KEN Smith’s Those Were The Days photograph of band leader Joe Loss signing autographs(“No snow problem for buses in the 50s”, The Herald, October 17) brought back some distant memories. In the late 1940s and 1950s Joe Loss had an annual booking at Greens Playhouse for several weeks over Christmas and the New Year, and the place was always packed. I don’t know if he had his famous signature tune In The Mood before Glenn Miller played it, but it was instantly recognised on the radio (or wireless as we still called it then).

In those far-off days Glasgow was the undisputed ballroom capital of Britain, with Greens, The Albert, The Plaza and many other dance halls around the city, not to mention the University Union and local tennis clubs which held regular Saturday night dances. The Albert was claimed to be the most popular, and The Plaza was certainly the poshest with dinner suits and long dresses required, but Greens, two floors above street level, was acknowledged to have the best-sprung dance floor.

I don’t remember Joe Loss being at The Plaza, but I’m sure the camera and the caption never lies. He also had a regular holiday booking at the Beach Ballroom in Douglas, Isle of Man, and as a schoolgirl visiting her farmer uncle on the island my wife-to-be was thrilled to meet Joe Loss and get his autograph.

Today’s young folk don’t know what they are missing, as they stand on their own writhing about surrounded by a cacophony of tuneless noise. Some of your older readers will know it was much more fun to hold on to your partner and move smoothly in perfect step with each other. Those were the days …

Iain AD Mann,

7 Kelvin Court, Glasgow.

WHAT bliss it was to be alive in the 1950s and attending the Liverpool and Southport Repertory Companies’ productions.

One play in particular in May, 1958, in Southport, had the delightful Jean Alexander (Herald Obituaries, October 18) in the cast. She played Polly Blair in Keep In a Cool Place by William Templeton. Amongst the props listed, and from whence they were borrowed or supplied, were “nylon stockings by Kayser, table lighter by Ronson and Olivier cigarettes by Benson and Hedges”. It was fascinating to watch the cigarette smoke drifting away from the stage and into the auditorium.

The Southport Repertory Theatre, which was at the Scala Theatre in those days, had at the bottom of the front page of its programmes “to hold as ‘twere the mirror up to nature”; and the little company certainly did that.

I do so enjoy looking back through the concert and play programmes I have kept since the early 1950s. At the Liverpool Playhouse, in the 1958 production of The Time of the Cuckoo, in just that one production, on stage were Nicholas Hawtrey, Thelma Barlow, Caroline Blakiston, Trevor Baxter and John Stride, amongst others, who went on to fame on TV and in the West End theatres. They all looked so young.

So, Miss Jean Alexander, many thanks for the pleasure you gave throughout your long career.

Thelma Edwards,

Old Comrades Hall,

Hume,

Kelso.