SWAPPING a jam jar for a cinema ticket has been dismissed by some as an urban myth: but now a social history project aimed at exploring Glasgow's long love affair with the silver screen has found the 'jeely jar' ticket did exist.
The initiative by Glasgow Film Festival has collected memories spanning nearly a century, including the heyday of the 'pictures' - when going to see films involved standing in huge queues instead of online booking and being entertained all day instead of for just one film.
Glasgow was once known as "cinema city", with more picture houses per head of population than anywhere outside America during the 1930s. Angela Fussell, Cinema City project manager, said the recollections had been collected mainly from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
"It is a way of going to the cinema that no longer exists - at that time huge crowds were going and it was much more of social event," she said. "Post-war Scotland was pretty austere, but cinema was a way of getting out of that - it was literally escapism, that was a very strong thread throughout the interviews.
"People were going four, five or six times a week and many people would talk about how you could go in at 2pm in the afternoon and leave at 10pm in the evening.
"There was a variety of cinemas - in a local area you could have as many as five - and very beautiful cinemas as well a number of basic ones they would call 'flea pits'."
The memories captured in the project will be displayed in a free exhibition 'Jeely Jars and Seeing Stars' opening this Thursday (12th) at Glasgow Mitchell Library as part of Glasgow Film Festival.
Fussell said the title of the exhibition referred to swapping a jam jar for a cinema ticket - a practice long gone and which some doubt ever existed.
But she said: "We have had at least three ladies who remember going into the cinema with a washed out jeely jar. It would seem to have been in certain cinemas and linked to kid's matinees on Saturday.
"I think people thought it was an urban myth and we have managed to prove that is not the case."
Fussell said other recollections included cinemas providing a refuge from overcrowded and poor housing, where people could have a sleep and stay warm as well as watch films.
Contributors also vividly recalled stylish usherettes selling Kia-Ora drinks and Lyons Maid ice-cream and immaculately dressed doorman - known as commissionaires - greeting customers.
Fussell said: "There are people who also remembered the queue entertainers - people who would turn up with penny whistles, for example, or one woman mentioned an entertainer who would tap dance on a bit of old hardboard.
"They would move along the queue and put the bunnet out and get a few bob for that.
"People remember the queue entertainers from the 1980s even - so it has disappeared very quickly."
The exhibition will also feature a number of cinema-related artefacts on loan from a collection which is usually housed at Summerlee Museum of Scottish Industrial Life in Coatbridge.
This includes crockery and tablecloths from Green's Playhouse in Renfield St, an entertainment complex which included a cinema and tea rooms and later became the iconic music venue The Apollo.
Two plywood cut-outs of Disney characters Goofy and Donald Duck, which were made for advertising purposes by an apprentice projectionist at the Rio Cinema in Canniesburn Toll around 1942, will also feature.
Jenny Noble, social history curator at Summerlee, said there were also some more unusual items which would be on display.
"There is a hearing aid that used to be connected to the end of the row of seats for cinema patrons to use, which we know came from the Odeon at Eglinton Toll," she said.
"Another of the more interesting pieces we have a disinfectant spray can which was made in Ibrox, although we don't know which cinema it came from."
"They were used in the cinemas when people were smoking and there would be various other smells.
"Quite often the usherette would go round with her spray can and make sure everything was smelling a bit fresher."
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