WWII: Robin Hood, Roy Rodgers

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Entertainment for children growing up during the Second World War mostly comprised street games, comics, the radio and the cinema. It was, perhaps, a sign of the times that their subject matter shared a general theme – “goodies” overcoming “baddies” – as Eric Swales, of Sunnyhill, describes here.

WHEN I was a child in the wartime 1940s, our entertainment, other than playing games, was provided by comics, the radio and the cinema.

My first two comics were Tiny Tots and Rainbow, which protected us youngsters from the realities of war.

Then came The Dandy, Beano, Film Fun, which mirrored the characters from the silver screen, and Radio Fun, likewise for the radio.

The Knock-Out was banned by my mam because it contained a whole page of characters called Gremlins who did all sorts of naughty things and my mam must have feared I would be influenced by them.

The Gremlins were little people who caused trouble. They were created by Roald Dahl during his wartime service with the RAF.

As Harold Richardson remarked in his recent article about his childhood memories (October 23), money was in short supply, so to buy all the comics or magazines was impossible. The average price was 2d (1p) or 3d (1.5p) so, as friends, we would visit each other’s homes carrying a bundle of comics and swap them, sooner or later managing to read the lot.

My copy of The Knock-Out used to be smuggled into the house tucked inside other comics, a practice adapted from a wartime spy technique.

Eventually, I got to the big boys’ comics, The Triumph, Magnet (Billy Bunter and Greyfriars), Gem, Skipper and my four favourites, Hotspur, Adventure, Rover and Wizard.

These comics had more reading matter and less illustrations and embraced wartime themes, aerial exploits, commando raids, spy mysteries, submarines, unexploded bombs and super heroes and even science fiction all with their stories of “derring-do”.

My favourite books were the Famous Five stories of Enid Blyton and Richmal Crompton’s Just William, a boy who remained 11 years old throughout about 40 books.

The radio, or the wireless as it was known, became the focus for family entertainment and the latest news.

There was a tale something to the effect that if Hitler had invaded Britain on a Sunday evening he would have met no opposition as everyone would be inside busy listening to the radio.

Top of the list, so far as I was concerned, was Dick Barton – Special Agent together with his comrades, Snowy White and Jock Anderson, the theme tune being the exciting Devil’s Gallop.

This programme was sure to clear the streets of children between 6.45pm and 7pm and left listeners with a cliff-hanging story until the next evening.

Paul Temple – Amateur Detective with his wife, Steve, and the equally thrilling theme tune the Coronation Scot was another favourite.

The most popular programme, though, must have been ITMA (It’s That Man Again) with Tommy Handley and a host of hilarious characters. The one I remember best was Funf the spy with his catch phrase “This is Funf speaking”.

There were so many programmes produced to lift the spirits and boost morale.

Here are just a few – Workers’ Playtime, Variety Bandbox (a must on Sunday evenings), Much-Binding-in-the-Marsh (Kenneth Horne and Richard “Stinker” Murdoch) and “Big Hearted” Arthur Askey (Ay thang yow!).

I used to sit under the table listening to The Man in Black (Valentine Dyall) – this is your appointment with fear. His voice was usually more frightening than the stories.

The cinema, if you were posh, or the pictures as the rest of us called it, was a great crowd-puller in those dark days of wartime.

There was usually a change of programme half-way through the week and again on Sunday. This day was taboo for me, Sunday School being the rule.

If the films I went to see with my mam when I was very young were cowboys, I would use her umbrella as a rifle with appropriate sound effects, much to the annoyance of the people in the row in front.

Walking home on a cold winter’s night, if I saw a trolleybus coming, I would position myself behind her to shelter from the icy blast from the slipstream of the bus.

I was a member of the Saturday Morning Club at the Cavendish, which was 6d (2.5p) for the stalls and 9d (4p) for the balcony. On my birthday, I would receive a card which would entitle me to take a friend and sit in the balcony for free.

There, we would be enthralled by serials such as Flash Gordon fighting his arch enemy, Ming the Merciless, which, at the end of each episode, would leave our hero in a situation from which there was no possible escape.

The following week would come and guess what? He had escaped.

Westerns were a staple diet of Saturday mornings – Hopalong Cassidy (William Boyd), Roy Rogers with wife Dale Evans,and four-legged friend Trigger, Johnny (Mack) Brown, Gene Autry and many more. The heroes were always cheered and the baddies booed.

Comedies would be Laurel and Hardy or Abbot and Costello and who could forget Disney films such as Pinocchio, Dumbo and the tear-jerker Bambi, along with the cartoons, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Popeye, fighting the Japanese Navy on his own.

Other films seen during the week, such as Robin Hood (Errol Flynn), would be re-enacted when my friends and I got home. I would beg a bit of white sheet from my mam, cut a hole in it, paint a red cross on the front, slip it over my head and fasten it round my waist with a belt – snake-shaped buckle and all.

I would then knock up a sword from two bits of wood, borrow a saucepan, put it on my head with the handle at the back and finish off with the dustbin lid as a shield. Hey presto! I was King Richard or a crusader.

There were three cinemas close to where I lived, so there was no need to go into town.

The Cavendish (Cav) was the most modern, having an imposing frontage and a large plain foyer with red upholstered settees round the walls.

The ticket/confectionery kiosk was situated in the centre which gave plenty of room for queuing under cover in bad weather.

The Normanton (Normo), located at the Vulcan on the corner of Princes Street and Dairyhouse Road, had a tiny, cosy lounge foyer with a fitted carpet and Magicoal electric fires.

The entrance for the cheaper seats could not have been more different. It was a bare stone passage to the rear of the cinema, boarded at the side with many planks missing, leaving customers at the mercy of the elements.

The tickets were large square metal tokens with a hole in the centre.

I recall one day going with a group of friends to see an adventure film and becoming a little restless and noisy during the mushy, romantic scenes, which we did not like.

A man with one arm and standing about five foot nothing, came across, shone his torch on us and we were ejected, without any argument, for misbehaving. We knew we had done wrong and accepted it. I wonder what chance he would have had in similar circumstances today.

The third cinema, the Alexandra (Alex), on Normanton Road, did not have a balcony due to previously being a skating rink and the floor was mainly flat. It had quite a long carpeted foyer at the front. Again, the cheaper tickets only warranted a side entrance with a bare planked floor.

The Alex was renowned for having seats missing so, when shuffling along rows in the dark, it was essential to make sure there was a seat before sitting down.

The theatre didn’t figure much in children’s entertainment, except during the pantomime season.

On one visit, I remember going to the old Grand Theatre in Babington Lane and climbing gaslit stairways to the gods almost up to the ceiling to see Aladdin, starring Old Mother Riley (Arthur Lucan) and her daughter Kitty (Kitty McShane). The couple were actually married in real life.

During the war, slogans abounded on every subject, one being “The Devil makes works for idle hands”.

This meant hobbies were almost obligatory for children. These included collecting postage stamps, cigarette cards and packets, marbles for their different colours, shrapnel, bus numbers and tickets and railway engine numbers.

The latter for me became much more interesting with the publication, in 1943, of the Ian Allan ABC booklets, listing details, numbers and names of the railway engines, nearly 22,000 in all, of each of the big four railway companies.

I will conclude with the famous words of Uncle Mac (Derek McCulloch) from the radio programme, Children’s Hour. “Goodnight children, everywhere.”

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