"Hillbillies in Heanor"

‘The Ladder of Success’

Looking back at some of the projects I found myself involved in, I realise that I was infatuated with the lure of the cinema and its workings; modern technology was progressing too fast.

After the Heanor ‘Empire’ had been opened for two years, and I was now Manager, I decided that it would be nice if we could have a nice fresh coat of paint on the auditorium walls, after all, our takings had more than trebled in the last couple of years, so I put the question forward, with hopes that at least some of it might be done.

The reply was that we couldn’t afford to do it as things were; these were hard times, so I decided we would do it ourselves! I enlisted the help of a friend who had an interest in the ‘Empire’. We would do it together over the Christmas Holiday, as the only time the place would be closed was Christmas and Boxing Day. The ceiling would be left this time, because without scaffolding it would be a ‘no-go’ area, due to the height.

The decorating shop opposite the cinema named ‘Decorite’, would give me access to all their stock of paint, even on the two special holiday days, thanks to the Manager, cinema fan Rex Taylor.

We would paint the lower haves of the walls in summer blue, and the upper halves in sand gold, the colours chosen by lease partner Dion Hanson. Helping me would be Tim Woodroffe, who was used to ladders and heights.

In 72 hours we redecorated the whole of the auditorium walls in the circle and stalls area, on the understanding we would receive a lump sum on completion, and approval. The place looked really smart and clean, and we were both pleased with the results, as were the owners.

For the first time in years, we decided that the old ‘Odeon ‘ style clock would be cleaned and repainted; it had not been telling the time correctly for about ten years, and in bad need of rewiring. Tim was an expert with clocks, and he had this way of cleaning the works with carbon technicloride , which we couldn’t buy from the chemists, but he found an old disused fire extinguisher which had been discarded from the Projection Room. Within an hour it was working again perfectly after having years of dust removed from it’s works.

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Frank Dainty phoned me a week later to say he would be visiting, and he would bring me the payment for the re-decorating. After chatting for a while we came to the subject of the money, and he said: “It had been decided to pay us in cash, so it would not be going through the books. The sum they had agreed on was a hundred pounds to share between us, which, as we were not paying Income Tax on the amount, was actually worth about a hundred and fifty pounds!"

This surprised me at the time, I honestly expected more, but I took it, put it down to experience, and you can guess what I thought!

This didn’t dampen my interest however; because it found me work doing similar jobs elsewhere, which paid eight pounds an hour. At the cinema I went on to paint the staircases leading to the balcony, the projection box, and my office; they did however buy me a lovely pair of floral curtains for the latter which was a good thing, because I had a special reason for wanting it to look nice.

Work satisfaction was something that came easily in the entertainment business, but there was a point where on needed to bear in mind that there is only so much that one can work for free. My mum best put it as: “A man who will work for nothing, and a woman who will do the ‘other’ for nothing will get a job anywhere!”

Oh how truthful that saying is mum…….

‘I went to the Palace tomorrow,
They gave me a front seat, at the back,
They bought round some plain cake, with currents in,
So I ate it, and gave it them back!”

‘Hillbillies in Heanor’:

Whenever we needed to have anything done at the Heanor ‘Empire’, the price was always a major factor, and sometimes it didn’t always pay to take cheap tenders.

The inside of the cinema was now clean and bright after it’s recent decoration, but by the following year the exterior had worn, and was starting to look very shabby, with paint peeling off in several places, but that was one job I was not going to tackle!

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However it had been observed by the powers that be, and one night Frank Dainty told me to expect a visit from a representative of a company who did this kind of work, from the village of Dinnington, near Chesterfield, who was going to give them a quote for the painting work to be done.

After about three months I then heard that they had accepted their quotation, and they were coming to do the job on the following Monday, so would I make them welcome, and give them my full co-operation.

They arrived in an old Ford van, with ladders, steps, and dust sheets, and at first appearance, reminded me of ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’, which was then being shown on television. There was the father, referred to as ‘The Old Man’, his wife Gladys, their daughter, and her husband. It had been along time since I had seen anyone wearing a ‘turban’, and I reminded myself that they were popular in the 1940, and 50s; by people like Gracie Fields, and Thora Hird, usually in North Country comedies.


They were a right group of characters, ‘The Old Man’, looking like a cross between Fred Dibnah, (‘The Lancashire Steeple-jack’), and Stanley Holloway; and Gladys was seldom seen without a cigarette in her mouth, puffing happily away.

They had contracted with a local firm to hire their lift truck, which was like a giant arm mounted on the back of a lorry, with a bucket fixed to the end, so that they could reach the highest and awkward sections of the frontage, which was about 75 foot high, from coping stones to the ground.

To save time, and I would expect money, it was going to be give one coat of masonry paint, and as some parts of the walls had been ‘pebble dashed’, it was going to be hard work even for two of them partly working from ladders, but they seemed quite confident in the job before them. Luckily for them the weather remained good for the whole of the week that they were there, and I felt confident in leaving them with their own keys for the front doors.

They had been at work for about two days, when at 9 am one morning, Rex Taylor from ‘Decorite’, the decorating shop opposite, called me at home, with one of those ‘you’re never gonna believe this’ remarks. Which quite frankly, I was willing to believe anything for the price they were charging, I can say that I don’t think we could have found any one else cheaper; then came his punch line.

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Did I know that one of our painting contractors, (‘The Old Man’), was dangling on the end of a piece of rope, halfway down the front of the cinema, with the rope just tied around his waist? I jumped in my car and went to the cinema, to find it was perfectly true, and not only that, but a crowd of about twenty people had gathered, looking up at the event.

The story goes that as the car park was a sloping surface, he considered it too risky to put the arm and bucket to the highest point, because the motor might be ‘top heavy’, and topple over, due to the balance. Ladders were not long enough, and I was assured that this was the only way to reach the highest point, without erecting expensive scaffolding.


I joked about the incident that night on the telephone when I rang Frank Dainty, who didn’t really believe my story. He agreed with me, they were rough, but they were cheap, and didn’t mind bending the rules a little, even though they didn’t have personal accident insurance on themselves.

I got to the point that I dreaded going down to the cinema when I knew they were there, because the wife, would insist in making me a cup of ‘char’ (tea), as she called it, and even by the end of there stay, I still had not got used to P.G.Tips with milk, sugar, and cigarette ash!

Frank Dainty told me later that when he visited them at home, they lived in unbelievable circumstances. They invited him into their front room for a drink and a biscuit, and in each corner of the room, by the fireplace, were two ‘Growbags’ of peat, with tomato plants growing about four foot high. However, I wasn’t surprised to hear this; it was just what I had expected, for we were still cleaning up their rubbish at the ‘Empire’ some three weeks later.

We were now clean and tidy both inside and out, and the whole of the building looked as if it was cared for. Red Lion Square at last looked brighter now the grey coloured paint had been replaced with a rich warm sandstone look; it looked so good that Ron Soar decided it was time to repaint ‘Regent House’, the hardware shop he owned to the left of the cinema. I felt proud that something had been done which gave the impression we were doing well business wise and for weeks people remarked what a good job the contractors had made. The next major work to be done was to the roof, and that was a bit more difficult because builders are not too keen to work on high roofs, but I found a trusted worker in Keith Berrisford, who was used to doing this work.

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