry and went inside to see the last part of the film. Eight reels had already been run and packed off into an unusually large eight reel transit case and I thought I would do the driver a favour by taking the case down the steps and putting it on the back of the wagon. Well, I dragged it downstairs, one step at a time and eventually reached the wagon. I dropped the side gate of the wagon and, puffing, panting and straining and using all my strength, tried in vain to lift it onto the wagon. Just then, there was a shout from the open window of the manager's office. "OI!", shouted Benny Norcott, the manager. "PUT THAT DOWN! YOU'RE AN OPERATOR, NOT A TRANSPORT DRIVER! IT'S HIS JOB TO LOAD THAT ON THE WAGON, NOT YOURS. IF YOU INJURED YOURSELF, YOU COULDN'T CLAIM A DAMN THING!" I dropped the case on the ground and left it by the back wheels and never did anything that daft again.

[darrenburnfan]

name='will.15' date='15 July 2010 - 07:39 AM' timestamp='1279175991' post='452059']

Her is another early 1960s movie dealing with a pedophile with a surprising sympathetic view you wouldn't see in any movie made today.



http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1920141081/

Notice, as with Victim, the trailer for The Mark doesn't say what the film is actually about. It would be interesting to see the trailer for Never Take Sweets From a Stranger to see if it followed the same convention. The Mark,, an "X" film released by 20th Century-Fox in the UK, was shunned by the circuits and was hardly shown in this country. Also, the film is obviously about what is known as a non-exclusive paedophile, that is, one who is attracted to adults as well as children. The same scenario happened in Victim, which was supposed to be about a homosexual lawyer who had to be married as a sop to the general cinema audiences of the day. Dirk Bogarde's character was actually more bi-sexual that homosexual, the same as Oscar Wilde. Even in Sammy Going South, the little boy-fancying Syrian had to have photos of women in his wallet to show the audience that he was at least half normal. Perhaps one day, the film industry will make a more accurate film about what is still a taboo subject in cinema.

[will.15]

The Mark was a UK movie. Nobody would know it with that cast.

[m35541]

On the subject of the original question I doubt if there was any specific law for cinema employees.



a) enforcement of the law on cinema admissions was I think covered by local authority by-laws not by UK laws as the BBFC cinema certificates were (and still are) always advisory and could be overriden by the local authorities.



b) I think the law prohibited patrons (members of the public) under the relevant age from seeing a particular film



c) as a cinema employee is not a patron and hasn't paid to see the film then I would assume that the law did not apply to them.

[darrenburnfan]

name='m35541' date='15 July 2010 - 11:19 AM' timestamp='1279189153' post='452119']c) as a cinema employee is not a patron and hasn't paid to see the film then I would assume that the law did not apply to them.

Maybe that's the answer, m35541.

[Moor Larkin]

name='will.15' date='15 July 2010 - 07:39 AM' timestamp='1279175991' post='452059']Her is another early 1960s movie dealing with a pedophile with a surprising sympathetic view you wouldn't see in any movie made today.

http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1920141081/

I remember that when I watched Suddenly Last Summer on the TV as a youngster, the significance of the bronzed young boys eating .... Sebastian, took a while to sink in.



Not too much sympathy in 1959, but the message was clear enough........

[will.15]

It shows you how smart I am. I thought until this monent they really did eat him.

[Moor Larkin]

name='will.15' date='15 July 2010 - 02:16 PM' timestamp='1279199803' post='452192']It shows you how smart I am. I thought until this monent they really did eat him.

They did, but I don't think it was just another cannabilism movie......