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CHAPTER ONE

‘Let’s go to the cinema!’

Today it is possible to buy or hire a video and watch a film at home, but millions of people all over the world still prefer to go to their town or city cinema for a ‘night out’. And before television arrived in people’s homes, a visit to the cinema was something really special to look forward to.

The ‘golden age’ of film-making - and going to the cinema - was between about 1930 and 1950. Film stars seemed like kings and queens. Cinemas were ‘picture palaces’ where, for the price of a ticket, you could enter into a magical world where anything and everything was possible.

In 1946, 1,650,000,000 cinema tickets were sold in Great Britain. That’s thirty-three tickets for every man, woman and child in the country.

And in the year 1939 - the year when audiences first saw Gone With The Wind - 30,000 people were employed by the big film studios in Hollywood. They made 400 films every year. Americans called the moving pictures, ‘the movies’, and fifty million of them went to the cinema every week. They wanted to see the magic of the movies!

But how did it all begin…?