David Parr fell in love with the flickering lights through the cigarette smoke in his local cinema
22:34, 15 May 2026Updated 22:41, 15 May 2026
David Parr has been a projectionist for over five decades (Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
While most children are glued to the screen when they’re at the cinema, a young David Parr found himself more interested in what was going on behind him. Intrigued by the bright light flickering through the cigarette smoke, the then 10-year-old knew he wanted to be a projectionist.
Now 73, David is one of Merseyside’s last remaining film projectionists. And having done the job for more then 50 years, says he plans to “die” doing it. David told the ECHO: “I still enjoy it, you don’t treat it as work at all it’s just something you enjoy doing. It’s very hard to explain, it’s in your blood. I mean it’s my ambition to die on the job, if the opportunity arises. But, I’ll keep going while I can physically do it and I’m mentally aware.”
After his interest had been piqued a few years earlier, by the time he was 13, David, who lives in Walton, finally got the moment that he had been waiting for.
He said: “I used to pester the projectionists to go up to the projection room and they let me in, so I began to get even more hooked then. [It was] absolutely fascinating, you had your two projectors with your changeovers, the room was dark, it didn’t shine in the auditorium. It was a very interesting technical thing that that you don’t have anymore.”
David is one of the last to do the job in Liverpool(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
Two years later, his mum saw an advert in the Liverpool ECHO. He said: “My mother showed me an ad in the ECHO for a projectionist’s job and I went down and there was a couple of others there waiting, but they went on to other cinemas as far as I know.”
After successfully landing the job at Tatler News Theatre on Church Street in 1969, he later worked in the Classic cinema in Allerton in the early 1970s and for the chain’s location in Hoylake as well as the Albany cinema in Maghull.
After working at various cinemas across Merseyside, he has been behind the projector at Woolton Picture House since 2003.
In recent years, most cinemas have moved to digital models meaning the intricate job projectionists once did no longer exists in the same way.
David has been a projectionist at Woolton Cinema since 2003(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
In fitting with many of the traditional cinema’s of that era, the Woolton Picture House’s projection room is totally self contained, fitted with its own bathroom and other facilities, projectionists would usually spend their duration of the shift in there.
David said: “I’d probably start at 10 o’clock in the morning, we’d mop the projection room floor, clean all the brasses on the projectors, clean the mirrors in the arc lamps, wipe down the projector inside and clean the sprockets with a toothbrush to get all the debris out”
However, the real pressure came when guests started pouring in. He said: “A proper projectionist’s job is all about presentation, timing the music, timing the curtains and everything else that goes with it.”
Dave hopes to do the job for the rest of his life(Image: Andrew Teebay Liverpool Echo)
He added: “The film could snap, you could have what they call a rack which is a line across the film where it’s not been put in the projector in the proper place, you could have a bulb fail, you could have the lights failing and things like that.”
Even though he has been doing the job for over five decades, he said that he still gets the same buzz every time he sees people leave a screening happy.
He said: “You don’t get any applause up in the projection box but you you get your applause through people laughing at the film and going out smiling, that’s where most of the enjoyment comes from watching people being happy.
“I watch people coming in now who were kids when I was showing films to them as children, they’re adults now and they’ve they’re bringing their own children in now.”