Leeds To Marlon
Brando
by Nigel
Hutchinson
The house
stood half way down the terraced street, although
the slope of the street was more obvious when you
walked up from the bottom to either the front of
the house, or the back. Both cobbled streets
followed the same angle, so whether you walked
out of the front or back door the choice was the
same, walk up the slope to the street that cut
across the top, or down towards the one with its
row of shops and wide pavement.
Here were the
red telephone box, the post box and dogs killing
time in front of the butcher’s, purveyors of
offal and cheap cuts; the newsagent’s, the
electrical repair shop, the baker of indifferent
bread and passable mince pies, the ever steamy
Chinese take-away and chip shop.
Just around
the corner, the cinema, its outside decorated
with terracotta tiles, tiles covered in twisting
flowers and foliage in bas relief, a theme
continued inside behind the mahogany doors. Deep
red-brown doors with gleaming, lovingly polished
brass handles, hand plates and kick plates at the
bottom to protect the door from the kicks and
scuffs of boots polished thin and, latterly,
stilettos. The tiles inside glazed with a kind of
acid green, paler where the glaze had bled away
from the edges, covering the walls of the cramped
foyer, broken only by the ticket office window, a
small vertical opening of thick glass with a
brass frame and a small cluster of penny-sized
circles at mouth height to speak through. The
counter in front of it worn into a shallow dip
from the decades of coins, the change offered,
that had been scooped across it. The carpet in
front of the window more shabby than the rest, a
deep crimson once thick carpet ornamented with
expressive swirls in deep blue and green, an echo
of Imperial adventures in India and the Far East.
An anteroom like the entrance to a palace or one
of the grand houses out in Roundhay built by men
who had made their fortunes in wool, transplanted
here amongst the terraced streets that sat in
gridiron ranks around it.
Home to its
loyal clientele who filed here on most nights,
though mainly on Fridays and Saturdays, all
dressed up for a night out, to sit in the dark in
your best, perhaps hoping to hold hands and maybe
more.
Inside the
small, dark wedge shaped auditorium, the dusty
smell of ancient moquette seats, glimpses of
dimly lit plaster reliefs on walls and ceilings
and faded velvet curtains. Through the ever
upwards curling smoke, the darting light of the
usherette’s torch and later the intimate and
inviting glow above the tray of ice cream and
orange drinks as she walked down the aisle at the
interval, to stand in front of the screen as dust
danced in the beam of the projector.
A brief pause
between the newsreels, trailers and
advertisements and the main feature, the thing we
had come to see; always a world away from here,
not a world of sooty, dispiriting greyness, but
of the elegently held cigarettes that filled the
pauses in French films, or the decisive
cigarettes that men threw into gutters in
American movies when they were ready for action,
always knowing exactly the right thing to do, or
the cheroots that clung to Clint Eastwood’s
lips no matter what, coolness that took our
breath away, made us aware of the clay that clung
to our feet; if only, if only - we coulda been
contenders, coulda been somebody, our lips curled
like Marlon Brando’s.
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