Once a year, the Mercia Cinema Society gets together for a Committee meeting.
It is held in Birmingham because it is fairly central to get to and every time I go there I like it a little bit more. When I lived in Coventry though, I didn’t like it very much at all, unduly influenced by the blight that is New Street Station. The station remains a dire, gloomy underground bunker but the nearby streets and buildings are vibrant.
I moved to Coventry in 1976 when I got a job as a Technician Engineer Student, a thin sandwich three year course, the outcome of which was a Diploma in Electronics and Telecommunications. My first visit there was for the interview and I travelled down the previous afternoon, staying in a Hotel close to the station that distinguished itself by having rubber sheets on the beds. (I have vague recollections of it being called the Melford). As GEC was paying, we had to share rooms but my room mates didn’t seem overly interesting so I checked out my Evening Telegraph that I had bought at the station to see what was on in town. The only thing that caught my eye was “The Towering Inferno” which was on at a Cinema called the Paris.
When I tracked down the Paris (slightly out of town) it looked rather small and seedy. A plain facade was relieved only by some red neon signage spelling out the word “Paris” and a couple of stylised tubes in the shape of the Eiffel Tower and the Arc De Triomphe. The neon was very restrained (which is unusual for neon, normally being somewhat brash) and felt almost art house by the understatement.
Inside, it was bigger than I was expecting but very plain and unmemorable. It is arguable as to whether it was the worst Cinema in Coventry but it certainly wasn’t the best. In my five years living in the City, I was a regular at the Odeon Film Centre, The ABC, the Theatre One and the Paris. Each had their own history and quirks. I liked the Odeon screen One best (it was the former balcony of the huge 1931 Gaumont Palace) but bore only a superficial resemblance to the opening style as seen in this Youtube photo montage.
Anyway, the Society has now published a Coventry Cinema history and I took pleasure in reading it on my journey back to Wakefield. (I had seen a copy of the proofs but there is nothing like having a proper bound copy to look at).
Working my way through the book, I was pleasantly surprised to find credits to myself for some photos. A distant memory then stirred of a visit to Coventry in the early 90s and a re-acquaintance with the Paris. By now it was derelict and not terribly well secured so we managed to sneak in and take a few snaps. It had been stripped out but the port holes were still visible in the projection room and in an unexpected find, the original silent screen with rounded corners was visible plastered and painted onto the back wall. (This dated back to when the building opened in 1912 as the Crown Picture Theatre.)
Another reference in the book refers to a Gentleman who informed us he “opened the Belgrade”, although what he meant was that he installed their internal telephone system for the opening. We nicknamed this chap Slydlock after he ernestly described the construction of an electrical switchboard somewhere at great length. (A slydlock is a brand name for a type of fuse holder which was widely used in the mid 20th Century, including the Kenton School Falks 21 way switchboard of 1964).
I can recall someone else being given a trademark as a nickname, a rather loud fireman with strong opinions out in Saudi was nicknamed Tannoy.
