AFTER a 44-year career in the cinema industry, John and Peter Douglas have seen some of the all-time movie greats.

Just don't ask them to sit through Star Wars or The Sound of Music ever again.

The twin brothers from Dumbarton, who both worked as projectionists for the J Arthur Rank Organisation from 1953, are a link with Glasgow cinema history that is long gone.

There is much they miss about the world they worked in, including the fabulous surroundings of the city's Odeon cinema, the best-paying outside of London's west end, but the 77-year-olds don't long to sit through some of the films.

Peter screened Julie Andrews hit The Sound of Music for a record-breaking two year and eight months.

"It's not my favourite film. I could do without it. It was the longest running film ever in Glasgow in the mid-1960s," he smiles.

"And when Star Wars arrived for the first time, it had this new optical Dolby sound system printed on the film. Unfortunately with the tracking of that Dolby sound, a light shone through the optics on the projector and onto the soundtrack so it had to be exactly correct.

"But we found that with the mass production of film printing, when they were bringing out hundreds of copies to be opened up at the same time, the quality of the film stock was a bit poor. It warped a little bit, which meant the film didn't run smoothly.

"So when you were in the auditorium listening to this wonderful soundtrack there were all sorts of variations where the music overrode the speech and you couldn't make out what people were saying.

"The number of copies of that film John and I sat through before we opened up to the public, before we got a good enough copy, drove us round the bend. We had to watch Star Wars over and over again."

By the time John and Peter retired in 1997 they had seen the heyday of Glasgow picture-going when the city was packed with cinemas where audiences queued round the block every night of the week to get in give way to diminishing audiences and the birth of the multiplex.

Back when they started their apprenticeships, the brothers worked with 20-minute reels of film that had to be dexterously changed or else they would incur the wrath of the audience.

Larger reels of film were replaced by digital screenings and in today's multiplexes the projectionist has all but disappeared, replaced by engineers who man several screens at a time.

"Because it is now computer files it is much more automated than in our day," explains John. "It is only in the last couple of years that the job we did for 44 years has disappeared.

"At Oscars time, Peter and I were talking about the fact that we have to rethink in this country our terminology for going to the cinema.

"We talk about seeing films but film has gone. I suppose we'll have to take over the Americanism of going to the movies."

These days John and Peter say they will only go to the cinema "kicking and screaming".

"Audiences have changed so much. When I go to the cinema now I get so irritated by all the noise," says Peter.

"People naturally chat to each other during the film. That can be quite annoying. In the old days you went to this dark hall to see a film and it was completely different from your own home but today you're so used to seeing films at home, getting up and going to make tea, talking to each other that has carried over into this dark hall."

The brothers, who grew up in Hyndland, remember going to the Ascot cinema in Anniesland in the 1940s to watch Roy Rodgers or Laurel and Hardy films.

As teenagers, so impressed were they by the cinema manager, they decided that was the career for them. First they had to take an apprenticeship and train as projectionists. When the time came to transfer to management training they preferred to stay in the projection room.

"We realised the manager couldn't make a lot of decisions; he couldn't say what films he was going to show or how he wanted his cinema run," says Peter.

John adds: "At the time we worked less hours that the manager and the salary wasn't much more than ours so we thought we'd stay where we were.

"We eventually ended up as joint chief projectionists at the Odeon in Glasgow, which was the cinema to be in."

After jobs at different cinemas around Glasgow, the brothers worked together at the Odeon from 1970 onwards, where John had been for the previous 10 years.

The grand old dame of Glasgow cinemas, the Renfield Street site housed an audience of 3000 with an orchestra pit and a cinema organ.

"That was the place all technical staff wanted to go and work in because it was such a wonderful cinema," remembers John.

As well as screening films, the cinema operated as a live music venue and John's job changed from projectionist to sound and lighting man for some of the biggest performers in the business.

Not just the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but Dusty Springfield, Ella Fitzgerald and Roy Orbison all played there.

"The projection staff manned the spotlights to light the stage. In those days these groups didn't bring their own sound engineers, they brought amplifiers for guitars but they relied on the cinema sound," explains John.

"We had 10 microphones and my job was to do the mixing of the sound, which was a wonderful job - with all these famous artists I would make or break them.

"The only thing that spoiled it was when we had the likes of the Beatles: the screaming of the girls from the moment they came on stage was very frustrating. Although you could hear the rhythm and the singing, because of the intensity of the screaming you just couldn't really make it out as it should be.

"The first time the Beatles came to the Odeon they didn't top the bill, I think it was Roy Orbison who was the star of the show. The Beatles finished the first half of the show. Of course next time they came back it was pure Beatlemania."

Meeting Prince Charles for a royal performance of The Girl in the Picture, starring John Gordon Sinclair was another highlight for the brothers.

They say the best part of the job was always seeing a full auditorium.

"You got that extra wonderful buzz when you knew people were flocking in to see a film," says Peter. "The audience reaction to Braveheart, for example, was wonderful."