By Mark Green

Last updated at 14:43, Friday, 09 March 2012

It comes as a bit of a shock to hear the guardian of a grand, 99-year-old cinema say that he’s not a film buff. Tom Rennie didn’t take on the job for the love of the silver screen and the romance of the movies.

Tom Rennie

He’s a bit too clear-sighted, level headed and long in the tooth for that sort of thinking.

But it’s more of a surprise to hear that he spent most of his working life in the savannah grasslands of Botswana and Uganda, helping farmers improve their crops and cattle.

Tom was 21 and had just finished agriculture college in 1964 when he landed a job helping cotton farmers in Uganda improve their businesses.

While there, he met Sylvia, who was teaching.

When his five-year contract ended, they returned to her home town of Huddersfield to marry, before Tom landed another job in Botswana.

Then when their children came along, the couple sent them to Keswick for their schooling.

Most other British ex-pats in Botswana sent their children to board at Keswick, so the Rennies followed suit.

Daughter Sandra is now an accident and emergency consultant in Australia, son Paul a designer for Formula 1 team Sauber in Switzerland and their other daughter Carol is a linguist who works with the director of Queen Mary’s College, London.

Tom says it wasn’t a huge wrench to send them away for schooling: “We are not possessive parents, we didn’t have any hang-ups about sending them to boarding school and it damaging their prospects.

“We thought it would be fun for them, and it was.

“Keswick looked after them in terms of morals, education, everything, we only saw them at holidays, three times a year.

“I can’t speak too highly of the way Keswick school educated them and brought them up.”

When his contract in Botswana ended in 1989, starting a new life in Keswick, close to their children, was the obvious move for the couple.

The 69-year-old officially took over the Keswick Alhambra this month.

He signed the deal because he needed a job and he wanted to prove that there was still life in the stately old lady.

He was sure that townsfolk and the tens of thousands of visitors still needed a cinema.

There were fears the St John’s Street cinema would be forced to close last December if no-one could be found to take over the lease from operator Alan Towers.

Tom became manager in 1991 but was among the staff made redundant last year when Mr Towers decided not to renew his lease on the cinema owned by the Graves family.

“I was made redundant on Friday, thought abut it on Saturday phoned to make my offer on Monday, met them on Wednesday and they snatched my arm off,” explains the man from Aberfeldy in his soft Highlands burr.

“Everything about it was an absolute no-brainer.

“Alan Towers had invested tens of thousands of pounds and put in new carpets and Dolby speakers and 3D projection, he had spared no expense but shut the door and walked away. So I’m walking into a little gem.”

He was helped by the outcry the Graves family prompted when they announced last year that they intended to sell the Alhambra’s sister cinema in Penrith to pub chain Wetherspoons.

A protest group quickly formed, backed by local MP Rory Stewart and the cinema was saved.

“I was surprised that the Penrith opposition was so well orchestrated, they got to the press and got the Graves family to reverse their plans,” says Tom at his home just a minute’s walk from the cinema. I think they wished they had never suggested it and they were paranoid about the same thing happening in Keswick.

“When Alan Towers said he was pulling out, they were very concerned.

“The object of this was to prove it is a viable proposition to operate a successful, family-run cinema.

“A young family man looking for £35,000 a year is going to be disappointed, but you can make a decent living.”

With 20 years of redundancy pay and no staff to retain, the sums added up for Tom.

As manager/owner, he employs someone to man the ticket sales and provide ice creams at the interval, while he also doubles up as projectionist and book-keeper and his wife Sylvia helps out.

Tom agreed a five-year lease to run the cinema. He works six nights a week for five hours at a time.

But you can tell has a deep affection for the square-built red brick building with its art deco interior.

It’s one of the few cinemas in the county that still has a curtain to swish across the screen and even a balcony!

It used to seat 600 people in the ‘tuppenny crush’ days of small seats and tiny aisles. Now it seats 246 maximum.

Built in 1913, the cinema opened the following year with the biblical epic Quo Vadis – a film where it is said one of the extras was actually eaten by a lion.

Although Tom still splices reels together to run 35mm films, the march of time and technology means he will switch to digital-only in October and will offer his 60-year-old projector to the town museum.

While he can understand the improvement that brings, he is not a fan of 3D.

He shakes his head when he hears that Cineworld in Glasgow is launching 4D cinema today – which means that your chair vibrates and moves, depending on what is happening on screen.

“We will not do that in Keswick,” he laughs.

“3D has had three, four or five flashes in the pan and this is the latest.

“There is a gee-whizz factor, but it does not appeal to older audiences, which is what we have here.

“We have had several 3D films here, but I can’t call them to mind,” he shrugs.

The type of film Alhambra-goers do like to see are like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel starring senior Brit stars Judy Dench, Bill Nighy, and Maggie Smith and currently showing.

“It is really Keswick’s cup of tea,” he beams, “It is Slumdog Millionaire, it is Four Weddings and a Funeral, it is Mamma Mia!

“We are having 70 per cent occupancy, compared to the usual 25 per cent.”

Ah yes, the audience. As technology advances ever-quicker, will there still be a demand for the cinema in 10 or 20 years?

“Our audience is probably 40 per cent visitors and 60 per cent locals with a high percentage of 60-plus people.

“Ten years ago, on Friday nights the stalls were the domain of youngsters from Keswick and I can remember getting cross with a few and throwing some out. That has changed and the cinema is no longer the cool place to be.

“But I think there is a future for the cinema because it is insular to sit and watch a DVD at home or download a film and watch it on a laptop on your sofa.

“It is a night out, you get people coming out in groups of four and five chatting about the film and sharing the experience, there is a bonhomie.

“Its strongest point is the conviviality of people going out for a night together.”

There has been a long and passionate campaign to revamp and reopen Carlisle’s last independent cinema The Lonsdale.

Supporters want to see it reborn as an arts centre, offering non-mainstream movies.

Tom isn’t sure it would work without offering blockbusters, adding: “It would be a brave decision to go alternative.”

The biggest movies at the Alhambra in recent years were Jurassic Park, which sold 9,700 tickets; Mamma Mia! (9,300), Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood (7,100); then The Full Monty, Chicken Run and Miss Potter starring Renee Zellwegger as Beatrix.

“We kept a print of that in the projection room for nine months,” says Tom, still amazed at the film’s draw.

“We showed it seven days a week, then five, then three days a week.”

He says his own favourite film is another of the top 10 grossers at the cinema: Dances With Wolves. “People often ask what is my favourite film.

“It is a difficult question, but it is probably that one.

“I don’t have a great love of cinema, it’s just another job,” he says.

“I would not claim to be a film buff, though it does rub off on you.

“Working here has not galvanised me into becoming a fanatic, there are two or three in the Keswick film club who have hundreds of DVDs and huge screens at home to watch films on.”

Although he has given no thought to his own 70th birthday next year, Tom plans to celebrate the Alhambra’s centenary in 2014 with a selection of specially-chosen films and some free screenings.

Although there are no prints available for the 1914 version of Quo Vadis, he will be screening the 1951 version of the epic starring Robert Taylor and Deborah Kerr and the modern classic Cinema Paradiso.

He grins: “It’s a film about an old git running an old cinema...”

First published at 14:10, Friday, 09 March 2012
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk