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Page 3 FRO^^^ ROW CE^^^RE Howard Fletcher was a man a way ahead of his time. Long before the spectre of television spread across the continent like a plague and threatened to bury the motion picture industry, Howard Fletcher was fostering a reserve of future cinema audiences and he did it by handing out movie passes to elementary school kids who ranked first in their class each month. 1 was lucky enough to grab a few. To be sure, I occasionally went over town to the syndicated theatres. The outing started with a fill of fish and chips at the National Lunch and then a sprint up Granville to the Orpheum to buy tickets before the price was hiked at one o'clock. Cross the threshold and a fantasy world unfolded ....... the ascent of the majestic stairs, footsteps muffled by thick carpets; the swishing sound of the usherettes' satin 'bell-bottoms'; the dimming of the massive chandelier. The contrast between the Orpheum and Hollybum theatres was as conspicuous as an oil spill on an iceberg. The Hollybum had been built in 1925 and opened the following year showing such stellar films as "Below the Line" featuring RIN-TIN-TIN, the famous police dog and "Sally of the Sawdust". The earliest picture 1 remember was Noel Coward's "Cavalcade". A particularly vivid memory is the scene with the two figures on a balcony looking down on Queen Victoria's funeral procession. The boy turns to the woman and in a very stiff, upper lipped fashion says something to the effect, "She was a little woman, wasn't she. Mother?". That remark really stuck and for a long time I wondered if adult caskets came in different sizes and, if so, what would Toulouse-Lautrec's look like? Those B-rated mid-week flicks and the Saturday matinee serials were fodder for our fertile minds. Who could ever forget Flash Gordon, Burn 'em Up Barnes, the Undersea Kingdom or Clyde Beatty's Bring 'em Back Alive .... Clive thwacking through the jungle in search of some rare, albino species, his clothing fresh and crisp and his bandbox pith helmet set at a determined angle. Someone or something was always falling into a poorly concealed trap. The villain in the Dick Tracy serial was a club foot, the rest of him not to be revealed until the final frame. In every hair-raising episode, a sinister delta-winged aircraft appeared, circled, landed and discharged the club foot. His intended victim, eyes bugged out like a surfaced bottom fish, would set off running at quite a respectable rate but was, of course, doomed to be overtaken by the relentless, dragging club foot. The line-up for the Saturday matinee stretched eastwards from the theatre well beyond the Bluebird Confectionary. The first few dozen kids got to witness the arrival of the Fletcher family in their Kissel motor car. The sedan would draw up before the theatre and disgorge an amazing number of little Fletchers who paraded past us and on inside to lay claim to the row of overstuffed chesterfield chairs on the main floor. When Mrs. Fletcher opened the box office, there was a stampede for the balcony, the bigger boys scrambling over the tops of seats to stake out their territory in the front row centre. For the next couple of hours, to a cacophony of boos, whistles, clapping, cheers, hisses and rude bodily noises, we immersed ourselves in another world. The Hollybum's counter part to the gorgeous gal ushers over in the Orpheum, was Mr. Pettigrew. Mr. Pettigrew was slightly built and probably an asthmatic. He carried a 5-cell flashlight the size of a plumber's helper and whenever the catcalls and foot stomping reached 90 decibels (annoying), or the patrons downstairs complained about the hail of candy wrappers descending upon