THE glimpse that a reader's 1950s picture provided recently of Blackburn's old Cinema Royal brought memories reeling back for 80-year-old Mrs Win Nicholson, of Darwen -- of the time when she was one of its first usherettes.

It meant unsocial hours and late nights, six days a week -- all for the grand wage of 22s 6d (£1.12). But work at the new cinema was what hundreds sought in job-starved 1938 as it was about to open.

For when 16-year-old Win took half-an-hour off from her shop assistant's job at Cowell's Candy Store in King Street in order to attend the interviews advertised as taking place between 5pm and 6pm one evening at Blackburn's White Bull Hotel for situations at the Royal, she found a queue of other hopefuls, two and three deep stretching a good 150 yards.

"It went from the White Bull's entrance all the way up Church Street as far as Darwen Street," she recalls.

"There were quite a lot of jobs going. They wanted commissionaires, cashiers, usherettes, page boys, "chocolate girls," cleaners, firemen, chiefs, waitresses and kitchen hands as well as projectionists."

Having previously been a "chocolate girl" at Blackburn's Grand Theatre, selling sweets from tray before the show and during the interval, Win -- then Miss Winifred Fitzpatrick -- believed she was in with a chance of being hired. But when she saw the length of the queue, she soon realised that she would not even reach the interviews in the half-hour she had begged off work at tea-time if she joined the end of the queue.

So, she breezed towards the White Bull's revolving doors -- only to be dragged back by angry people at the queue's head. But she protested that she knew nothing of the interviews and was only there to deliver a message -- and got into the hotel. There, following a maid taking tea to the directors of the company that had completely rebuilt the town's old Theatre Royal in Ainsworth Street as a modern cinema, Win sought out the interviewers.

"I knocked on the door, went in and asked if there was a chance of a job. I told them I had only got half an hour off work, but would join the queue if there was a chance, but wouldn't if they told me I would be wasting my time," she recalls. "One of the directors replied: 'There's a job for you -- for your cheek!'."

Win never got back to the sweet shop that night though her finishing time there was 9pm but ended up having to wait until the interviews were completed to be measured along with other the successful candidates for their uniforms -- a task that went on until 10.30pm, leaving her terrified of getting the sack at Cowell's and being without work or wages in the month-long interval before the Royal opened. Fortunately, her employer was understanding.

"The usherette's uniforms were beautiful -- pale green with a silver trim. We also wore forage caps and apple green shoes. But, unlike at the Grand, where trousers were allowed, there was a dresses-only rule for the girls," says Win.

She remembers that the first film shown at the new 1,600-seat cinema was the musical 'The Firefly,' starring Jeanette MacDonald. But Blackburn's picture-goers were forced to wait an extra week -- until May 23, 1938 -- for the Royal to open due, its owners announced, to the "non-arrival of certain electrical equipment."

Admission charges ranged from 6d (2p) to 1s 6d (7p) and in addition to a caf under the balcony with room for 200 -- and "a series of alcoves that afford delightful privacy for a certain number of tables" -- another special facility was that several of the seats in the cinema were fitted with "the latest Western Electric deaf aids run direct from the sound system."

The Royal's rival in the town's 'super-cinema' league, the 2,000-seater Rialto, which opened in nearby Penny Street at the end of 1931, also advertised free earphones for the deaf and it boasted a feature that the Royal lacked -- a giant organ. A large one with an illuminated console had been in the plans for the Royal when its transformation was announced in 1937, six years after its switch from live theatre to films, but finding space for it was too big a problem. Win heard plenty of the Rialto's organ as she later went to work there, also as an usherette, after quitting at the Royal when the manager threatened to withhold her wages for working Monday to Friday if she failed to turn in on the Saturday -- the day when the staff were paid -- of the week in question, even though she was due that night to catch a boat for a holiday in Ireland.

The Rialto's organ fell silent in 1950 when it was decided that audiences no longer wanted it or the singsongs it used to accompany and in 1964 -- seven years after the cinema became The Odeon -- it was removed altogether and sold to a collector.

But Win remembers how popular the organ and community singing were back in her day there. "It was played for about a quarter of an hour during the interval and the patrons really enjoyed it and all joined in the songs," she says. She also remembers that some of the numbers -- whose lyrics were projected on to the cinema's giant screen -- were parodies of well-known songs, with the words altered to promote such things as recruitment to the forces as war with Germany loomed and sales at stores in Blackburn.

Win is pictured in this 1939 group of the Rialto's staff, second left in the back row. The cinema's usherettes and page boys are distinguished by their pill-box hats whereas the girls who worked in the box-office have different headwear.

The uniforms, recalls Win, of Sandringham Road, Darwen, were in an attractive blue with a gold trim -- and that their smartness had to be matched by that of their wearers' personal appearance.

"We were all lined up and inspected by the manager before we went on duty -- our fingernails were examined, our hair was checked to see that I did not hang over the collar and our stockings were checked to see that their seams were straight," she says. "People might find that extraordinary now, but it was like everything else in those days -- people took pride in themselves and their work."

Among the Rialto's other rules were that the female staff had all to be single that its senior commissionaire, seen here far right next to the cinema's fireman, was addressed as "Sergeant."

At the centre of the group in white-tie and formal dress is the Rialto's manager, John Pilkington, better known, says Win, as "JP" Next to him is the organist, Harold Titherington, whose musical talents were also enjoyed by worshippers at St Jude's Church in Blackburn where he was organist and choirmaster.