As a small boy, the highlight of my week was a trip to the local cinema. The building was little more than a block from the flats where I grew up. Here, every Saturday afternoon a matinee affectionately called ‘The Threepenny Rush’ took place.

It wasn’t a situation to be in if you were faint-hearted, with lots of pushing and jostling for places. Among about two hundred urchin boys and girls, we would wait patiently for the doors to open. No sooner did they do so, than the rush would commence for the ticket office. Eddie the Usher, tried his best to keep us in line but it was a battle, he fought in vain.

With entry gained, the scramble began down the slanted floor to the wooden seats on the right, which were known to one and all as ‘the woodeners’. They were slippery and shiny and very difficult to sit still in. You normally had to brace your feet on the seat in front to remain comfortable.

The building opened its doors for the first time in the 1850s and was called ‘The Ancient Concert Rooms’. It closed its doors in 1885 and for almost a decade it became a gasworks. This company later amalgamated with the Dublin Gas Company and moved lock, stock and barrel to their new quarters in Macken/Pearse Street.

In 1904, John McCormack, years later the world-renowned Irish tenor, topped the bill here in a benefit concert for a friend to help him out of the many debts he was continually in. The poor friend who sang that night was James Joyce. Rumour had it that McCormack paid for Joyce’s entrance fee the following year.

Joyce had a light tenor voice that many found pleasing and those in the know predicted that he would walk away with the gold medal of 1904. He sailed effortlessly through the heats and the gold medal was within his grasp.

The Italian judge was so impressed with him that he requested an encore. The judge’s favourite musical piece was then handed to the bemused singer.

Joyce could sight read music easily but he was very vain and did not wear his glasses that day. The composition was too difficult to read. Had they told him what the composition was he would have had no difficulty singing the piece.

Joyce instead handed the music sheet back to a bemused judge and then walked calmly from the stage. A special bronze medal was then presented to him. According to Oliver St. John Gogarty in his memoirs, Joyce threw the medal into the Liffey one night crossing the Ha’penny Bridge, as they were returning home from ‘Monto’. Before he threw it away he muttered: “Sure you wouldn’t get two bob for that in a pawn shop”.

Critics of the day were not too kind on Joyce’s performance after the concert. In a conversation with McCormack, the famous singer consoled him. “Which would you rather be, the poor man’s John McCormack or the first James Joyce? Do what you do best lad, write”.

An afternoon matinee at the Palace consisted of a ‘B’ picture, sometimes a gangster film starring James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart of Edward G. Robinson. These were among some of our favourites. There might be a cowbow flick with the likes of Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Randolph Scott or Hopalong Cassidy.

My own particular favourite movies were anything with Errol Flynn. His swashbuckling has never been equaled, even to this day. Moviemakers may use special effects to make their films seem more gritty and realistic, yet they bear little comparison to those I enjoyed as a boy.

The Palace was on the thoroughfare once named Brunswick and now called Pearse Street. The building was left derelict for many years. It is now undergoing remedial surgery and what will eventually emerge is a little less certain until the present scaffolding is removed.

The Palace changed its name a few times down through the years: Ancient Concert Rooms, Forum, Embassy and most recently the Academy but it will always be the Palace to those who still lovingly remember it. Somewhere within its tumbling walls the sound of childish laughter, cries of ‘look behind you’ and sentimental tears must still resonate. For those young at heart who may fondly recall the rare old Palace, it will not be forgotten, at least, never in my lifetime.