Swalwell Memories 3
The Plaza and Empire programmes were advertised in the Blaydon Courier. This programme is from 1950 and note that the Plaza has replaced the Empire as the first cinema shown in the advert. On Sunday The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) is screened, with Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin, Kirk Douglas, (his first film), Lizabeth Scott and Judith Anderson in a drama with Stanwyck dominating weak husband Douglas, with a dark secret from her past revealing itself when childhood friend Heflin turns up.
On Monday Tuesday and Wednesday we have In the Good Old Summertime (1949). Judy Garland, Van Johnson,and Buster Keaton star in an MGM musical, in colour, in which Judy Garland falls in love with pen-pal Johnson. At the end of the week is the famous Ealing comedy Whisky Galore (1949), starring Basil Radford, Joan Greenwood, Gordon Jackson, James Robertson Justice, John Gregson, Bruce Seton and Duncan Macrae about the shipwreck of a cargo of whisky in the Hebridean island of Barra during the war. Meanwhile, the Empire has A Woman Destroyed 1947 (also known as Smash Up: The Story Of A Woman), on Sunday, a melodrama with Susan Hayward, Lee Bowman, Marsha Hunt and Eddie Albert. Singer Susan Hayward wrecks her career with her drinking while husband Lee Bowman, also a singer, succeeds.
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday has The Man in Black, a British picture from 1949 starring Betty Ann Davies, Shiela Burrell, Sid James and Valentine Dyall as the storyteller. Sid James, as Henry Clavering uses his yoga skills to feign death to trap his second wife (Betty Ann Davies), whom he suspects of trying to drive his daughter by his first marriage insane, to prevent her inheriting his money. Also on the bill is episode four of the popular serial Flash Gordon, starring Buster Crabbe in the title role and Charles Middleton as Ming the Merciless. Screening for the latter part of the week is The Mutineers with Jon Hall and George Reeves, a 1949 film involving gun-running, counterfeit money and mutiny at sea.