IN the days before television, people made their own entertainment.

There were clubs and groups, sports leagues and the theatre – before live performances were superseded by the cinema.

Many Looking Back readers will, no doubt, be able to remember the time when there were several cinemas in their home town, and their happy days at the children’s Saturday matinees.

Here, Burnley historian Steve Chapples looks back at the old picture houses of his youth: The Odeon, in Burnley, was built on the site of the Old Rishton Mill, near the Culvert Garage facing Gunsmith Lane, and when it opened, in 1937, it was the second largest purpose-built cinema in Lancashire with seating for 2,150.

At the opening ceremony, the Band of the 1st Battalion of the Royal Scots provided the music. It cost £80,000 and the manager Mr C Brown employed 30 staff.

The Art Deco architect was Mr Harry Weedon and the enormous foyer was painted in green and gold.

The first film I ever saw with my parents, though, was at the Pentridge cinema, in Holme Street, which closed in 1960. Two years later my father took me to the old Savoy, in Red Lion Street.

I started going to the Saturday morning matinees known as the “Mickey Mouse Club” in 1955 at the Odeon, and the show would start with a singsong and words would come up on the screen.

All we kids would sing: “Sons of the sea, bobbing up and down like this.”

We would all jump merrily up and down in our sixpenny tip-up seats. Those in the stalls would often find themselves being bombarded by the posh kids in the balcony with apple cores, orange peel, rice, and hard peas fired from peashooters.

In 1955, when I was nine, the craze was Davy Crockett with Fess Parker in the lead role. I recall the cinema being filled with little boys in ’coon skin hats toting six guns and toy rifles, who would join in with the on-screen action by firing their weapons. Occasionally the projector would break down and 2,000 kids would boo, hiss, slow handclap and stamp their feet, until it was repaired.

After a Disney cartoon there would be the Pathe News, then the interval.

This would be followed by a comedy like Charlie Chaplin, or Abbott and Costello meet the Keystone Cops, and finally there would be a super hero adventure starring Flash Gordon, Tarzan, or Batman and Robin.

At the height of the drama the film would end, forcing us to come back the following week to find out how our hero managed to escape from his latest life-threatening scrape.

In 1959 I remember there was a yoyo demonstration, the latest craze of the day, while another fad in the early sixties was the 3D film.

Every member of the audience was given a cardboard pair of glasses with one green lens and one red.

As you looked at the screen, one had the impression that the snake, or runaway train, was coming right at you and some of the girls would scream in terror.