Tags (All lower case. Use " " for multiple word tags): cinema., ritz / abc
Albums: Historical Images of Harringay After 1918 | 2 of 3 (F)
Brings back memories of when my mum took me here a couple of times in the early 70's to see the On The Buses movies.
I went there a couple of times in the 90s. It was one of those places where you had to wipe your feet going out into the street.
ABC was posh in my day but then almost any cinema was posh when compared with the Coliseum. Loved each for what it was. ABC held local talent shows on Saturday afternoons. My sister took part more than once.
ABC and Ritz for a while in my day. Used to go to Saturday morning cinema there with a gang from our end of Ducketts Common (Joan Miller, Brian Walden, Caroline???? etc) . Flash Godon etc. We always called this Turnpike Lane - Ducketts was raraely used then for anything but the common (which wasn't a common either!).
Geraldine's mention of the Colly brings back more mundane memories; as she implies the Flea Pit was, well a Flea Pit. My mother did not like us going as in winter tramps would get in and sleep all afternoon and evening - hence the name!
Talent shows at the Ritz - was that when McCarthy was the manager?
I can remember, during the war, queuing outside with my Mum & Dad virtually ignoring any air raid warnings and then on the way home, getting chips in newspaper from the fish & chip shop along Green Lanes on our way home in Alison Road. The Flea Pit was really out of bounds but I went with friends a couple of times. It was well named. Memories!
I forgot, I also belonged to the Saturday Morning Club. Watched lots of cowboy films and the good guys always won in the end. In the interval would be the talent shows.
This was the place to go for us "upmarket" Ladder Lads! The Coliseum was closer but the films and the cinema were not up to the same standard. With no television or computer games the cinema really was our source of adventure stories and escapism.
Along with my contemporaries, we joined the ABC Saturday Morning club and were treated to a wonderful diet of westerns, science fiction and cartoons in the controlled chaos of a cinema full of hundreds of kids hyped up on sugar and away from parental control! I don't know how we all survived it and how the staff were able to organise it!
Happy memories, but sad to see the demise of so many cinemas.
Eileen Corbett yes I went there with my parents in the 1950's and did the same as you. We always walked home with our chips in newspaper, they always tasted better in those days. We lived above a shop at the bottom of Allison Road. I also went to Saturday morning pictures with friends from South Harringay school.
The dear old Colly was our local, living in Harringay Road you couldn't get much more local ! We had great times there as kids, when money allowed, before upgrading to Turnpike Lane Ritz on achieving teen hood. As has been mentioned.....great escapism, fuelling our heads with much adventure.
My friend Steven’s mum used to be a cashier there in the 1960s; I remember her letting us in using alternative accounting on a couple of occasions; her name was Mrs. Conrad and they lived in Sirdar Road.
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