Page 9 - Palace Memories Gerald Jervis

Palace Theatre Memories Redditch Heritage

paid at a separate pay-box in now what is purely and exit to the right of the main
entrance.

A terrible disaster at Paisley, about 1930, in which hundreds of children were killed and
injured in a cinema fire panic, caused the authorities all over the country to tighten up
safety precautions. At the Palace, this led to buying up and demolishing of the two
houses backing on to it in Grove Street, so as to create a stalls exit there and an
operating box with an exit to the open air. The solid partition between the stalls and
pit was abolished, as was the separate pit pay box. Centre gangways appeared, so
that the seating capacity was reduced to 533 (199 in the circle; 334 in the stalls), not
counting the two boxes.

Variety of Films?

Films did not entirely oust stage performances during this period. In the 1920`s there
was a fashion for “cine variety” – a programme consisting of a feature film and a
newsreel, supported by one or two variety turns on the stage. The Treadgolds at the
Alcester Street Picture House were the local pioneers in this. It was they who
introduced Martin Bredis, the strong man, who bent iron bars round his arm. Bredis,
who died a few years ago at the age of eighty, is still spoken of locally.

The Palace followed suit, and I remember an acrobat balancing a roaring motorcycle
on an inverted tripod on his chest, at this period. There was also a clown who walked
daily down Alcester Street to the theatre on top of a two-foot globe. No one took a bit
of notice of him; it must have been heart breaking.

Messrs. J. & D. Russell, who succeeded the Treadgold family at the Picture house and
renamed it the Select Kinema, had a theatrical stock company there for a time, as well,
and the Palace also had a similar company, with a leading lady named Jill Wray, if I
remember rightly.

Otherwise the chief theatrical event of the season was the annual production of the old
Operatic Society. The first of these that I saw, in 1927 was “Tom Jones”, with Bert
Bate, of jovial memory, in the title role, and Mavis Bennett, the local soprano, who had
already begun to make a national impression, as Sophia Weston.

Local Talent

Mavis Bennett was the daughter of the caretakers at the Redditch Secondary School
(later the County High School, and now the older portion of the College). Her fine
soprano voice unfortunately faded in what may be regarded as mid-career, but at one
time she was a singing principal roles for Lilian Baylis at Sadler`s Wells. About 1926,
she married Stanford Robinson, the B.B.C. conductor (the elder brother of Eric
Robinson) at St. Stephen`s Church. I was in the crowd outside, and as a new boy at
the Secondary School I bitterly resented the indignity when I incautiously stepped off
the pavement and was replaced on it by a policeman who took my ear between his
finger thumb.

This marriage was dissolved after a few years, and Miss Bennett later married a local
industrialist until after the Second World War. She will still figure again in this narrative.

© Redditch Heritage 2019 Page: 9