IT was a hushed and packed house last weekend in Witton Park as Michael Smith’s 90 minute documentary, Streets of Steel, had its world premiere in the village hall.
“Not since the halcyon days of the Cosy Cinema have we seen these scenes in the Park!” says Dale Daniel. “The only difference was that there was no stamping of feet like back in the day when the film snapped.”
Michael, 16, and a media student at Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College in Darlington, made the film about his home village’s history.
READ MORE: STREETS OF STEEL: YOUNG FILM-MAKER'S PREMIERE ENCOMPASSES 175 YEARS OF VILLAGE HISTORY
One of the stories Michael told was of Alice Simmonette (above), whose parents ran the Queen’s Head where she was born in 1884.
In 1897, when Sanger’s touring circus pitched its tent in the pit village as part of the annual flower show, Alice entered a cage with a lion in it and, with the lion watching on, sang a song, Break the News to Mother.
Alice’s grandson, Harry Plant, told the young film-maker that on the first night there was a canny crowd to see the circus but, as word went round of Alice’s bravery, on the next two nights there was standing room only, although whether people turned up to hear Alice’s beautiful singing or whether they were there to see if the lion might eat her is open to debate.
Alice practically ran away with the circus, and became a trapeze artist and singer. On her travels, she met and married fellow performer Harry Plant. They created an act of their own, calling themselves “the Two Plants” or “the Thistle and the Rose”, which, based from 1903 in the Queen’s Head, toured the country’s music hall theatres.
Alice, “the phenomenal lady vocalist”, even adopted Dimambro as her exotic-sounding stage name. Her inspiration must have come from the Dimambro family of Italian ice cream makers who had a shop in Gilesgate.
In 1905, Alice and Harry’s son, William Harry, was born in the Queen’s Head, and from the age of seven, he was on stage as part of the act. He was billed as “the smart kiddie” and he was an acrobat and horse rider.
The marriage between Alice and Harry broke up, and family legend has it that Alice travelled to America with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West rodeo show. She is said to have performed with Paul Robeson, the legendary black singer, for whom she may have written some songs.
Alice was clearly a remarkable woman: a suffragette, a tightrope walker and an accomplished pianist to boot! In later life, she remarried and settled in Yorkshire.
With such fabulous stories, it is little wonder that Michael’s film was such a success that after the standing ovation died down, there were calls for it to be turned into a DVD so people could watch it all over again.
“He pulled it off big time and kept the audience enthralled,” says Dale, the village historian and budding film critic. “I would like to praise the narrator, Tony Davis, who did a brilliant job and all the helpers in the village hall for supplying tea, coffee, snacks and popcorn.”
Watch this space for news about the DVD.
READ MORE: PARADISE REGAINED: AMAZING PICTURES OF WITTON PARK
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