Young Winstone by Ray Winstone Read Free Book Online

doctors and nurses together (I think I peaked too soon as a ladies’ man). I was always the soldier who came back from the war injured and they had to kiss me better. That was where it all started for me as far as acting was concerned.
    Another place that helped incubate the bug was the Odeon, East Ham. There were a couple of local cinemas we used to go to, but this was the main one – it was just near the Boleyn Pub as you go around the West Ham football ground. Do a left onto the Barking road at the end of Green Street and you’re there, down by the pie and mash shop (which we never ate at, because my dad hated pie and mash almost as much as he hated the Salvation Army).
    It was a beautiful cinema which had opened just before the Second World War with a live show called Thank Evans starring Max Miller. You’d go in and the organ would come up from the floor and you’d all have a little sing-song. Then you’d get the B-movie before the main picture – you weren’t just in there for a couple of hours, it was the whole afternoon. The first film I ever went to there was 101 Dalmatians, which came out in 1961, so I must have been four.
    My mum took me, and by all accounts I got quite angry with Cruella de Vil, because she was bullying the doggies. Apparently I got out of my seat and ran down the aisle towards the screen waving my fists and shouting ‘Cruella de Vil, leave them puppies alone!’ I don’t actually remember doing this myself – the red mist must’ve really come down – but Mum told the story so many times I can’t forget that it happened.
    The slant she put on this incident was that I was so trappy as a kid that I ‘even wanted to have a fight with a cartoon’. With hindsight I suppose you could also take it as evidence of how willing I was to get caught up in a drama even then.
    Although my mum was the first person who ever took me to the cinema, my dad soon took over the reins. Obviously he had to rise very early to work on the markets. The upside of that was that he tended to be free in the afternoons, and every Wednesday from the age of five onwards he’d pick first me and later me and Laura up from Portway and take us to the pictures. There’s a few stories later on that’ll show Ray Winstone Senior’s harder side, but he was a great dad to us, and I might not be doing what I am now if he’d decided to go down the pub instead of taking his kids to the cinema every week.
    Of course, part of his motivation was that he fancied an afternoon kip, but if it was a good film – like 633 Squadron – he’d stay awake to watch it. I remember him falling asleep in Jason and the Argonauts, though, and by the time he’d woken up I’d watched it all the way through twice. We used to see some pretty adult films given how young I was, but the only one I ever remember us being turned away from was a war film called Hell is for Heroes with Steve McQueen and James Coburn in it. I think it was an X, which at the time meant sixteen and over, and I remember the ticket-seller (whoknew us) very politely telling my dad, ‘Sorry, Ray, your boy can’t come in.’ With hindsight, I can’t really fault the guy from the Odeon for that. It is quite a violent film – especially the bit where the guy gets shot and you see his glasses crack – and I was only five years old.
    Going to the movies wasn’t just a local thing. About once a month, usually on a Sunday afternoon, we’d go up the West End. Cinerama was a big draw then, and we’d go and see big, grown-up films like Lawrence of Arabia or Becket with O’Toole and Burton – which I loved, even though I was only seven when I first saw it.
    My nan and granddad took me to see How the West was Won in 70mm, and I had the poster up on my wall with a big map of America and pictures of Annie Oakley on it. Even though grand historical epics were the films I felt most strongly drawn to, I liked stuff that was meant for kids as well. Probably my favourite film of all