CINEMA is in a second golden age. Families are flocking to see the modern, multi-million dollar blockbusters at the multiplexes. Independent movie houses are also finding an audience. When City Screen opened last year, it became the first cinema in York city centre for 14 years.

Yet this big screen resurgence cannot compare to the original golden age. In the Thirties, Forties and Fifties, before television brought moving pictures into the living room, everyone went to the pictures, all the time.

And if you were a moviegoer in York at this time, chances are you will have known Ernest 'Johnnie' Johnson. Certainly he was remembered by Tom Allison. Now living in New Zealand, he wrote to Yesterday Once More with memories of his debut as a page boy at the Picture House in Coney Street in 1937, and he mentioned Mr Johnson.

Mr Allison's recollections were published three weeks ago, prompting Mr Johnson's widow Moyra to get in touch. Having worked at the Castle Museum "I learnt about squirreling everything away," she said. At her home is a marvellous collection of scrapbooks and photographs from her husband's days as a cinema manager.

After a time working as a shipping clerk in his home town of Goole, Mr Johnson got the job of manager of the Tower Cinema there.

Later he wrote to the big cinema corporations seeking a job with better prospects and landed a job in Middlesbrough with the Gaumont British group.

Another of the Gaumont's cinemas was The Picture House, where the York branch of Woolworths now stands. He was made manager there in 1936. In a memoir, Mr Johnson wrote how the 800-seat Picture House also boasted a restaurant and caf. "The head waitress was Mrs Booth - large and busty - who used to tell patrons off and terrified some of the patrons."

In the city centre, his cinema was in competition with the Tower, St George's Hall, the Electric, the Rialto and the Grand. "The opposition was pretty hectic and I knew that I had to be very good with promotions."

Mr Johnson proved to be a natural showman. He was always devising tie-ins and advertising opportunities. The 1937 editions of trade magazine Kinematograph Weekly chronicled some of his stunts.

May 20: The Green Pastures, a movie which told the story of the Old Testament through the eyes of a black cotton worker, was under fire for setting back the cause of black emancipation.

So Mr Johnson invited "the Watch and Licensing Committees of the town to attend a special preview of the film held a week prior to the play-date".

Only three later objected to its screening.

June 3: Two thousand samples of face powder were distributed by Mr Johnson to "lady patrons" of the Picture House, as a boost for tearjerker Sweet Aloes. The packets said: "It is the wish of every woman to be beautiful - see beautiful Kay Francis in 'Sweet Aloes' at the Picture House next week."

September 9: Race week at York was the ideal opportunity for Mr Johnson to promote Wings Of The Morning, Britain's first Technicolor film.

The Kinematograph Weekly reported: "He arranged for sandwich-board men to attend the racecourse and distributed throwaways made up in the form of racing tips".

Mr Johnson also set the weekly admission record for the Picture House, with the help of a hugely popular Shirley Temple film.

In his memoir, he wrote: "On the last Saturday, when we were going to run a special children's matinee, by some strange coincidence some of the staff came in early to start at 10.30am.

"But at 9.15 the police came to see me and said that there was such a large number of children that I had to start showing the film straight away.

"We started at around 9.30am and ran continuously through the day and, except for the odd cup of tea, none of the staff had any refreshment.

"I remember well because at 9pm, when we got the last of the queues in for the big picture, Mrs Clifford knocked on the glass partition in the cashier's desk and said, 'Mr Johnson, do you think I could go to the toilet before I cash up?'

"She had been there for nearly 12 hours without a break. I am told that the queues at their peak around 7.30pm were right down Coney Street to the Mansion House for the circle, and the stalls queue ended by Ouse Bridge. A day to be remembered."

Another successful promotion involved a military march through York, when soldiers garrisoned in the city came to watch the film The Gap, accompanied by the band of the 2nd Battalion, West Yorkshire Regiment.

Mr Johnson would also regularly meet the film stars, among them Derek Bond and Margot Grahame. "They used to do what we called PAs - personal appearances," Mrs Johnson recalled.

She said her husband always dressed formally for work. "The dinner jacket and tails was his uniform. He used to get them from a tailors that was opposite the Picture House.

"His shirts had stiff fronts and you used a rubber to keep them clean."

The couple met when Mrs Johnson, who comes from a long-standing York family and is a former Master of the Gilds of York, visited his cinema. It was, he wrote later, "the most important happening to me".

When war broke out Mr Johnson enlisted in the RAF as a wireless operator. During his time overseas, he managed to rig up mobile cinemas to entertain his fellow servicemen, using wireless operator vans as projection rooms.

After he was demobbed, he was made manager of St George's Hall cinema, in Castlegate, York. Among his promotions there was one for Brief Encounter: he set up a special display advertising the film in travel agent Thomas Cook's window, featuring railway ephemera and the slogan: "To make your holiday a signal success: book through Cook's".

Later he moved on to a Leeds cinema. "When he was at the Majestic in Leeds, he had a flag flying, like the Queen. He had the doorman take it down when he left the building," smiled Mrs Johnson.

Eventually, however, the picture palaces began to lose their pulling power and bingo started taking over. Life was never quite the same for Johnnie Johnson. "Cinemas were his lifeblood," Mrs Johnson said. "He was very happy in cinemas."