The Man In The Seventh Row (13 page)

While other kids played rugby or records after school, Roy went to the cinema. He saw Dustin Hoffman in
The Graduate
at the Dominion in a double bill with
The Thomas Crown Affair
, with Steve McQueen, who was of course one of the seminal North Berwick seven, playing a really cool bank robber. He saw
Deliverance
, the story of four city men fighting for survival against rapids and hillbillies, at the
ABC
, in a double bill with
Bullitt
, with Steve McQueen playing a really cool cop, with a jazzy soundtrack, a jazzy blue polo neck and a jazzy Ford Mustang.

At the Ritz, Roy saw
A Gunfight
with Kirk Douglas, the original man with the dimple, and Johnny Cash, the 'other' man in black, as two old gunslingers. Roy was listening to Cash's 'A Thing Called Love' while other kids were getting into T. Rex and Deep Purple. Down on their luck, Cash and Douglas agree to one last gunfight in a bullring, charging spectators to get in, winner takes all, loser dies. Cash shoots Douglas, but then there seems to be an alternative ending where Douglas shoots Cash. Or was Cash just imagining that?

Roy wished his father was there, so he could ask him, like he used to ask him 'What happened next?' when the ending of some film they would be watching on telly was not entirely clear, like
The Day the Earth Caught Fire
. Atomic bomb tests have knocked the Earth out of its orbit and it is headed towards the sun. So what do they do? In one last desperate throw of the dice the powers-that-be decide they had better explode four more bombs, simultaneously in different parts of the world, to knock it back on course. At the end there are two newspaper headlines prepared reading 'World saved' and 'World doomed'. And that is it. But which is it?

'What happened next?' said Roy.

'It's up to everybody to make their own mind up,' said his father.

'What do you think happened next?' said Roy.

'I don't know.'

'But it's like stopping the film half way through ... or the end of an episode of Dr Who,' Roy complained. 'But then we find out what happened to Dr Who next week ... The writer must know whether Earth was saved or doomed.'

'I'm inclined to agree with you,' said his father. 'I don't like films like that.'

Roy and his father agreed they liked a definite, unambiguous ending. Roy was not even entirely convinced that Butch and Sundance might not have got away after they came charging out of their hideout.

Films were still shown in double bills then and while it might seem logical to put
A Gunfight
on with another western, or at least some sort of action film it was paired with
Carry on Teacher
, a mediocre, 11-year-old episode of the British comedy series.
The Hunting Party
, one of the new crop of very violent westerns, was on a double bill with the Beatles film
Let It Be
at the Caley. The Caley regularly screened an old western on Saturday afternoons. Roy arrived so early for
The Hunting Party
and
Let It Be
that he saw virtually the whole of
3:10 to Yuma
as well, with nervy Van Heflin assigned to look after outlaw Glenn Ford until the eponymous train arrives. Roy's enjoyment of it was marred only slightly by the nagging worry that some usher might come along at the end and ask him to pay again if he intended to stay for the other films. Roy rehearsed the arguments in his mind, while Heflin and Ford psyched each other out on screen. Would Ford's men come for him? Would an usher come for Roy? Heflin got Ford onto the train and Roy stayed put when the rest of the audience got up. No one queried his right to stay, so he saw a triple bill that day.
3:10 to Yuma
was the best.

In the empty expanses of the Playhouse Roy saw Burt Lancaster in the western
Valdez is Coming
, memorable for the repetition of the title 'Valdez is Coming', as promise or threat. It was on with Kirk Douglas in the war film
Cast a Giant Shadow
. The programme ran for more than four hours once you included the trailers and the adverts.

You might think that James Bond was with British intelligence, but really he worked for United Artists. The man with the gong would precede the Carry Ons, Paramount had their mountain, Columbia had the lady with the lamp,
MGM
the lion and Universal the world. But one company dominated cinema programmes more than any other.

'Pa-pah, Pa-pah, Pa-pah, Pa-pah, Pa-pah Pa, Pa, Pa, Pa.' Pearl and Dean heralding the adverts.

'Experience the authentic taste of India at…', and a card would appear on screen and a different voice would read,

'The Taj Mahal, Corstorphine,' or 'The Maharajah's Palace', a dingy wee diner near the Hearts ground in Dalry Road, which would be pronounced wrongly.

Everyone said Roy looked much older than his 14 years, especially the bus conductors who only reluctantly gave him half-fares. It was not long after his 14th birthday that he decided to try and get into an X film, for which the age limit wa
s now 18. This was the time of
The Devils
and
Soldier Blue
, but Roy decided not to be too ambitious at first. He liked to see every western that came to Edinburgh and
Captain Apache
, an
AA
film starring Lee Van Cleef, was playing at the Playhouse in a double bill with
Cotton Comes to Harlem
, a film about two black cops that carried an X certificate. He practised sucking in his cheeks to emphasise his cheek bones, which he thought gave him a harder, meaner look, though it made talking slightly more difficult. He wondered if maybe he should half-close his eyes as well: snake eyes like Lee Van Cleef. He deducted four years from his date of birth and memorised '31.10.53' just in case the cashier tried to catch him out by asking him his birthday rather than his age.

'Shtalls,' he mumbled through teeth that were clamping his cheeks in place.

The cashier was so old that she could no longer remember the difference between 14-year-olds and 18-year-olds and gave him his ticket without asking either his age or his birthday. All she said, in a rather concerned voice, was

'Is there something wrong with your eyes, sonny?'

'No, no,' said Roy, hurrying through the door.

He didn't attempt to do snake eyes anymore and his eyes were wide open when Judy Pace showed off her backside in
Cotton Comes to Harlem
.

The only time he ever got asked his age was at the Jacey in Princes Street, which specialised in 'kinky' movies, not somewhere he would usually go. But he wanted to see the documentary
Danish Blue
because of the controversy that surrounded it.

'The controversial film passed by city magistrates,' said the advert. 'Banned in many major cities including Glasgow. Only for the broad-minded.'

Roy was not shocked, though he might have been if he had understood it. There were some queer references to what might go where in some films, but that did not stop him appreciating the visual qualities on display.

The only other problem Roy had with an X film was when he decided to go with his friend Gordon Ramm to see the western
The Revengers
at the Playhouse. It was an
AA
, but it was showing with an old Frank Sinatra film
The Detective
, which was an X. He was 15 by this time, Gordon a few weeks older, but he was an inch or two shorter. It might have been alright even then, if Gordon had not decided to bring along his next-door neighbour Michael McStay, who was 14 and looked 13. They did not even get to the box office.

The commissionaire, a young man in a heavy dark green coat with polished buttons and gold epaulettes, took Roy aside and explained to him that he could not take 'kids' in with him. A middle-aged couple interrupted to say that all three were with them, but the commissionaire said the law was that nobody under 18 could see the film.

Roy, Gordon and Michael dithered about what to do. Michael went home, but Roy and Gordon walked across the city centre, through Princes Street Gardens, beneath Edinburgh Castle on its volcanic rock, and past the
ABC
, to the Cameo which was showing
Walkabout
, some sort of drama in the Australian outback with Jenny Agutter from
The Railway Children
, which they did not know much about other than the fact it had an
AA
certificate.

'Fucking hell,' said Gordon when Jenny Agutter took all her clothes off and swam, full-frontally naked, her nudity all the more delicious for its unexpectedness in an
AA
film.

'Fuck,' said Gordon when she took all her clothes off and swam full-frontally naked again, turning every which way, in a flashback at the end for everyone who missed it first time round.

'Michael will be really pissed he missed that,' said Gordon when the film was over.

'Yeah, it was really good,' said Roy.

'I meant the nude scenes,' said Gordon.

'Yeah, great,' said Roy, 'but it was a really good film as well.'

'Aye, but do you think it would have been such a good film if she had gone swimming in her undies?'

'It wouldn't have been as good,' conceded Roy. 'But, Jenny Agutter's pubic hair was just one factor in making it a really good film. It was really poignant at the end when she's living in some concrete jungle somewhere and she remembers a more innocent time when she swam naked with nature all around her. And there's that poem "Into my heart an air that kills ..." And the chill air comes from her past.'

'Yeah, but even without the poetry, the nude scene would have made it a great film.'

His father and Gordon were the two people that most often accompanied Roy to the cinema. Wednesday afternoons were his father's half-day and sometimes Roy would meet him straight from school. If they were going to an X film, Roy would stick his stripey school tie in his pocket and fasten up his duffle coat so the cashier could not see his blazer. They never arrived in the middle of films now. Roy wanted to be comfortably established in his seat when the lights dimmed, so he could enjoy the thrill of anticipation at the silent appearance of the opening credit, the one that confirmed that it had an X certificate, which it displayed as proudly as any school kid with his certificates.

Gordon subsequently helped Roy set up a school film club, or rather 'cinematic society', which Roy thought sounded classier. Just a dozen or so turned up for
Carry on Teacher
, 40 for James Dean in
East of Eden
, but they had three times that many and had to turn people away from
Blow-up
and
If ...
, which were among the first films to get a few flashes of pubic hair past the censors without having them snipped off.

The kids in
Carry on Teacher
might seem delinquent, but it is only because they love their teachers. The kids in
If ...
might seem delinquent too. They do not use itching powder, they use machine-guns and massacre the staff and prefects.

'It's a serious artistic film,' said Mr Moon, the English teacher who had to approve their bookings. 'The boys should have the chance to see it.'

And so, in a liberal decision that should have shamed the national censor, the august Royal High School of Edinburgh ruled that
If ...
complete with pubic hairs and dead teachers, was suitable for everyone from Second Year upwards.

The announcement came up on screen: 'British Board of Film Censors, 3 Soho Square, London Wl. This film has been passed ...' And in suddenly enormous writing 'X.' The silence was broken by the sound of young cinephiles whooping and thumping their feet on the wooden floor in appreciation.

The likelihood of a nude scene or nude scenes plural, was becoming a factor in determining which films Roy went to see, maybe even the main factor, but it was certainly not the only one. If he was going with Gordon or his father, they would also have a say in which film to see. Whatever they suggested would invariably be fine with Roy, who wanted to see every new film that came out. More often than not however they would let him decide, for he was the one who bought the '
ABC
Film Review', which could usually be relied upon for a few nude scenes of its own.

Both Gordon and Roy's father liked westerns. In the Forties and Fifties westerns constituted between a quarter and a third of all American feature films. Although the number of films and the proportion of westerns declined in the Sixties, the genre was enjoying a minor revival by the early Seventies. Not only did the period produce some belated classics, like
Little Big Man
, but also dozens of westerns that would turn up at the Playhouse or Tivoli for a week and then disappear. Films like
Lawman
, starring Burt Lancaster, and
Chato's Land
, with Charles Bronson as an Apache, which together represented the western chapter in the career of an unlikely young English film-maker-turned-restaurant critic, Michael Winner. It did not matter to Roy that they were not all classics, they all represented a classic genre, another fascinating world.