The Boy Who Sneaked into the Pictures

An inheritance of imagination

I have an old book, its corners worn, its spine a little tired and its pages softened by the passing of nearly ninety years.

It is the Picture Show Annual of 1939. Inside, Greta Garbo gazes wistfully into the distance, Bette Davis looks knowingly towards the camera, and Leslie Howard smiles out from a world that was about to change forever.

Just four years later, on 1 June 1943, Howard would lose his life when the civilian aircraft carrying him from Lisbon to Britain was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay. All seventeen people on board were killed. A tragic reminder of how the glamour of the silver screen existed alongside the harsh realities of a world at war.

The book belonged to my father.

Born in 1934, he grew up in an age when going to the pictures was something magical. He would tell me how he sneaked into the local picture house with his big sister, slipping into the darkness to be transported into another world.

I imagine him there, a small boy sitting wide-eyed beneath the flickering light, captivated by the stories unfolding on the screen. Outside, the world was changing. Inside, for an hour or two, anything was possible.

He never lost his love of cinema. And he never parted with that annual.

As a teenager, I discovered the book for myself. I was fascinated by the photographs of the great Hollywood stars, their expressive faces, elegant clothes and dramatic lighting. I would spend hours copying their portraits in pencil, studying the shadows and contours, trying to capture something of their extraordinary glamour.

Without realising it, I was learning to look at art.

Years passed. The stars grew old, picture houses closed, and the world moved on. Yet the book remained, quietly connecting two generations through a shared fascination with images and imagination.

A few years before he died, my Pa gave it to me.

I was establishing my own art gallery and he wanted to hand it over for luck. He thought I might enjoy sharing the book with visitors, allowing them to experience something of the old-school glamour of the flicks.

It was such a simple, thoughtful gesture. A book that had entertained him as a boy, inspired me as a teenager, and might now bring pleasure to people neither of us had ever met.

I think about that whenever I turn its pages.

Art, music and cinema have always shared an extraordinary ability to transport us beyond the ordinary. They invite us into other worlds, stir our emotions and create memories that can last a lifetime.

Perhaps that is what my father understood when he handed me his treasured annual.

Today, surrounded by paintings, music and conversation, I can imagine him smiling at the thought of his old book finding a place among it all.

I am its custodian now.

But more than that, I am continuing something he began all those years ago, when a small boy sneaked into the darkness of a picture house and discovered the magic of the silver screen.

The lights may have come up, but the magic never really left us.

Sara McKee FRSA