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ON CHILDREN'S CINEMA CLUBS
To the Odeon we have come, Mow we can have some fun,
We are a hundred thousand strong, So how can we all he wrong?
There is no club 'hymn' in the Gaumont British Junior, I am glad to say. I have not given the whole text, but I assure my readers it is not above the level of the four lines quoted. Now we listen to the club promise. In it the children promise to obey their parents, to be kind to animals, and to make this country 'a better place to live in'. This promise is crowned by the singing of the National Anthem.
I refrain from any comment except to say that it is regrettable that we have no I.C.I, song, or a Vickers song, etc. Most of our contemporary industrial problems might be solved if, as children, we were imbued by lyrical songs with loyalties towards the masters of industry and commerce.
Mr. Rank is president of the children's clubs and the children receive birthday greetings in his name.
Now the cinema proper begins, though in recent months cabaret artists have also been presented on the stage. You first see a Mickey Mouse picture, but not so often a genuine Walt Disney as one of his plagiarists who, as is well known, have copied only the technique but not the artistic taste of Disney.
A cartoon is followed by a full-length picture. Except on one or two occasions when good pictures like 'My Friend Flicka' have been shown, it would appear that either old westerns or old comical pictures (early Shirley Temple films and 'funny' comedies about ten or fifteen years old) are considered good, and what is probably more important cheap, enough for children. I have seen films of the type older than the familiar Tarzan pictures with animals almost killing human beings in strange cinema landscapes. Some of the children at such performances have been really frightened and horrified. My own son refused, after he and a friend of his — they were then nine — had accompanied me two or three times to these performances, to take a further interest in his father's sociological curiosity.
Last, but not least, come the serials, e.g., Don Winslow of the Navy. They are of American origin. I was never able to discover a coherent plot in these serials. A considerable amount of shootinggoes on, with nerve-racking persecutions of the bad men who have
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