41. Blind Man's Bluff a way of getting into the bio-scope for niks

Playing six nights a week at the Grand Prix Night Club left us with time to kill during the day. A couple of afternoons were taken up rehearsing new material but that still meant we had a lot of spare time to fill. Mac, Lea and I found the perfect solution, the bio-scope. As there were an inordinate number of picture houses in and around Cape Town we could quite easily enjoy a different film every afternoon of the week. But here's the thing, the enjoyment didn't just come from actually watching the movie, no, at least half the fun came from trying to wangle our way in free...and during our time in Cape Town we came up with many a ruse to avoid paying but there is one that stands out - simple yet ingenious.

We arrived at the picture house on that particular afternoon armed with the essential props...sunglasses. Both Mac and Lea donned a pair.

We approached the ticket booth. I smiled at the cashier sitting behind the glass fronted panel as I passed my 50 cents into the money tray. “One ticket please”. 

 She looked confused. “One...? But there’s three of yous”.

 “My two friends never pay to get in”, I gave a condescending smile. “Never”.

“Why not? What’s so special about those two?”

I lent close to the glass panel which had a circle of holes drilled in it to speak through and whispered, “Those two, ma’am, are blind...they can’t see the screen but they can listen to the soundtrack...” I added, “Please don’t make a big deal out of it they find it extremely embarrassing”.

“Oh! ...Sorry, I didn't realise...No, no, of course...” She looked suitably chastened as she took my 50 cents and handed back the single ticket, plus two comps.

It had worked. Our simple ingenious ploy had worked to perfection and it continued to work at the same movie house on a further two occasions. 

However, as the late great showman P.T. Barnum once said, and he could have been talking to directly to us, “You can't fool all of the people all of the time”, and we certainly couldn't fool the picture house manager all of the time. I don’t know what aroused his suspicions but halfway through the trailer - before the Pathe News, cartoon and main feature had even started - he appeared out the darkness with two usherettes who trained their torch beams on Mac and Lea who were watching the movie and hence not wearing the sunglasses. Taken by surprise Lea held up his hand in front of his face to shade his eyes from the glare and without thinking called out, “Do you mind! I’m trying to...” realizing what he was about to say, he added, “...listen to the movie”. The slight pause was fatal. The game was over. We had been rumbled. We were escorted from the auditorium and told to never set foot in the movie house again.  

Although we tried our scheme out at a number of other cinemas none of them fell for it, I guessing the word must have got round. The days of Blind Man’s Bluff were over...we’d have to come up with something new.