Colin Crosby Heritage Tours

Rotary Hear of Cinema Career

I gave a talk recently to Wreake Valley Rotary.

It was "Adventures of the Bearded Cinema Manager", and detailed my early career when coming into the cinema business in 1963.

I spoke of my teenage years in Southend as a regular cinemagoer, my ambition at that time to become a journalist and my frustration with boring office work in the City of London, to which I travelled forty miles each way every day, taking three hours on those occasions when the trains were on time.

Then I detailed my joining the Rank Organisation as a Trainee Manager at the Odeon Gants Hill, ten days short of my 21st birthday in 1963, and my rise through Assistant Manager to becoming the country's youngest cinema manager at 23.

The talk was of the after-dinner variety, and delivered after an excellent meal at the Britannia Inn at Queniborough.