G.H.Bell Britannic

G.H.Bell : "The Britannic days"

This page contains the original story of G.H. Bell

In the Spring of 1947 the Cunard-White Star ship Britannic had just finished converting from a troopship to her original function as a passenger Liner sailing between Southampton and New York.

I signed on as Cinema Operator while she was still in the repair dock in Liverpool.

She had two projection rooms, First Class and Tourist. Both equipped with two GB-N projectors, all four machines were fitted with automatic Kidde CO2 fire extinguishers. The light source for each of them was a 1,000watt incandescent bulb. There were no theatre auditoriums, the lounges were converted to that purpose as required.
First class Cinema Britannic The First Class lounge was about 3/4 the width of the ship with a ceiling two decks high, the length was probably about 80 feet. Two rows of support columns ran the length of the lounge, with the columns spaced about 20 feet apart and a spacing of about 12 feet between the two rows.
The 6 to 7 foot wide screen was located between the first two columns from the rear wall of the lounge. The screen, complete with masking, was lowered by a hand winch concealed in the decorative casing surrounding one of the two columns. When the screen was in position the bottom masking just touched the top of a cabinet faced with rare wood veneers the doors of which, when opened, revealed the accoustic fabric concealing the speaker system inside the cabinet. A light coloured sound transparent drape was suspended below the bottom masking to conceal the speaker system and cabinet.
Stewards would remove exisiting furniture from the theatre area and set out rows of folding chairs. The projection room, one deck up was about 50 feet away from the screen.
Before starting the show it was necessary to fold down the hinged decorative wood panels in front of the projection and observation ports. When the ports were not in use and all the panels pulled back into place it took a sharp eye to discern, from the lounge, that there was a projection room "behind that wall up there". Same thing with the screen when it was winched up into its hiding place between two sets of decorative drapery. And, of course, with the cabinet doors closed there was not even a hint that it contained a speaker system.
I am unable to remember what make of sound system was installed. Could have been British Accoustic or something similar and, of course, in that year it didn't contain a single transistor!

2-nd class Cinema, backscreen projection Towards the after end of the vessel was the Tourist Class Lounge which was much smaller and only one deck in height and the situation called for rear, rather than front, projection, The rear projection screen complete with top and bottom masking was a roll-up type secured to the ceiling and appropriately concealed when not in use. Side drapes and masking legs were suspended from ceiling tracks and drawn back into storage areas when not in use.

The sound pickoff of the GB-N differed from the usual impedance drum and projected slit.
Instead of the film motion past the pick off point being smoothed by the film being held in contact with an impedance drum attached to a flywheel and an accurately aligned slit of light focussed on the sound track, the film passed through a gate.
The gate was similar to a normal flat picture gate complete with tension runners but much shorter. The gate also had a circular aperture in the sound track area and a miniature projection lens.
A condenser concentrated the light from the exciter lamp onto the aperture and an enlarged image of that section of the sound track was projected on to a slit immediately in front of the photo-electric cell. The slit was physically adjustable for azimuth and small metal side masks were individually adjustable to prevent light spill beyond the edges of the track from reaching the photo cell.
2-nd class Cinema, with screen mounted
The lens to screen distance was very short, only about 6 to 8 feet, have been even less. The screen width was about 5 to 6 feet.
One thing I always had to keep in the top of my mind when working that projection room was that the film had to come off the feed reel in an anti-clockwise direction in order for the sound track edge to be on the inside rather than the outside.
From my side of the rear projection screen I would see the tiles reversed from right to left but the audience, on the other side, would see them displayed correctly. I eventually became quite adept at reading titles and credit crawls in reverse!
For the six months or so I was on that ship all the GB-N's performed very well and gave no trouble at all.
In addition to the sound gate which could be very easily reversed to accommodate the sound track being on the inside it had a framing (racking) method which I have not seen before, or since. It consisted of a pair of rollers, one for each edge of the film, which were located between the bottom of the gate and the intermittent sprocket. This assembly was mounted on a pivoting system which allowed the length of film between the aperture and intermittent sprocket to be varied. A simple gear method controlled the degree of pivot movement when the winged framing "knob" was rotated in the appropriate direction. The gears worked against a strong spring which held the pivot system rigidly in place when not being used for adjustment.
The closest approach to this I have seen is the Century (Westar) projector which moves the whole intermittent assembly in a vertical direction. In both cases shutter compensation is not required during framing as in the case of Simplex, Brenkert etc. where the whole intermittent movement is rotated around the sprocket axis.