Inside that dark theatre it was bedlam. Every kid that came considered it his duty to make as much noise and create as much mayhem as possible. We always arrived at least a half-hour before the show started, and for some silly reason they let us in (the practice of making kids line up outside on the sidewalk evidently hadn’t been considered). So, we whiled away the time wrestling, stealing each other’s toques and mitts, shoving each other under the seats, chasing each other up and down the aisles and yelling our heads off.
Then–at last–would come the long-awaited signal. The lights would go out, and the trademark of the Union Operator would flash on the screen. And the roar was such as greets a tie-breaking home run in the ninth with two out. And when the movie began there was still no need to be quiet. There was no talk or sound–except what came from the eager piano player in the pit–and all the dialogue was printed on the screen. So you could cheer with the good guy, scream at the bad guy, and laugh your head off at the funny guy without ever interrupting the action.
And what action! It was all action then. We’d see at least four items. A feature, usually starring William S. Hart, or Doug Fairbanks, or Hoot Gibson, or Milton Sills, or Thomas Meighen. They were the greatest: plenty of fist-fights, thousands of blank cartridges blazed away, break-neck chases, crashing aircraft, exploding ships. Talk about violence! They were loaded with violence.
And then came the serial. Continued from last week, when the heroine, always in riding breeches, had been bound hand and foot and locked inside a shack which was perched precariously on the edge of a cliff. The villain, bad cess to him, had planted a charge of dynamite–they used more dynamite in the movies than they did in construction in those days–and was lurking behind a boulder, ready to push the plunger down and blow shack and heroine to eternity.
But it never worked out that way. The hero, you see, was on the way. He always got there in the nick of time and saved her life. Then she would throw her arms around his neck, and kiss him, and flutter her eyelashes, and such a “boo!” went up from the disgusted boys in the audience as could be heard clear down River Street.
And then there was the comedy, which we all loved. One- and two-reelers, featuring Charlie Chaplin, or Fatty Arbuckle, or cross-eyed Chester Conklin, or wistful Harry Langdon, or deadpan Buster Keaton. There was always a chase with automobiles just missing each other on busy streets, with men piling out of them and flying through windows, and lots of prat-falls–the pie in the face came much later–and the Keystone Cops, and the Mack Sennett bathing beauties.
It was all pantomime, and it killed us. I have never heard such laughter as arose from those Saturday afternoon audiences. Never since have I laughed so hard that I couldn’t get my breath, that my stomach pained, that I literally fell out into the aisle. Yes, I admit it, more than once our bladders couldn’t stand the strain, and many a wet-legged kid staggered embarrassed out of the Strand. No generation of kids ever laughed as hard as we did, I’m sure, and none had so much to laugh at. It was truly the golden age of laughter.
The serious shows, too, could get to us if they were broad enough and mawkish enough to make us cry. Over the Hill to the Poor House is one that did the trick. There was this old couple, see, who gave everything to their children. The youngest child begged them not to, but they wouldn’t listen to him, and the rest of the family practically threw him out of the house. But then the time came when the old couple were sick and weak, and there was nowhere for them to go but the poor-house. Finally, the youngest son arrived, too late to save them, but on their deathbeds they forgave him, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the Strand.
But the greatest of all the shows we saw in Prince Albert–it must have been toward the end of our years there–was Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks.
There’s never been another movie like it. There never can be. Denny and I wanted to go to that show so badly we could scarcely wait until Saturday afternoon. We begged and begged for a dime for Friday night, but Dad wouldn’t or couldn’t provide it. So, since we just couldn’t wait around the house, we went out and played in the deep snow-drifts beside the jail field. We rolled down them and tunnelled into them and ran through them until we were so covered with snow as to be unrecognizable. And so tired we could hardly drag ourselves home. The next day was Robin Hood.
The show was everything we’d hoped for. Full of adventure, and humour, and pathos, and suspense. Those wonderful, wonderful scenes in Sherwood Forest, with the men in Lincoln green running up and down the slanting trunks of those great oak trees, and the sun slanting through the leaves. The scenes in the castle, when Robin Hood and his men finally attacked, and the sword fight. Ah those sword fights! Doug Fairbanks could jump ten feet in the air from a standing start, I’ll swear he could. Those other guys just didn’t have any chance against him at all. And the way he could shoot that arrow. Wow!
After the show, as we puffed our way up the long Second Avenue hill, our frozen breath shooting out like smoke, we went over those marvellous scenes in Sherwood Forest again and again. And from then on, Robin Hood became our game. We made bows from the oak ribs of binder canvases, and arrows from long sticks, with nails fastened to the ends, filed down to needle sharpness. And we shot at everything that moved.
If you remember–as I do–the great movies of the early 1920’s, don’t try sitting up to watch them again on the late, late show. They’re not the same movies that made us die laughing, cheer our throats sore, and cry big tears. They can’t be. Why, they often look kind of silly. I don’t know what they’ve done to them, but they’re certainly not the same movies. Don’t watch them. They’ll make you laugh and cry all over again, but not in the same way.
8 Chums
From London, England, to Prince Albert is a distance of approximately four thousand miles as the crow flies, and to get from London to Prince Albert in the early 1920’s, by ship and train, would take at least twenty days. But in other respects, the two cities were close as brothers. In the matter of reading material for instance.
Much of what we read in Prince Albert came directly from London. The Illustrated London News, Punch, The Spectator, and other publications were in many homes; but so far as we were concerned, the piece of pure literary gold, the ultimate in fantasy, adventure and excitement was bound up in a big, red hard-covered publication called Chums.
The big, red book, at least eight by ten inches in size and two inches thick, contained a variety of good things to gladden any boy’s heart. There was always a story about English public school life. This bore absolutely no relation to the public school we attended, and it fascinated us. There were “masters” for instance, and “fags” and “head boys”. Also, the boys lived in the school, and played strange games called rugger and cricket, of which we had never heard. These stories were always peopled with the same kind of boys. A thin one, with glasses, and a fat one, with a sweet in his hand. We didn’t know what a “sweet” was, but it looked like a piece of cake or a cookie. And there was always a misunderstood boy who was having a hard time getting on with the others, but Lord! how noble he was, and brave. He’d never snitch on another boy, no matter what bad thing the other might do, and he always took his canings like a man.
Then there was always a story about pirates. This also was something so far removed from Prince Albert as to be from another world entirely. Men who went to sea in wooden sailing ships, and fired round-shot at each other, and sliced each other up with cutlasses. Terribly fierce men they were. Talk about violence on modern television! I’ve never seen anything to equal those pictures in Chums. There would be a man standing at the end of a plank, and another prodding his posterior with a cutlass, and the water below full of sharks grinning hideously up at him. That was enough to give you nightmares for a week.
And there was always a serial about the American wild west, with rustlers and gun-fighters, and the lonesome man searching for his identity. And a story about the French Revolution based on the “Scarlet Pimpernel” idea. The o
ne I remember best was Jackolantern, which was all about a mysterious rescuer of aristocrats who gave off a peculiar glow when he ran through the night.
Science, too, had its place. Gold a Mystery was a perfect example, and it featured a scientist who had discovered a method for turning lead into gold. Needless to say, there were a number of nefarious characters after his secret who wanted to use it to “rule the world”. Then, as now, in popular fiction, some rotten type was always trying to get control of the world.
There were stories of people lost in the Arctic and others lost in the tropics, and being swallowed by giant, grinning shakes. Stories of India, stories aboard Chinese junks, stories of Africa. And always one white man was a match for those hordes of ferocious savages which surrounded him, and always “right” was synonymous with “white”, and inevitably British fair play and justice triumphed in the end, after a satisfactory slaughter of vile aborigines.
All the stories were in serial form, which suggests that Chums was actually a boys’ magazine, with the twelve issues or twenty-four or whatever, bound together to make an enduring book. Besides the stories, there was a great variety of puzzles, jokes, things to make, things to do, magic tricks. None of these appealed to me much, since I’ve never been much interested in guessing riddles, manipulating cards, or putting things together. But the fiction! I’m sure that the English writers of stories for boys must have reached the high point of their artistry during that era.
We got Chums for Christmas the year I was seven. Mother began to read the stories to Denny and Hub and me. She’d sit in front of the enormous fireplace, with the three of us scattered around on the rug, and read to us in her soft Irish voice. Each night, one instalment. And since that’s where the story stopped, she stopped, too, and no amount of argument, cajolery, blandishments or threats could get her to go further.
Three things happened, inevitably, as a result of Mother reading Chums to us. One was that we got pretty mixed up about the English and the British Empire. The second was that I developed a great liking for exciting, suspenseful, violent, fast-moving, imaginative adventure stories. And thirdly, I learned to read much faster than I otherwise would have done.
I simply couldn’t wait until the next reading session to find out what happened in the story, and so I’d get hold of Chums and read it myself. This did queer things to my vocabulary. Since I didn’t know the meanings of some of the big words I encountered, and since I hadn’t yet started using dictionaries, I just sort of guessed at the meanings. I also guessed at the pronunciations. I went around saying things like “intimate” for “intimidate”.
The school we smaller members of the family attended in Prince Albert was named, naturally, King George. Dad took Phyllis and Hub and me to school, and introduced us to the principal, a tall, horse-faced man with two enormous front teeth, by the name of Maurice Werner, who had a mean eye and a powerful right hand. Try as I may, I can’t think of one good thing to say for Maurice Werner, or for his school. One of the worst things I remember is that Werner had the strange notion that the ability to spell somehow entered the head through the hand. Thus, for having mistakes in spelling we were sent to the office, where Maurice pounded away at our hands with a long rubber strap. I can truthfully report that this method of teaching spelling doesn’t work. When Hub and I went to King George School we were both poor spellers. When we left, our hands were tougher, our dispositions meaner, and our respect for the reasonableness of adults considerably reduced, but there was no noticeable improvement in our spelling.
When Dad led us into that big, ugly, two-storey brick building that spring, Hub was in Grade Three, and I was in Grade One. We went to our respective rooms–this school was big enough to have one grade to a room–trustingly placing our destiny in the hands of adults who we’d been taught were, by definition, worthy of respect.
The morning, except for a few routine questions and hostile stares, was uneventful. At recess we went out and faced the city kids, with whom we sparred warily like strange dogs meeting for the first time. After recess, things were going on well. I’d been handed a dog-eared primer and some plasticine, and was beginning to take notice of my strange surroundings when the back door of the room opened, and the Grade Two teacher poked her head in. After a whispered consultation with our frowning teacher, the two of them stood aside and Hub was ushered into the room.
He had a look on his face that he was never again to lose in school. Cold, semi-amused, defiant. He took a vacant seat at the back of the outside row, the biggest seat in the room but still too small for him. Head held high, he surveyed the inquisitive faces squirmed around to gawk at him and, much to their delight, favoured them with an exaggerated wink.
What had happened was so stupid that even now I find it hard to believe. During the course of some routine tests the Grade Three teacher discovered that Hub couldn’t spell the words he should have been able to spell. So, determined not to be put upon, she marched to the principal and complained that this boy from Nokomis had obviously been shoved ahead without regard for his scholastic achievement, and should never have reached Grade Three.
“We can’t have that,” said Maurice Werner. “Put him back to Grade Two.”
The Grade Two teacher, finding the same deficiency, put him back to Grade One. Hub’s comment at noon was caustic. “If they’d put me back any further they’d have had to kick me out of school.”
Naturally enough, this action of the teachers finished Hub’s school career. It was patently obvious to him that he was dealing with nincompoops, so he treated them with the scorn they deserved. Of all the lickings he got from Maurice Werner for bad spelling, not one ever brought a tear to his eye. And, when the going became too rough, he simply played hookey. The year we left Prince Albert he played hookey for an entire month without our parents discovering the fact. He’d leave for school in the morning, come home for lunch, then apparently leave for school again afterwards.
By the time we left Prince Albert, Hub had managed to filter his mis-spelled way up to Grade Four. Encountering considerably more understanding for his affliction in Saskatoon, he managed to make it up to Grade Six. By then he was sixteen and could legally quit school, which he did with a great sigh of relief, to enter the real world where people are judged by what they can do rather than how well they can spell.
Possessing an abundance of natural skill, energy, practical common sense, and a willingness to work ten times as hard as his rivals, he naturally prospered. He ultimately became the head of a large dairying concern and a pillar of the community. So much for the teachers who promised him reform school, jail, and skid row.
There were a lot of English, Scots and Irish in Prince Albert in the early Twenties, a result of the pre-war wave of immigration that, in 1913, brought more than 400,000 newcomers to Canada. Many of them lived in a sort of ghetto on the south end of town known as the “English Settlement”. They were mostly Londoners, a lot of them Cockneys, and they were a rugged, pugnacious group. They taught us how to play soccer, and then beat the pants off us at every match.
But the Britisher I remember best was Nigel Spencer, the boy who faced up to the bully. Nigel’s father had been a sergeant in the British army in India. Straight as a ramrod he was, and full of those old-fashioned army virtues, such as bravery, resourcefulness, manliness, devotion to duty, and these he instilled into his son.
Nigel’s house was full of exotic treasures from India, wicked, long, curved scimitars, turbans and hookas. He even had an eight-foot-long cobra skin. Perhaps it was this which gave Nigel his love of snakes, but in any case he always kept a number of these creatures as pets. They were red-sided garter snakes, the only kind found as far north as Prince Albert, and they were, pretty, timid little things. He kept them in wire cages in a tent in which we also used to sometimes sleep. On occasion, they’d get out and crawl under our blankets for warmth. I think that’s where I lost any fear of snakes that I might ever have had.
Not far from Nigel’s h
ouse on Twenty-first Street there lived a bully named Art Forester. He was a real honest-to-gawd bully of the type we sometimes read about in Chums. And he hated snakes. So his particular target for bullying was Nigel Spencer, who was about eight inches shorter and at least twenty pounds lighter than he.
Art would wait for Nigel after school and push him in a ditch, or steal his cap and put it in the mail-box or punch him in the nose. Life became pretty hectic for Nigel who, although he was a fast runner, couldn’t seem to keep out of Art’s clutches. None of the rest of us would help our chum, of course, because we knew that if we did Art would start bullying us. That was understood and accepted.
Finally, although he knew it was not in the best tradition of English schoolboy honour, Nigel was reduced to telling his father about this.
Sergeant Spencer drew himself up to his full five-feet-eight-inches, threw out his chest and his handle-bar moustache bristled. “What’s this? A bully? And you are snitching on him?”
“Well, he won’t leave me alone. Yesterday he took half my dibs from me and shot them away in his catapult.”
“And what did you do?”
“What could I do?”
“You could have stood up for yourself like a man and threshed him.”
“Threshed him! Gosh, Dad, have you ever seen this guy? He’s twice as big as I am.”
“Makes no difference. He’s a bully, and bullies are always cowards.”
“They are?”
“Absolutely. That’s why they’re bullies. If you stand up to this fellow and let him know you won’t stand for any more of his bullying, he’ll.…”
“He’ll kill me! That’s all!”
“Better a dead hero than a live coward, my boy. But he won’t kill you. The thing is to attack him suddenly, with all the vigour you can muster, do you see. Take the blighter by surprise. Do that, and see what happens.”
Never Sleep Three in a Bed Page 9