Cinemas - memories

[Stephen Pickard]

In the early 60's I lived near Southend-on-Sea. They had a great variety of cinemas.
1) Garons. This was a tiny cinema that only charged a shilling a seat and ran second-run films
2)Essoldo. This cinema was located down the end of an alley way in the high street and ran mostly 50's British and American horror/science-fiction 'X' films.
3) Odeon. This was ofcourse the Rank Organisation's cinema that ran first run films.
4) Ritz. This was located on the top of Pier Hill. This cinema used to run films that the Odeon didn't run when a film went into a second or third week.
5)ABC (Rivoli) This cinema was located in Alexandra Street and ran first-run releases.

Between 1964 and '66 I worked at the Odeon as a projectionist. It was a lovely theatre. Had 2200 seats. We did live shows as well as films. The longest running was "Goldinger". It ran for 5 weeks. I projected it over one hundred times! It ran four times a day.
We screened "Help" for a week starting in the afternoon of the same day as the World Premiere at the London Pavilion. I projected the first ever public performance.
Anybody else live in Southend at this time and care to share their experiences?

[Freddy]

Hello Stephen,
Nice one but wonder what they are now?
Was Southend on Sea featured in any films, around that time. Memories of film set in southern seaside towns sugggest there could have been a couple.
I suppose the holiday makers went to see the films in the afternoon if the weather was bad ...so busy days. Looking at the choice of picture house makes you realise how tv has changed peoples lifes, and of course when you see some of the trash now showing you have to ask would people pay to see reality tv, makeover tv etc. in the cinema.
On a lighter note one of the city centre cinemas in Liverpool was converted to a church, one of my friends mums who was a cleaner there said that people would put their shopping down to pray and some of the groceries would roll out of the bags down to the front where the old screen was. Any food found would be given to the poor.
regards
Freddy

[Stephen Pickard]

Hello Freddy. According to www.imdb.com there are 10 titles listed as having been filmed in the Southend area, two of which I contributed. One was "Goldinger" which was shot at the airport. If you study the scene closely Bond studies his electronic map in the Aston Martin and you can see Southend-on-Sea at the bottom!

[Stephen Pickard]

That should have read "GoldFinger", not "Goldinger"!!

[Pam1927]

smudge: Late last year they demolished a big one on the Narborough Road, Leicester. As they tore down the drop down walls which had gone in for tripling in the 70s, you could see behind it all the original and unfaded Art Deco bits. Tragic SMUDGE

Demolishing any Art Deco building should be a criminal offence... and if it's an Art Deco cinema, it should be a hanging matter!!! :mad:

[Jim]

Sounds like the old Fosse Cinema, closed long ago as a cinema and turned into a bingo hall! Couldn't believe it when they started knocking it down as it was a 1930s style building. Mind you, some little a******s started a fire in it, so I suppose there wasn't the money to restore it.

There is still the frontage of a cinema in High Street, Leicester with the words in 1900s style 'Electric Theatre'; in the 60s it used to run non-stop cartoons and was called 'The Cameo'.

Perhaps 'they' thought we ought to have something to make us smile, after what our so-called 'Town Planners' did to the centre of the city!

The Colluseum; the Karlton Kinema; the Regal; the City Cinema; the Picture House; the Floral Hall, where you came out with more than you went in with; The Belgrave Cinema; the Savoy; The Odeon with, organist coming up in front at the bottom of the screen; The Roxy; the Star, I could go on.... all gone now. Some of these buildings were works of art; others weren't, but they are all missed.

frown

[David Challinor]

Anyone care to join me in nostalgia..what was your childhood cinema/your memories? I grew up in Birkenhead in the late 1960s/70s...the town once had 28 cinemas but by the time I was watching my first film - Disney's 1967 animation The Jungle Book - this had dwindled to a handful. However, I have vivid memories of the Plaza on Borough Road (especially its blood red drapes at the end of the Robert Shaw Custer film of 1968!), the ABC down in town where I saw my favourite film The Elephant Man when I was 16, and the Classic where I saw Hope & Glory in 1987 before it turned into a carpet shop! Across the water in Liverpool I remember seeing Towering Inferno at the ABC, and queuing up with my nieces and many others on xmas eve 1984 to see Ghostbusters only to be told by passers by the cinema wasn't going to open!

[Bob M.]

The mid sixties in Bedford saw The Plaza, The Century, The Picturedrome and The Granada. My first film was Pinnochio at the Picturedrome when I was about ten. I remember the smell vividly, the building was right next to the river and it smelt of damp, like a house that had not been lived in for many years. The Granada was the poshest cinema in town with its grand staicase sweeping up to the second floor, and it had a Wurlitzer organ that appeared from the depths of I don't know where with our insurance man playing it! My parents would give us kids 2/6 each to catch a bus into town on a Saturday morning to go to the Saturday morning matinee. We were aged between eight and twelve, can't see anybody doing that today with there kids. The outside of The Granada was a stately affair, with oppulant wooden picture frames with stills of this weeks film on one side, and next weeks on the other.Big wooden doors with perfectly clean glass in the frames and just inside the doors was the ice cream shop. We thought it fantastic when they started to sell hot dogs! My clearest memory is of going to see Born Free with my mum. We had the best seats in the house and I got very upset when my mum started to cry at the film. That was the only time I recall my mum going to the "flicks".
Whenever I see the film or hear the theme song it brings a lump to my throat the size of a monkeys fist. I took my first girlfriend to the Granada to see The Towering Inferno, and I took my own children to see Teenage Mutant whatever they were! The Granada has gone now to make way for a Lidl supermarket. The other cinemas have all gone as well and we have got a multiscreen complex out of town run by teenagers who don't seem to be bothered, or can't be bothered or something, but going to the pictures is not the same in the mutiscreen as it was in The Granada.
C.U. full of nostalgia...
BobM.

[Ascoyne D'Ascoyne]

My childhood memories go back to the cinemas of the early 1950,s. The regulars (my mother was a cinema addict and we used to go to the pictures 4-5 times a week) were the Gaumont, the Odeon, the Granada, the Capitol and the Premier, all in East London.
The foyers always seemed to have a certain hard-to-define smell about them which was not unpleasant. I think it must have been the cleaning materials they used. People then didn't always make an effort to arrive for the start of the programme and I can still remember the enticing sound of the dusky-voiced actresses permeating out into the foyer from the auditorium as the usher was tearing the tickets.
Other memories include the cinema cat which used to walk around the circle at the Capitol and used, now and again, to choose a lap into which it would snuggle (apparently it fell from the balcony on one occasion on to some astonished patron sitting downstairs in the cheaper seats!).
I think it was also the Capitol which used to sell Eldorado ice cream --absolutely foul!

[Gibbie]

David Challinor: Anyone care to join me in nostalgia..what was your childhood cinema/your memories? I grew up in Birkenhead in the late 1960s/70s...the town once had 28 cinemas but by the time I was watching my first film - Disney's 1967 animation The Jungle Book - this had dwindled to a handful. However, I have vivid memories of the Plaza on Borough Road (especially its blood red drapes at the end of the Robert Shaw Custer film of 1968!), the ABC down in town where I saw my favourite film The Elephant Man when I was 16, and the Classic where I saw Hope & Glory in 1987 before it turned into a carpet shop! Across the water in Liverpool I remember seeing Towering Inferno at the ABC, and queuing up with my nieces and many others on xmas eve 1984 to see Ghostbusters only to be told by passers by the cinema wasn't going to open!

David,

Freddy took us down memory lane with Old cinemas thread and he's Liverpool stock. In those days, one had to go to the grand old cinemas to see Special feature films or certain big movies in the states. My father took me to Chicago to see Jungle Book as a child. In those days, folks dressed up when they went downtown - no shorts and t shirts MO (modus operandi). The city crawled with sailors in white uniforms (Vietnam days and also Chicago was a major navy outpost). We did a lot of singing that day. In the late-60s, there were still those deco and chrome places that people have been fond of memorializing for so long. It would be in the following year, in Chicago, when all havoc would break loose and from then on leave a nervous tension downtown. Since the mid-90s, there has been a downtown renaisance, but it's not the same. BTW, if you ever make it to Chicago, there are still some old theatres to catch the old cinema feeling or history:

* Town Theatre (Highland, IN SW suburbs from Chicago), near the town where I grew up, this theater is owned and operated by a couple and they serve free refreshments at intermission. A favorite of my parents.

* Chicago Theater - Probably one of the grandest theaters built. It is the jewel of Chicagoland. Famed for live performances and single screen.

* Music Box Theatre? - This is popular and near Wrigley Field (Cubs baseball team). Had some good dates there. New and old films. Built in 29 and has a music hall feel to it. BTW, the Third Man is playing on the weekend matinee, this weekend.

* Pickwick in Park Ridge (north and west side) is a grand old Art Deco and is probably the best kept one in Chicago area. The original art deco theater was built in 1928 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.

* The Biograph - It has been updated and is a bit run down. This is where Dillenger was shot by the FBI.

* Artist's Cafe - And, don't forget to finish your tour with a visit to the old Artist's Cafe on Michigan Avenue. My father and I used to hang out there when we worked/studied downtown. There was a nice little old theater in the building - Fine Art's Theater (Beaux Art style), but it closed in 2000.

There are some other old treasures, but you will find them in surrounding towns like Winnetka and Elhurst.

Indianapolis -

* Circle Theater - In Indianapolis, the only grand old theatre left is the Circle, downtown. Built in 1916, it no longer shows films, and is the home to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. It was one of the first movie theaters outside of New York, made for films. It is now called the Hilbert Circle Theatre.

* United Artists Circle Center 9 - The grandest multiplex downtown. Has a grand marquee.



* IMAX - The big 3D experience.

* Hollywood Bar & Filmworks - For a dinner and a movie all in one.

[ollie]

My first cinematic experience was also The Jungle book(must be an age thing)at The Danilo,in a place called brierley hill,we also had The Plaza Dudley,The Odeon Dudley,The Abc stourbridge,The forum Cradley heath(locally known as the flea pit)the classic Quinton,i won tickets in a competion to see Jaws on day of release at the Gaumont new street B/ham!(seemed to take forever on the bus)
When i used to go on holiday to Blackpool, i always used to go to that little cinema in the arcade near yates wine lodge(another flea pit!)there was an Abc where they also had live shows,and the grander Odeon forgot the street name?
The sad fact now is i NEVER go to the flicks,not that there's much to go for,it's just intolerable as most of you know,one day i'll get down that london and go to the NFT.
One last thing a little game i used to play was to try and get in to the AA (14)Films under age and it felt like a real victory when it worked,also the old trick with friends one payed,opened the fire exit door and let the others in,lol we got caught a few times though.
"Ah nostalgia,it aint what it used to be."
cheers Ollie.

[MrDrakesDuck]

have vivid memories of the Plaza on Borough Road

Is that the one near the college and 'Glenda Jackson Theatre', thats still standing as a bingo hall?

[Freddy]

Lovely letter Gibbie,
those Chicago cinemas equal to anything we have got and more important they seem to have lasted far better than ours. The common theme is the grand architecture on both sides of the Atlantic, what caused it? was it private enterprise and ambition, a love of theatre and the realisation that this was something special?
In Liverpool the waterfront was built in the early 1900s . . . Liver Building, Cunard Building, India building. All similar in grandness and craftsmanship and all still with us.

Perhaps you kept cinemas because you didn't have the sixties new world order of architecture that came to blight and destroy wonderful buildings.
Finally Gibbie why and what were you singing?
best wishes
Freddy

[ollie]

Architecture is something i've got interested in over the last few years,i wonder if some of it is due to the fact that some cinema's where structured in a kind of (exteriorally) art deco(or is that moderne) frank lloyd wright style.smooth,turrets, curves balcony's with rails,kind of down town miami.
(closest ive been to miami is, miami vice,)lol
cheers Ollie. wink

[Gibbie]

Freddy: Lovely letter Gibbie, those Chicago cinemas equal to anything we have got and more important they seem to have lasted far better than ours. The common theme is the grand architecture on both sides of the Atlantic, what caused it? was it private enterprise and ambition, a love of theatre and the realisation that this was something special? In Liverpool the waterfront was built in the early 1900s . . . Liver Building, Cunard Building, India building. All similar in grandness and craftsmanship and all still with us. Perhaps you kept cinemas because you didn't have the sixties new world order of architecture that came to blight and destroy wonderful buildings. Finally Gibbie why and what were you singing? best wishes Freddy

Thanks, Freddy!

The Pickwick is supposed to still be in good condition. Park Ridge is a nice suburb in Chicago (may be part of city now). I went with a friend to see Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach about 5 years ago at the Chicago. It has that old cavish appeal. The truth is that few things last in a pristine manner in Chicago.

More truth - the Modern style, known as International, is well represented with many towers in Chicago with many car parks built in the brutal style.

Indy's old theater's are mostly closed. The current ones here are mostly contemporary and maze like multiplexes and tend to be placed in a lot of malls, which there are many of here.

Since the social fracturing of the 60s here, as you get away from cities, buildings tend to be scattered and geared toward road travel, as are theaters and malls. The overwhelming thing is that I could live on the major street right off where I live and never go anywhere - all the conveniences, shops, hospitals, etc. Probably 4 or 5 theater multiplexes on the stretch of the main road on the northside across the city.

The song we sang was the punsical "The Bare Necessities" from "Jungle Book". Still great for kids and parents. Dad and I would frequently break into song on the road.

Best wishes,
Gibbie