Please – can you help us ?
A small group of HS alumni are gathering recollections of various Drama and Music activities which were enjoyed by many participants at HS – not just actors or audiences, because many other people contributed too.
In addition to the plays etc enacted mainly by pupils, it may not be so widely known that the Staff put on various productions, mostly for their own amusement, but at least one of these ventures was made as an end-of-term entertainment for the Pupils; it was a 16mm silent film, with (as far as we can remember) piano accompaniment in the true 1920s style, and was titled: “One Track Mac”.
Despite the original film and the sound-track tape having been damaged/lost, someone, somehow created a VHS Tape copy of the film, and a copy of the taped version is currently held on a DVD. There may be other DVD copies, but we don’t know. If we could recreate a piano soundtrack in suitable style, it should be possible to combine it with the video, and make the 23 minute experience available more widely.
You can read here, copies of the description of the film, its making, the cast and other members of staff who played essential roles in the making of the film. These descriptions seem to have been written by Vic Hughes (Chemistry master), to accompany the creation of the DVD copies.
To give full credit to the staff behind the creation, slightly better copies of their images are pasted into the attached files.
NB
Have you checked recently the other HS Pages/Posts listed and hotlinked in the list at the top right of this page ? The titles don’t say everything, and new edits and new Posts are being added often.
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I definitely remember seeing this film. I can’t remember the occasion at which it was shown, but possibly in 1964 or 65. Of course by then some of the teachers featured were no longer there, but my abiding recollection is the tall figure of David Cregan in a black coat and a top hat with a kind of black netting attached to it and blowing in the wind. I’m sure they played the Death March for that bit, but I couldn’t swear to it. The other bit I remember is Mrs Mills tied to the railway line and the film running at a sort of keystone cops speed, like in the old silent films. In fact, didn’t it have captions interspersed with the action to make it like a silent film? I remember it was hilariously funny to see the teachers taking part in such antics. And I remember Mr Hughes as the policeman (people said that he was a Special Constable at weekends, not sure if that was true or not, but that he thus had access to the uniform).