Saturday morning pictures were film shows put on in British
cinemas
A movie theater (American English), cinema (British English), or cinema hall (Indian English), also known as a movie house, picture house, the movies, the pictures, picture theater, the silver screen, the big screen, or simply theater is a ...
between the 1920s and 1970s for children. They were shown on Saturday mornings and the price was normally
6d (2½p). At their peak, nearly 2,000 British cinemas put on a Saturday children’s matinee show, but by 1978 this had dropped to 300.
Films shown included comedy classics, cowboy and adventure films, cartoons, ‘’
Zorro
Zorro (Spanish language, Spanish for 'fox') is a fictional character created in 1919 by American pulp magazine, pulp writer Johnston McCulley, appearing in works set in the Pueblo of Los Angeles in Alta California. He is typically portrayed a ...
’’, ‘’
Batman
Batman is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger, and debuted in Detective Comics 27, the 27th issue of the comic book ''Detective Comics'' on ...
’’ episodes and also films produced by the
Children's Film Foundation
The Children's Film Foundation (CFF) was a non-profit organisation which made films for children in the United Kingdom originally to be shown as part of childrens' Saturday morning matinée cinema programming. The films typically were about 55 ...
.
The programme often included community singing of songs such as
Do-re-mi
"Do-Re-Mi" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical ''The Sound of Music''. Each syllable of the musical solfège system appears in the song's lyrics, sung on the pitch it names. Rodgers was helped in its creation by long-time ...
, with a pointer tracing the lyrics on the screen to help the audience follow. The ABC chain promoted its “
Minors Matinees” as providing ‘’Good films, good fun and good fellowship”.
On 5 October 2013 the
Cinema Museum in
Kennington
Kennington is a district in south London, England. It is mainly within the London Borough of Lambeth, running along the boundary with the London Borough of Southwark, a boundary which can be discerned from the early medieval period between the ...
, London recreated a Saturday Morning Pictures show, with ticket prices between £3 and £5.
See also
*
Saturday-morning cartoon
"Saturday-morning cartoon" is a colloquial term for the original animated series programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the United States on the "Big Three" television networks. The genre's popularity had a br ...
References
Cinemas in the United Kingdom
{{UK-film-stub