15/11/2024
If you are offended by a writer who seems to get a slight dig at a priest and admits his Dad smoked dope, don't read this article. It is unsuitable for your eyes, especially if like me, you come from Glasthule. Says who? The editor of the Sandycove and Glasthule Residents Association magazine, who thought it was a "great read" at first but then told me his his committee of 12, decided otherwise.
They also blocked me from the Sandycove and Glasthule Residents page, which is supposed to be public. It’s a Sandycove page
I was Ireland's first writer in residence, in Lucan Vocational School, in 1986, and I always told students to never be ashamed of where they came from and to write from that source. It strikes me as so funny that a group of 12 people, none of whom I know from Glasthule and who seem to come from Sandycove, the more priviliged local area, should try to silence me! Enjoy!
Memories of Two Cinemas and a Beat Club.
Every time I pass by the Spar shop in Glasthule, I am reminded of that building in three of its previous incarnations – the Astoria Cinema, Club Caroline, or the Forum Cinema. It must house countless thousands of memories for readers of this magazine.
In my own case, it is highly likely that I would not be writing this article or have written anything during my career as a journalist and author if I hadn't gone to the Astoria one afternoon when I was nine. The life-changing experience reminds me that it is too easy to say movies are an escape from reality. They can reshape reality and lead to self-actualisation. That sure happened to me when I saw Deadline Midnight.
During one seminal scene in this forgotten film noir movie set in a newspaper office, a City Editor, played by William Conrad, gave a rousing speech defending the core values of journalism. It concluded with him declaring that their newspaper “Gets good information to people who otherwise might not get that information.” I was hooked. I felt, ‘He makes being a journalist sound like being a Knight of the Round Table.’ I ran home to Eden Villas and told my folks, Phyllis and Joe Jackson, “I am going to be a journalist when I grow up!”
Better still, I saw that movie for free. My Dad knew Mr. Scanlon, Manager of the Astoria. I didn't have to pay to attend those screenings after school during the early 1960s. Not so on Saturday mornings, however, when hundreds of us children would eagerly hold onto the torn half of our ticket stub, hoping to win the raffle for a box of sweets. If you won, you had to walk down the aisle to the front of the cinema to get your prize. You were famous.
The Astoria was one of the greatest things about growing up in Glasthule as a child of my g-g-g-generation. I realised that this year when I began writing a memoir. The same is true of the fact that at precisely the same time I transitioned into my teens, the Astoria closed down and reopened as one of the first Beat Clubs in Dublin: Club Caroline. I still have a rough draft of my membership application card on which I added two years to my age to gain admittance to this site of afternoon teenage dances linked to the great Radio Caroline.
It was, in fact, designed to resemble the Mi Amigo ship from which the pirate radio station broadcast. This made it all even more exciting. The DJ, often Danny Hughes, was located on a stage in front of what had been the cinema screen; there was a lower deck dance area, an upper deck, a mast, and, best of all, booths in which couples could sit and kiss. More than once, I saw Christian Brothers arrive to haul students out of this "Den of inequity," as we were told it was, in school. God knows that made us run even faster to get to Club Caroline.
I often wonder what the Parish Priest in Glasthule, Father O' Sullivan, would have
said on the night later in the decade if he had walked past Club Caroline and seen me standing outside passionately kissing a nun who was responding in kind. I guess here I should hastily add that it was after a Fancy Dress Party, and she was not a real nun.
Yet there is no doubt that thousands of us teenagers had real fun inside, outside, and maybe behind Club Caroline. Best of all, it didn't attract only local kids from Glasthule, Sandycove, and Dun Laoghaire. They came from areas such as Dalkey, Foxrock, Killiney, and further afield, which was a social first for Glasthule and heaven if you were dating.
The Astoria and Club Caroline were so important to this kid’s life that I wrote about each in my diary, noting in 1965, ‘Tommy the Toreador was the last film shown in the Astoria’ and, in 1970, ‘The Astoria is set to reopen as a cinema called The Forum, I hear.’
My favourite memory from the latter period comes from 1971 and involves Father O ' Sullivan. He probably knew me best because I was in charge of Sodality for St. Brendan's Youth Club, in Beaufort. He must have been perplexed, to say the least after he heard a rumour that I intended to smoke dope when I went to see Woodstock at the Forum.
Worse still, he was told that I was trying to “induce a younger, local chap” to do the same.
So, he said to my Dad one night at our front door after he arrived, hoping, presumably, to save our souls from eternal damnation, or, as he might have seen it, from the inevitability of deepening addiction to heavier drugs. The latter, dubious a premise as it might have been, was commendable. However, something Father O'Sullivan said made it difficult for Dad and me not to laugh, though we didn't. He mispronounced the word, 'ma*****na.'
“I have been told by someone who is worried about them that they are planning to buy marriage-u-ana downstairs in Murray’s Record Centre and smoke it in the Forum.”
“Buy what, Father?”
“Marriage-u-ana, or ‘grass’ as I hear it is called, though God knows why.”
"Thank you for informing me. I will deal with Joseph my own way."
How did dad "deal" with me? He showed me his stash of hash, a drug I didn't know until then; he occasionally used "Listening to music." Talk about a hip Father. And I don't mean Father O'Sullivan. As it transpired, I was anti-drugs; the thought of getting stoned at Woodstock with that younger guy who I heard say he'd like to, was a momentary fancy, and it never happened. I went to see Woodstock in the Forum on my own, and while sitting there, I realised I didn't have to buy dope to enjoy it. The cinema was filled with the pungent aroma of people smoking dope. If I had checked I’m sure the walls would have been stoned.
Glasthule was a glorious place to grow up.
Joe Jackson’s memoir, East of Eden Villas, will be published in 2026.
