BY JOHN FITZGERALD
The burning down of Callan’s Gaiety Cinema in 1964 was a mortal blow to the town.
Though television had begun to eat into audience figures, the old “Picture House” in Green Street still drew large attendances for its nightly and matinee showings. W. F. Egan built it in 1941. It was a concrete structure with an asbestos roof and a seating capacity for up to 500 patrons.
From day one, it provided a popular outlet for locals, an alternative to the pub, card playing, or story telling around the firesides.
One woman who had been a cinema buff almost from the day the Gaiety opened recalled for me what it meant to her and many of her friends:
“I was just a teenager the week the cinema opened its doors. There was great excitement and Green Street was full to overflowing with people lining up to get in. The big screen held us all under a spell.
“Whether it was romance, gangster films, or westerns that were showing, we loved the films. I liked the John Garfield movies. He always got the electric chair in the end, if he wasn’t shot or hanged. He was great.
“My father, Lord have mercy on him, loved the westerns. He would light his pipe and we would talk for hours with him about Roy Rodgers and John Wayne and their larger than life heroic adventures.
“When the cinema opened in Callan, there was a certain amount of confusion about the films. I remember one fellow, who was quite clever in other ways, wondering why John Wayne had ridden his horse over a waterfall two nights in a row.
“When he went to see the film for the second time, he expected that his cowboy hero couldn’t be so daft as to risk his life again. One of these days, he said, John Wayne will be a sorry man.”
The dream turned to a nightmare in 1964. A capacity crowd had enjoyed a film called Words and Music. But somebody, it is believed, dropped a cigarette end on one of the seats, though the origin of the fire is far from certain.
What we do know is that the blaze would have caused even more grievous damage to other buildings in Green Street but for the foresight of Maurice Noonan.
At 3.30 am the morning after its last film was shown, he was awakened by what he described as a “crackling noise”. Maurice, who lived just thirty yards from the cinema on the opposite side of the street, looked out the window of his upstairs bedroom and almost fainted with the shock.
He offered a vivid account to local newspaper correspondent Seamus O’ Brien of what he saw:
“The cinema was ablaze. For a few seconds I was rooted to the spot as the fire crept up the curtains on the back window of the stage end of the cinema. I rushed out in my stockings and raised the alarm, shouting Fire…Fire.
I alerted Liam Egan, son of the owner, who lives beside the cinema and ran up to the fire station; smashed the glass panel and sounded the siren and waited a few minutes until Fire Officer, John Cuddihy, who lives opposite the station, appeared.
“Being a former member of the brigade, I assisted Mr. Cuddihy with the fire equipment and in a matter of minutes the unit was at the cinema and we were joined by the other members of the brigade.
“By this time, however, the cinema was blazing, and the ceiling and roof timbers had already caught fire.”
Callan was devastated by the loss of its cinema, which was completely gutted in the worst fire in the town for more than thirty years. Thanks to Maurice’s quick thinking, a far greater disaster was averted.
Callan and Kilkenny fire brigades were able to confine the blaze to the cinema and prevent the flames spreading to adjoining buildings, including the Bank of Ireland premises.
On a note of black humour, two of the films due to be shown on the nights following the fire had the ominous titles: A Taste of Ashes and Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye.
One wonders if the Gaiety might have been tempting fate with such a line-up…
(Callan in Words and Pictures is available from Amazon)
