Incredible drawings of old Glasgow cinemas by artist, 93, on show for first time in city

Thomas McGoran, 93. Pic: Colin Mearns

THE first time Thomas McGoran went to the cinema, it was at the Annfield on the Gallowgate in the 1930s.

“My dad took me, and the picture I saw, I think, was called ‘The Luck of the Irish’ starring James Dunn,” he recalls.

“I was more interested in the back of the cinema, where the light came from – this wee pinprick of light that come out of a wee window. I spent more time sitting watching that than I did watching what was going on at the screen. So much so, that I eventually became a projectionist.”

Green’s Playhouse by Thomas McGoran

Thomas, now 93, is a talented artist and his beautiful drawings of old Glasgow picture houses are now on show at the Reid Gallery in Glasgow School of Art, part of a collection commissioned by Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive (CMDA), a three-year research project looking at memories of cinema-going in 1930s Britain.

Thomas McGoran, 93, Professor Bruce Peter (GSA professor of design history) and Professor Sarah Neely, professor of film and visual culture , University of Glasgow) Pic: Colin Mearns

Although he has had few chances to exhibit his work, has been working diligently throughout his lifetime to create an exceptional body of work, which captures a time when Glasgow was considered Cinema City, with more cinema seats per head than any other city in the world.

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One of nine children, Thomas was born in 1927. His father was a labourer, his mother a housewife. He left school at the age of fourteen, and his first job was as a spoolboy.

In an interview with the Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive, he said: “When I started as a spoolboy the pay was twelve-and-six  for my week’s work.

The Gaumont by Thomas McGoran

“I started work at ten o’clock in the morning, finished at half-past-ten at night.

“I once ran a cinema of my own – I was about eight or nine at the time and I had a hand-cranked projector, with a wee five-volt battery. And it was my pride and joy. And there was a shop down in the Gallowgate, and it used to sell wee tins of film: 35 millimetre film, maybe about thirty feet long, and he sold them for threepence.”

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Thomas recalls: “There was theatres in the city for people that had money, and dance halls for the teenagers. The cinemas were for the poor people.

“Glasgow was a movie-mad city. There were cinemas everywhere,  queued out, every day and every night of the week. Going to the cinema was an escapist thing for us, you know? You used to go there and you would be carted away to another world.”

Thomas became a projectionist at the Arcadia, with responsibility for making sure there were no breakdowns.

“If you had a breakdown, all hell was let loose in the hall,” he smiles. “You know, they were all stamping their feet.”

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The first run of the films usually came to the city cinemas, says Thomas, like the Odeon in Renfield street, the Regal, La Scala and Gaumont in Sauchiehall Street.

“There was Green’s Playhouse which was at the top of Renfield Street; Cranston’s, at the bottom; and the Coliseum over in Eglinton Street – these were regarded as top-notch cinemas in the city,” says Thomas. “They got all the new pictures…and that’s where we used to go on our night off.

“Those were the days when films came straight from Hollywood into the city cinemas here. Local cinemas had to wait their turn.

“The way it worked was it would go to ‘first run cinemas’, then it would go away for a couple months, then come back to second run cinemas, the likes of the Parade, and the Olympia, and the Orient, the larger cinemas. They got a second bite at the cherry.

“And then it would disappear again for another couple of months, and be brought back again this time for the wee fleapits to show.”

After leaving the cinema, Thomas worked for British Railways for 33 years, before retiring and taking up drawing.

Glasgow, Cinema City: Drawings by Thomas McGoran is at Glasgow School of Art’s Reid Building now.