Published: Thursday, 25th June, 2009 9:00am

The days when the Regal was packed with film-loving fans

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For many people living in Fermanagh in the 1960s, a night out at "the pictures" was undoubtedly a popular choice for an evening of unforgettable entertainment.

Because so few people had televisions in those days, cinema-goers travelled far and wide to catch a glimpse of the latest Hollywood siren and many enjoyed shouting at the screen to alert the good guy in the gangster film that the bad guy was "behind you!'

For a small, rural county, Fermanagh had a wide choice of cinemas at the time including the Adelphi in Irvinestown, the Astral in Lisnaskea and the Ritz and Regal Cinemas in Enniskillen.

The cinema provided top quality entertainment for those people eager to savour all the glamour and fantasy that Hollywood had to offer.

However in 1967, the Regal cinema on Townhall Street was closed after many years in operation.

And the job of closing the cinema was left to one jovial Derry man, who, on a trip to Enniskillen last week, told The Impartial Reporter of that emotional day in his career and of his "fond and wonderful" memories of the town he loved so well.

Kelvin Kerr, (67) from Buncrana Road in Derry, became manager of the Regal cinema in November 1966 after working many years as a relief manager in cinemas across Northern Ireland for well-known company entertainment company-the Rank Organisation.

The Rank Organisation, more commonly known as Rank Group Plc, was a British-owned company responsible for bringing thousands of epic feature films to the masses and its customers will remember Rank"s iconic boxer Bombardier Billy Wells striking a gong during its opening sequence.

'I worked for Rank for a number of years and worked in cinemas all across Northern Ireland before being permanently based at the Regal in Enniskillen. Before that I did not know the place very well but said, why not and took the job. Although, I remember they asked me to start on a particular day and I told them there was a big problem because the following week I was getting married, so they let me off for a week and I hired a green Ford Anglia car from Breen"s Garage and me and the wife headed for Dublin on our honeymoon,' he said.

When he returned, newly-married Kelvin moved his wife into a flat above the cinema (above what is now Fishworks) and began their new life in Enniskillen.

'We instantly fell in love with Enniskillen, it was an ideal place to settle down we thought. Our first Christmas together I remember we walked up to St. Michael"s Church for midnight mass and it was magical, a really unforgettable place,' he said.

During his nostalgic one-day trip, Kelvin visited Fermanagh Ulster Unionist Association, where the old cinema used to be.

'Where Fishworks is now, that was the cinema"s entrance and my flat was above and looked out onto Townhall Street. The upstairs of the Ulster Unionist hall was the balcony of the cinema and where Toytown is now, used to be the stalls.'

Reminiscing of his time running the Regal, Kelvin said when he first arrived to work at the Regal he was warned by the locals to be aware of the "ghost" that lurked behind the cinema.

'They used to tell me there was a ghost in the building and I thought they were keeping me going, until I was in my office late one night, which was at the back of the stalls, and it just felt a bit eerie like there was a "presence", so you can imagine I did a quick march up to the flat that night, I can tell you, I wonder if it"s still there?' he laughed.

Kelvin said he remembers the sincerity and warmth of the Fermanagh people and how much they enjoyed their films.

'I always had great craic with customers and employees, I used to work with the best girls, they really were great workers and they also made me and my wife feel very welcome. The locals were real cinema-goers too and I was very surprised to see ones coming the whole way from the south to enjoy a night at the pictures. This was particularly the case when I first screened the "Prince of Donegal" and I remember floods of Donegal people queuing up to see the film so it came as a big surprise to me when Rank decided to close its doors.'

When he was told the news Kelvin decided to reintroduce matinees into the Enniskillen cinema and give the children a chance to see epic movies.

'I was only in Enniskillen five months when they decided to close the cinema because at the time I think it was very expensive for them to deliver goods and film reels to Enniskillen from Belfast everyday so they pulled the pin. So before it closed, I decided to show three special matinee-viewings to the schools of a re-released film called "The Ten Commandments" with Charlton Heston. It was a biblical film, very educational so the teachers and parents I thought would have been interested and would have allowed the kids to go,' he said.

At the time, the decision to allow children access to the film was questioned at a Fermanagh Education Committee meeting with some officials concerned that the content may not be suitable for children.

In an extract from The Impartial Reporter in March 2, 1967, it was reported that the Committee agreed that the film was 'educational' and as one quoted in the meeting, 'there was a fair amount of biblical history in the film.'

He said the success of the film"s re-release broke all Rank attendance records. 'The kids couldn"t wait to get their hands on the sweets and I remember them asking me what they could get for 2d and I used to break chocolate bars, Fry"s Cream and divide them a piece between them. In the last week of the Regal, people from all over came to see "The Ten Commandments" and this broke all Rank attendance records and I remember getting a phone call from head office explaining that the large numbers even breached Rank protocol so you can imagine the frenzy the closure created at the time.'

But the closure of other cinemas across Northern Ireland would soon become a reality as the Troubles began to escalate across the province.

'Less and less people ventured out in the evenings to attend the cinema and there was also the fear of buildings being targeted by bombs,' said Kelvin and in the early seventies the Rank Organisation completely pulled out of Northern Ireland.

As his short stint as cinema manager in Fermanagh came to an end, Kelvin went on to become manager of a Rank cinema in Larne and believed that his job at that time 'was the best job in the world.'

'I loved it, the advert for Rank Cinema Manager used to read Do You Want to Feel Like James Bond? Because you had to wear a tuxedo every night and I thought why not? I loved meeting people and travelling to various towns across the country. But I was gutted when I closed the Regal in Enniskillen because me and the wife were settling into the place and it really broke her heart when she had to leave. But we held great memories here and it"s brilliant and emotional to see the whole place again and although the years have gone by, it still feels very much the place I called home almost 40 years ago.'