大象传媒

At The Hippodrome Putney, we started our final performance of the day, around 7-30pm in the evening, the year was 1943.
Our junior Ted Reekie donned his steel helmet and took up his usual position on the roof, some twenty feet or so above the projection room where we worked, he always reported back to us every twenty minutes on the situation of the air raid in progress, intensity & direction of the anti-aircraft fire, this particular night it got very heavy, and so we ordered him down, as we decided to shut down the show, we rang the manager told him of our intention brought up the house lights and shut off the projector, making our way down through the Gallery to the Circle, there to our amazement were quite a number of patrons in.
I recall one lady saying how much they were enjoying the film ("Claudia" with Robert Young & Dorothy Mcguire) and hoped we would be able to continue soon, we waited fifteen minutes or so, things had then quitened down so we ventured back up to our projection room on the roof, and finally finished the show.
It was really unbelieveable how people stayed put in the cinema during an air raid.
I remember standing on the roof of the Hippodrome later & looking about, there was a complete ring of Fires around, what appeared to be an unbroken circle, and we seemed to be the center of this.
The German Luftwaffe had certainly done it's job that night.
Ted Dann. Projectionist Hippodrome Putney.

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