Episode 5 The Travelling Picture Show

The Travelling Picture Show is out on the road again visiting

towns and villages right across Northern Ireland

and reliving our past through home movies.

Today we are going to meet the people who took the films,

those who appeared in them and anyone with a story to tell.

Dad always had a cine camera in his hand. No matter where we went,

the cine camera was always with us.

It didn't matter who you were, you were filmed.

It was a lovely time to live in Portrush in the 1950s.

That's the time I remember best.

I saw my mother lying on the beach and she was very glamorous.

It was wonderful to see people that I haven't seen for a long time,

people who are no longer with us.

There are no replacements for these men, these men were all icons.

They were great ambassadors for the town.

Hello and welcome to the very popular seaside resort

of Portstewart where I have to say the views are absolutely stunning.

And of course at the height of the season, this entire area is

a complete hive of activity with a lot of enjoyment to be had.

Now, some come for the views, others come for the good old fresh air

but today, I have to tell you they have come for

The Travelling Picture Show,

so I hope you're going to be able to stay with us.

The North Coast is there to be enjoyed in all its glory

and with panoramic views of the Atlantic Ocean,

generations of holiday-makers have been doing just that.

This is the bustling seaside town of Portrush.

This rare footage was taken back in 1932

and it was advertised as A Day Of Delight.

Taking up this offer from organiser MP Joe Devlin was this

group of excited day trippers from Belfast.

Portrush was a lovely town to grow up in.

It was a lot smaller than it is today.

I lived in the centre of the town, the harbour end.

Everybody knew everybody.

When I was a youngster Portrush was,

if you like, the centre of the universe as far as we were concerned.

People were not going to Spain, the holidays hadn't started

in the way that they had, so everybody came to Portrush.

You felt you were somewhere where it was all happening.

My father was a pharmacist in the town

and he was really interested in taking cine.

In those days you got three minutes of a reel.

We used to sell lots and lots of cine film to American tourists

coming into Portrush to the hotels.

He always had a good camera.

Every couple of years he would upgrade it to a better one.

My father took cine of us as a family growing up. As kids,

we would have gone to the beach

or Portstewart to the paddling area over there.

He would have put it together with credits and things which was a nice

touch back in the '60s.

In winter evenings we would have a cine show in the house.

Everybody enjoyed it because in those days

there wasn't that many people with cine cameras.

We ran over the rocks, climbed the cliffs, we walked the beaches.

At that time, it was great. It was a lovely place to grow up.

Nobody ever looked for us or wondered about us, whereas nowadays,

kids are in cars all the time

and, you know, it was totally different in those days.

Ian, you looked great on screen. You did that very well!

But I was interested in Dorothy's reaction,

because you were going, "That's me, that's Ian, that's so-and-so."

-Yes.

-What's your reaction to having seen the film?

I saw my mother lying on the beach

-and she was very glamorous with her sunglasses.

-Loved her sunglasses!

Wonderful to see people that I have not seen for a long time,

people who are no longer with us.

And it is lovely to see them on film and see Ian

with his little wheelbarrow going down to the beach.

-You gave that wheelbarrow a lot of action, didn't you?

-I did indeed.

I always was very fond of the wheelbarrow.

-I don't remember it now.

-It was so sweet.

When you were walking along the street you said, that's our

-whole family and my cousin.

-That's right.

We were always a group walking down the street.

My father really loved to take us on film all the time

and we used to sit around and he would show it to us every now

and again and it was lovely to see us all together.

We'd have been taken to the beach every day in the summertime,

mostly because we had a local pharmacy

and my father was very busy, so Mum entertained us.

There were three of us within three years and she entertained us

by taking us to the beach in the afternoon.

The international Northwest 200 Motorcycle Road Race

was filmed back in the 1950s.

And this is Albert Mayers who shot footage of his father

right outside their cycle shop.

Now maybe it's not an event to match the international status

of the North West 200,

but it's just as important to the people of Portrush -

the annual Easter horse races.

I remember very well the people who shot the film.

I remember Jim McMillan very well, the local chemist.

Jim was a very keen movie man.

There weren't many film cameras in those days

because it was the days of the old film, before the days of digital.

I used to work for a local photographer

during my summer holidays developing films.

He actually once gave me his camera for the day and said,

"Hugh, go round the town and shoot whatever you see."

And he gave me a couple of films which were a tenner each

in those days and I remember going around the town,

shooting on film, just to have a day recorded and some of the film

you have was actually shot by me!

The town has changed so much

in the 75 years since I first appeared.

I have to say that the changes are to the better.

In those days, we had just emerged from the war,

there was a lot of rationing going on, a lot of restrictions

and by the time we got to the 1950s, things were starting to get better

and improve and it was a lovely time to live in Portrush in the 1950s.

That's the time I remember best.

Willie Gregg is a well-known figure around Portrush

and a larger-than-life character.

I am basically fifth-generation Portrush.

My whole life is in this harbour.

It was the Queen Elizabeth,

the very famous sightseeing boat which was run by the Doherty family.

My family, we had Gregg's boats, they were hire boats.

You know that, come in number six, your time is up. We ran those.

We had the bathing boxes

and the diving board which is all in bits at the moment.

It's not cool at the moment to go swimming

and diving any more and rowing,

it just doesn't do anything for the children, but this is very important.

I remember when you saw the train coming in from Belfast,

the day-trippers, they poured into Barry's

and after they spent what they had in Barry's, they poured out of Barry's,

straight down to the pier and this harbour was black with people

and they went out, maybe four or five people per rowing boat,

out rowing for half an hour.

I think it was two and six or something for the boat

for half an hour. Something like that.

My father was a keen photographer. He had all sorts of cameras.

The season in Portrush always started around Easter

and went until September.

In the winter,

then he would have had more time to go out and about and take things.

And it was a good thing that Ian's dad, Jimmy, did have

a bit of downtime because he was on hand to film this exclusive.

Much excitement all round.

There was an air sea rescue event, where the guy was

brought in on a helicopter and landed and that was, I think,

the first helicopter landing in Portrush at that time

which was quite an event in the town,

so people dropped everything and went down to see it.

And a somewhat more sedate way to arrive.

This is Lord Wakehurst, Governor of Northern Ireland.

Now, he's in town to lay the first brick of Portrush Primary School.

And of course no trip to the seaside would be complete

without a boat trip.

Lying four miles east of Portrush is Portstewart.

It, too, has spectacular views across the sea.

It's no wonder that Jimmy Kennedy was inspired to write the lyrics of

Red Sails In The Sunset.

Hugh Kane took to the air

and provided this bird's-eye view of the magnificent coastline.

And Robert Anderson put pen to paper about the historical links

of the area.

Well, one of the reasons for the development of Portstewart

was the fact that there were two major landowners here,

the O'Haras who built the castle, now used as a Dominican College

and there was also the Cromie family,

very much involved with the building of the harbour behind me.

They had a large house on the other side of the town and these

were Victorian entrepreneurs, if you like, the families

developed the town and encouraged people to come and settle here.

Like all seaside towns, the harbour was the focal point for fishermen.

They cleaned and sold their catch

and chatted, no doubt, about the one that got away!

Marnie, we have to thank you and your family for really

a lot of the footage that we have in the programme today.

Tell me about your dad who shot a lot of this footage.

Dad always had a cine camera in his hand. No matter where we went,

the cine camera was always with us.

With my dad, it didn't matter who you were, you were filmed.

Everybody was included in Dad's films.

-If you moved at all, he shot you.

-Exactly.

I gather he had a great sense of humour.

With the binmen, for example, he used to bring them in, didn't he?

I don't know whether anybody will get into trouble for this!

When the binmen came round, Dad used to have some home brew,

and if they got a wee bit thirsty,

they were able to have a wee bottle of beer on their rounds.

And then off they went again - but all totally innocent.

Nobody got into any trouble, I hope.

INAUDIBLE

There's some footage of me in my little yellow car

and our house.

Was he a fun man, your dad?

He was lovely - he was good fun and knew everybody in the town.

At that stage, Portstewart would have been a lot smaller,

but I think Dad nearly knew everybody that was here.

Uh-oh - note the date.

Had somebody overindulged in Christmas cheer?

You know what? No harm done -

just a bit of spilled milk, and nobody's going to cry over that one.

Why do you think he was just so keen on taking this?

Because it was quite a new form of filming for the average person.

I think his father was a journalist at one stage,

so I think it was partly in the blood -

he just carried on doing this

and wanted to record the social history round the area.

If there were any buildings of note in the town

that were being knocked down,

Dad would've been there with the camera to film them.

For example, Prospect House - that was a big occasion

when that house was knocked down.

Of course, Hugh knew the importance of filming disappearing landmarks,

but he also recognised

the significance of capturing restoration work as well.

How do you feel, seeing your dad? Sadly, he's passed away,

but how do you feel, seeing him in the film?

Oh, it's brilliant, it's just brilliant.

And Dad would have adored this today -

to think that all the hours he spent filming

all the things that we looked at, he would have loved this.

Although he wasn't born here,

Robert Anderson fell in love with Portstewart -

after all, who could blame him?

I was born in Coleraine, son of a seafarer.

I was interested in the sea myself.

I eventually moved to Portstewart

after I became the pilot for the River Bann.

Took ships from here into the port of Coleraine.

The film was taken in 1974

at a time when I decided

that we should have this on record,

because it hadn't been recorded before.

I had access to a movie camera

and I decided to make a film of the voyage of a ship

from Portstewart Bay here into Coleraine.

The film was done over a period of time,

cos I couldn't do everything in one day, obviously.

And it worked out well.

The film shows John Linton, the boatman.

It shows Tommy Laggan, the previous pilot.

It shows some of the people working on the ship,

it shows some of the people working at the docks at Coleraine.

It was a record of the events as they occurred at that time.

My son, in the 1990s,

he was a student at the time and he used a video camera

and more or less duplicated the movie I had made,

only this time, I was in the film.

He recorded me doing the job as pilot.

So there is a 20-odd year gap

between the old cine film and the new video film.

I think, again, it was well worth recording.

It's something that maybe won't be done again.

It was something that I felt should be recorded for posterity.

I knew possibly, in the future,

the port of Coleraine wouldn't exist,

and this was something which was fairly important

to the development of Coleraine - and indeed to Portstewart -

over the years.

Willie Gregg's father often took boat trips to the Skerries -

a group of small islands close to Portrush.

The late Jimmy McMillan, an incredible local photographer,

many's a time he went out on The Islander,

which was a boat my father built - a beautiful clinker-built boat.

He always has a wind-up camera and he had a cine camera with him.

And I was only a little kid at the time and we used to go out.

We didn't call them boat trips - they were voyages.

We went to the Skerry Islands

and they pretended there was treasure on the islands and things like that.

We even collected duck eggs and seagull eggs for cooking.

We collected dulse and looked out for the seals

and we'd always fish and go onto the Skerries

and maybe set a lobster pot or two and lift them on the way back,

and we'd have the fish we caught for tea that night

and the lobsters and crabs the next day for salad.

They were all big men

and they were always speaking to strangers and visitors -

they were great ambassadors for the town.

If they wanted to go and show you a basking shark or seals,

it was only three or four minutes out to sea we could find them,

and it was like an adventure.

There haven't been any replacements for these incredible men -

unfortunately, there's nobody taken their places.

I don't know whether I'm safe talking to you two boys, two brothers -

you seem to know the entire area.

I was sitting beside you, Willie, watching the film,

and I felt you were very emotional when you saw your dad.

It blew me away, it blew the socks off me.

It was the first time I'd seen my father...

Do you ever remember him without a beard?

-No. No, he had a beard.

-He had a beard for forever.

Some old photographs of Dad without the beard,

but that was the first time I'd ever seen him in a movie, as such.

-He was a handsome man.

-Yeah, he was.

-He was a handsome man.

The pair of you were just thrilled when you saw the boat -

you kept saying, "There's Dad's boat."

That was The Silver Scales, a salmon fishing boat.

What do you remember about your dad,

in terms of being out in the boat and all that stuff?

-Oh...on television, really?

-Not so sure we can say!

No, he was...he was very good at what he did,

he was an expert boat builder and he knew his craft,

he was good about the sea.

He always made sure that William and I were safe in the boat -

-that was probably his priority.

-Yeah.

-Made sure we knew how to swim from a very early age.

-Throwing us in!

-He did, actually.

-Is that what he did?

-He did.

-Threw you in to learn...

-Into the harbour.

-Into the harbour.

Then as you got closer to the boat, he rowed away from it,

-so you had to learn quick.

-Fast!

-You had to learn.

But it was OK - it was only up to your knees,

you weren't going to drown.

What did you like looking at today in the film?

Well, it was lovely to see the harbour

and lovely to see Dad and my mum down at the fish shop at the harbour.

And Florence is here as well today - Florence was selling the fish

and her husband was one of the fishermen.

He fished out of the harbour - he fished for a number of years

and he caught all sorts of fish.

Then he went into the lobster fishing,

and into the salmon fishing...

-So he was doing that professionally?

-Yes.

We sold the fish from the harbour yard

and supplied the local shops and restaurants and further afield.

I really enjoyed it, now - I really enjoyed it, it took me back

and let me realise just how good life was in those years, yes.

How important do you feel it is for all of what we've seen today

to be captured for posterity?

-Very important indeed.

-Very important.

I think...everybody's got TVs and mobile phones and things,

and...it's not the same.

That old black and white brings it out to you.

It's terrific just to see,

and there's various people and things around Portrush

that I can remember and...

The cars were coming the wrong way down Main Street.

Wee things like that - "Wait a minute, that car's the wrong..."

Nowadays, they go the other way, but this was going towards you.

OK, it's a small thing, but if you don't see those sort of things,

it would be lost and forgotten about.

It was a more innocent time - there wasn't iPads...you know,

things like that.

We just made our own entertainment. We had the beach.

We lived on the beach - we had shorts and literally no shoes

from June to September.

And we were like berries.

You were - you always took a tan. I never took a tan, but he did.

Do you still enjoy living in the area?

-Oh, very much so.

-Very much so.

I've been lucky enough -

I was all over the world, I was in the Merchant Navy, still am.

And I still call Portrush my home. It's wonderful.

Well, boys, thank you very much indeed.

-Thank you, Gloria.

-Thank you.

-Thanks for showing us that today.

-It was lovely, I enjoyed it.

-Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Gobsmacked - just overwhelmed, I was overwhelmed, definitely.

It takes a lot for him to be overwhelmed.

What will you take away from today, having watched the old footage?

-What will you remember most?

-I will remember, first of all,

meeting lots of people that I haven't seen for years

and who knew my mum and dad so well,

it's lovely to be able to chat to them.

And just the fun that we used to have as children in Portstewart,

on the beach, innocent fun -

paddling in the rock pools, digging in the sand...brilliant fun.

-Life seemed a lot more simple then.

-It did indeed. It did indeed.

Well, I'm afraid that's where we have to leave it for today.

But you know, I was just reflecting on the series -

we have visited some really beautiful towns and villages,

magnificent castles, wonderful landscapes

and great beaches, like this one at Portstewart.

But as for the local filmmakers,

they've ignored all of that, and instead of that,

they've recorded digging sandcastles on the beach, donkey derbies,

those faltering first steps, birthday parties...

In other words, the really important things in life.

As for the series, I thank you very much indeed for your company,

and until the next time, from all of us, bye-bye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd