Theatre

Leicester Street, Melton Mowbray, 1913. Courtesy of the Record Office for Leicestershire, Leicester & Rutland.

Interviewer: Now I think you told me that the Palace wasn’t just a cinema, it was also sometimes a theatre wasn’t it?

Mr Brownlow: That’s right, yes, used to have these, what you call 'fit up' companies, stock companies, that put as many as two or three different plays on a week.

Interviewer: And you played for those?

Mr Brownlow: I played for those, yes when necessary, yes.

Interviewer: What sort of plays did they put on?

Mr Brownlow: All the old ones, ‘East Lynn’, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, ‘The Face at the Window’, ‘The Murder at […]’, ‘Maria Martin and the Red Barn’, all the old, the old dramas.

Interviewer: Because, in melodrama there was quite a lot of scope for colourful music and atmospheric music.

Mr Brownlow: Oh absolutely, yes, we loved it, especially when the villain comes on you know and we used to give him the whole works with the music, it was lovely, yes, we enjoyed that. And it was easy, such easy work that was, when they’d got a stock company on we probably only played in the whole night not above a quarter of an hour sort of thing.

Interviewer: Did you supply the music?

Mr Brownlow: Oh yes, yes, we did all that.

Interviewer: I presume there was a kind of a set piece of music for the villain and a set piece of music for the heroine was there, that sort of thing?

Mr Brownlow: Pretty well, pretty well, yes, usually pretty much the same. For the sad things, you know, when it was a bit of sad music, ‘Hearts and Flowers’ was the favourite one in those days. Strangely enough nobody ever got fed up with listening to ‘Hearts and Flowers’, used to love it didn’t they, didn’t bother them, must have heard it hundreds of times in a year because it was sort of the thing to play Hearts and Flowers if someone was on the death bed, something like that. Oh yes, gosh.

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