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PRESS RELEASE from Kate Taylor

Issued : June 2009                                                        01924-372748            kate@airtime.co.uk

North Tyneside’s 35 picture houses recalled in comprehensive history

Well-known local historian writes fourth book on cinemas

Little remains of the thirty-five picture houses that once provided entertainment in North Tyneside. All have closed and many have been demolished. But now cinema historian Frank Manders has recalled them all vividly in Cinemas of North Tyneside, a comprehensive history of the former cinemas in the area of the metropolitan borough.

Cinemas of North Tyneside, which is richly illustrated with archive photographs, drawings and building plans, is published this month (June 2009) by Mercia Cinema Society at £12 95p

Mr Manders’ account look in turn at the cinemas of each town and of the colliery villages, noting their location, the dates of opening, their character, the proprietors and architects, unusual events such as fires or wartime bomb damage, and their dates of closure and subsequent fates. The book includes brief observations by people formerly associated with the industry.

The wealth of detail offers striking contrasts. In 1910 Forest Hall saw the opening of the modest corrugated iron Picture Hall seating 500 people. The magnificent Ritz at Wallsend, opened in 1939 and one of only two ‘super’ cinemas in the area, was architect-designed in the art deco style and held over 1,600 patrons.

Moving pictures first found a place in popular entertainment in 1896. Mr Manders notes that the earliest exhibition in the area was probably that at the Tynemouth Palace in September 1896 at a show put on to raise funds for a new rugby ground. ‘Living pictures’ were shown during a pantomime at the Theatre Royal, North Shields, in February 1987 and scenes of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee were screened there the following October.

Early cinemas were often conversions of existing buildings. Remarkably, former Methodist chapels provided the Royal Picture Hall, Wallsend, the Tyne Picture Hall, North Shields, and the Carlton, Tynemouth. The Pavilion at Whitley Bay was built originally as swimming baths.

However North Tyneside gained an early purpose-built cinema when T F Macdonald opened the picture-house named after himself at Wallsend in March 1909.

Amongst former cinema buildings which survive today, the author notes the splendid 1937 Reno at Wide Open which is now a Co-operative store and the 1939 Lyric at Wallsend, which provides both a supermarket and facilities for High Howdon Social Club. The unfortunate Palace at Shiremoor blew down in a gale in 1911 when only partially built. It was rebuilt and opened in December 1911. In 1949 it was damaged again in an arson attack. Today it is am equine equipment retail warehouse.

In a postscript to the book, Mr Manders gives an account of the Silverlink Odeon multiplex at Wallsend business park, now the only commercial film venue in the borough.

The multiplex was opened in February 1999 by the Geordie TV duo, Ant and Dec. Other national stars associated in some way with local cinemas also find a place in the book: The great film comedian Stan Laurel was the son of Arthur Jefferson, one-time proprietor of the Borough Theatre, North Shields. It was at the Borough that Jimmy Campbell, songwriter whose hits included ‘Show me the way to go home’, and ‘Goodnight, Sweetheart’ began his career.

Author Frank Manders was born in Carlisle but moved to the north east as a student at King’s College, Durham. Shortly after taking his degree in General Studies he embarked on a career in Librarianship, finally being appointed as the Local Studies Librarian at Newcastle in 1980. He is known for his historical accuracy and insight. His first book, A History of Gateshead, was published by Gateshead Corporation in 1972. Mr Manders had gone to the cinema regularly since the age of five but only became interested in the history of picture houses when the Newcastle library acquired a significant collection of photographs of cinemas. He felt, he says, that ‘something should be done about them’. The ‘something’ resulted in his magisterial book, Cinemas of Newcastle, which was published by Newcastle upon Tyne City Libraries and Arts in 1991. He has also written The Cinemas of Gateshead and, with Charles Morris, Essoldo, an account of the theatres and cinemas of the Tyneside entrepreneur Sol Sheckman.

Mercia Cinema Society is a registered charity and was founded in 1980 as a national organization to promote and publish research into the history of picture houses. It publishes a quarterly journal The Mercia Bioscope and has produced more than sixty well-researched books on cinemas in localities across the country.

Cinemas of North Tyneside, ISBN 9 780946 406654, is available from booksellers or by post from Mercia Sales Officer, 23 Thrice Fold, Cote Farm, Thackley, Bradford, BD10 8WW. (Enquiries : sales@merciacinema.org) Cheques for £ 12 95p + £ 1.20p+p (total £ 14.15) should be made payable to Mercia Cinema Society.

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Demy, laminated card colour cover, section sewn, prelims + 139pp inc. full index

Frank Manders             Telephone 0191 5283068

Illustrations for reviews are available as jpgs from admin@merciacinema.org

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From the Coventry Evening Telegraph:

Gil Robottom’s history of Coventry cinemas

Jun 5 2009 By Jane Stirland

“GIL ROBOTTOM spent 25 years researching the history of Coventry’s cinemas, but died suddenly before his work could be published.

Determined that his efforts should not be in vain, his grieving widow, Lynne, collected all his material together and approached a publisher.

The result is Coventry Picture Palaces, a beautifully illustrated book charting the rise and fall – and eventual resurrection – of the city’s big screens.

Lynne, who lives in Blandford Drive, Walsgrave, said: “After Gil died, I didn’t want to see all his hard work go to waste, so I gathered everything together and contacted the publishers (Mercia Cinema Society) who brought it up to date.

“When they presented me with a copy of the book at The Herbert gallery, I was so proud. Gil would have been so happy; the book is his dream come true. Cinemas were his passion.”

Gil died unexpectedly in October 2007, three days after going into hospital for a minor operation. He was 64.

His legacy, Coventry Picture Palaces, dedicated to wife Lynne, tells of the growth of the city’s cinemas from the days when moving pictures were first shown in the city in the 1890s through the golden years of the 1930s and ‘40s, when for a time there were as many as 30 picture houses, to their slow decline beginning in the ‘50s with the growth of television.

Gil’s interest in cinema began when, as a boy, he attended the Saturday morning club at Coventry’s Gaumont Palace in Jordan Well.

Lynne said: “Wherever we went on holiday he was always taking pictures of old cinemas; he would seek them out and welcomed any chance to get inside with his camera.”

His working life was spent first in the toolroom at Dunlop and then at Jaguar where he become an instructor in the apprentice department and then went into public relations for the company.

But it was as a cinema historian that he became widely known in the city where he often gave talks and took part in radio broadcasts on the subject.

The book highlights 1911 as the year when the first purpose-built cinemas – no fewer than five of them – were opened in the city.

And it shows the devastating effects of the Second World War when raids on Coventry destroyed three picture houses and damaged several others.

The Rex, the most splendid Coventry super-cinema ever built, complete with organ, restaurant and dance floor, was to have the shortest life of all; it was bombed in August 1940, the night before the eagerly-awaited Gone with the Wind was due to open.

The publication includes references to some of the local men, such as Gus Pell, Charlie Orr and Harold Philpot, who invested in cinemas before the big names like ABC and Odeon came to the city. Noted too are the splendid organs which were installed in all the better venues.

An afterpiece by cinema historian Ian Meyrick brings the book right up to date, with accounts of the area’s two modern multiplexes and the ill-fated attempt to provide a suburban twin-screen operation in the former Rialto-Casino building in Coundon.

The many illustrations include a number from the collection of the late W.G. (Bill) Edkins, one-time projectionist at the Astoria (Albany Road) who took over the Imperial (Earlsdon Street) in 1947 and some from the Coventry Telegraph archives.

Publisher Mervyn Gould, administrator of the Mercia Cinema Society, who designed, edited and indexed Coventry Picture Palaces, said: “Regrettably, the author died before his work was finished and so the book has been published posthumously; we hope the end result is as he would have wanted it and that it will be a lasting memorial.”

The paperback publication, priced at £14.95, is available now from The Herbert art gallery and museum in Jordan Well, from bookshops or, post-free, from the address below:

HOW TO ORDER

Orders to the sales Officer:

Martin Hall, 23 Thrice Fold, Cote Farm, Thackley, BRADFORD BD10 8WW

Cheques payable to the Mercia Cinema Society

Tel: 01274 583251
e-mail: sales@merciacinema.org

(Please note that only the Sales Officer knows the current availability of items in stock. Please enquire about availability from him – other officers will have no idea what is left).

Mercia Cinema Society is a registered charity, founded in 1990 to promote and publish research into the history of picture palaces.”

Coventry Picture Palaces                                                                  Gil Robottom

Coventry : the City where Cupid rubs shoulders with Godiva

As a country boy (by persuasion, anyway), I am always staggered by the number of cinemas that were busy in cities during the heyday of film-going.  In the case of Coventry, the tally is over 30, some of which had several names, as the managements changed. Of course, where you have such a number of cinemas, you have a rich variety of independents and the names of Bill Edkins, Charlie Orr, Gus Pell and H T L Philpot, to name a few, feature throughout the pages of this very comprehensive book.

The accessibility of the detailed information is exemplary. There is an elaborate index where Architects, Builders, Circuits, Companies, Decorators, Organs, Projectors and Sound Systems all merit sub-headings. The Organs themselves rate a chapter in the book and it was good to see that the Mustel instrument at the Grand is defined as a reed organ, as opposed to the serried ranks of pipe organs that otherwise kept Coventry harmonised. In fact the Mustel was probably that superior sub-species of reed organ known as an Art Harmonium. The Forum’s 1934 Conacher 3(coupler) / 8 rank organ is illustrated - looking uncannily like the Compton-made Drury Lane 1950 Strand Electric 216-circuit Light Console.

The history of first openings and last shows is dealt with first, not forgetting the emergence and disintegration of various local chains of cinemas and the personalities that forged them. Then the cinemas themselves and their landmark years are listed chronologically. The longest entry refers to the 1939 to 1945 war years, when four cinemas and a theatre were lost to enemy action. After a page that lists the buildings remaining in November 2008, we have a page giving every cinema (with all its names), its years in use and the page of its main entry in the book.

                The detail in the text from here on is prodigious. We have first-hand information from ex-cinema workers and from letters and financial records of the managements. A picture is built up of how complex the entertainment scene was in Coventry and how the launch of a new cinema led to some older houses closing. The only possible omission and one that would be so difficult to execute, due to the war damage and the subsequent re-build of the city, is a map showing where the cinemas were in the conurbation.

Gil Robottom uses the research documentation to get beyond the factual to a point where you can sense what seeing a film in each cinema was like and how you, the audience, would be treated. He is at his best when he uses his vast knowledge to interpret the merits of the various houses, as in his evaluation of the super-cinemas and the merits of the later tripling or rebuild.

This book is generously illustrated, with some early floor plans as well as the more usual 1930s opening souvenir book sketches and elevations. There are contrasting advert blocks from 1938 and 1952, as well as a lively set of colour promotion items on the back face. I particularly liked the exterior photos of the Redesdale and the Regal, both taken at night, after rain.

The Coventry cinema scene has been brought up to date by Ian Meyrick, who takes the story into the multiplex era. No amount of darkness, rain, and soft-focus, could make these latter-day sheds look alluring but it is good to read that there are still 24 screens, albeit in just three venues.

Sadly, Gil Robottom died in October 2007. This very readable account of Coventry’s cinemas will be a great way to remember him. He leaves a cornucopia of cinematic delights for you to dip in to. If, like me, you don’t know the City, by reading Coventry Picture Palaces you will find yourself in the two-and-nines and that lovely colour-flooded festooning is just about to lift for the main feature…

James Laws

Mercia Cinema Society, 2009, £12.50 members. Demy, section-sewn, laminated card colour covers. ISBN-13: 978-0-946406-64-7. Mercia Sales: Martin Hall, 23 Thrice Fold, Cote Farm, Thackley, Bradford  BD10 8WW       01274 583251         sales@merciacinema.org

Pictured, Mercia Cinema Society Chairman Kate Taylor gives the first copy to Lynne Robottom, Gil’s Widow. Also pictured are Ian Meyrick (left) who wrote the after-piece chapter and Ian Houseman (right) who designed the cover and prepared the illustrations. Behind them can be seen the former Coventry Gaumont.

COVENTRY PICTURE PALACES

Mercia Cinema Society, 2008. ISBN-10:  0-946406-64-2 ISBN-13:  978-0-946406-64-7 £14.50 / £12.50 (members). Available from Mercia Sales: 29 Blackbrook Court Durham Road Loughborough LE11 5UA

Before being ‘Coventrated’ on the night of 14 November 1940, the mediaeval city of Coventry was home to twenty-two cinemas, though others had closed earlier. At the end of the war there were still seventeen, and one of the damaged ones, the Imperial, later re-opened.

By the 1980s there were only three houses left devoted to the silver screen.

Gil Robottom traces the history of Coventry’s old cinemas – all the local flea-pits, picture palaces, and super cinemas. There are plans, photographs, and advertisements here to display the places where people queued to sit in the warm darkness and be conjured away from the industrial Midlands to their faraway dreamlands.

At the opening of the moving picture period in 1896, Coventry’s 1819 Theatre Royal was closing, reduced to being a music hall, but other venues exploited the new wonder – the Sydenham Palace, for instance, a public house music hall on the corner of Cox and Ford Streets. On the opposite corner was a ‘Coffee Tavern’, which in 1917 responded to the craze for war news by becoming the Alexandra Theatre.

Even this early cinema was by no means the first. Existing halls like the Empire, a 1906 internal rebuild of the city’s 1858 Corn Exchange, had taken the opportunity to show films, and an odd-shaped hall in Hales Street, next to the Opera House, was purpose-built and opened on 17 January 1911 for the new entertainment, followed in September by the imposing white arch of the Picture House Smithford Street.

A 1931 fire at the Empire proved the opportunity for re-building, and in 1933 the ABC circuit opened the new Empire Cinema inside the shell of the old theatre. At the same time as the fire, however, another national circuit – Gaumont-British – was building a super-cinema in Jordan Well, where earlier Frank Turner had run out of money before being able to complete his Coliseum. The Gaumont Palace may not have had much of a stage, but it had everything else – triple colour-change lighting around the proscenium arch, an organ console rising from the orchestra pit on a lift, a tea-room and restaurant above the art déco foyer, and even a flat for the manager on the top floor.

A nationally-known cinema architect, Robert Cromie, was responsible for the Philpot brothers’ Corporation Street flag-ship, the Rex. The most splendid Coventry super-cinema ever built, with an organ, snack bar, restaurant and dance floor; the Rex was to have the shortest life of all, as it was bombed in August 1940 on the night before the eagerly-awaited Gone With The Wind was to be shown.

As in all cinema histories, every entry charts the decline in audiences as BBC and Independent television kept older people at home, and the increasing supply of what were then luxury items, such as vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, and fitted carpets, became more widely available and increasingly affordable through the widening of hire-purchase schemes.

The Rank Organisation, owners of the Odeon and Gaumont-British circuits, split their buildings to provide several screens – at Coventry, eventually, five. ABC took a different approach here: demolishing the Empire as the city centre was being re-built and building an entirely new cinema with a new, simple, circuit name – the ABC.

But British cinema exhibition was utterly changed in 1985 when The Point, at Milton Keynes, opened as the country’s first multiplex. Cannon closed the former ABC, the independent Theatre One (originally the Alexandra) closed for the latest fashion – a nightclub, and finally the Rank Organisation closed the former Gaumont as the last traditional city-cinema, by then the five-screen Odeon, in 1999.

Gil Robottom died last year, but an Afterpiece by cinema historian Ian Meyrick brings the book right up to date, with accounts of the area’s two modern multiplexes, and the sadly ill-fated attempt to provide a suburban twin-screen operation in the former Rialto-Casino building.

The book is well-presented, with colour laminated covers, and unlike many local history books, a full index is provided.

The history of Barnsley’s picture houses has claims to a wider than purely local interest in two events in the South Yorkshire town, a hundred years apart, one tragic and the other bringing some optimism to cinema lovers.

In January 1908 sixteen children were killed in a crush when they went to see the then-novelty of moving pictures at the public hall in Eldon Street. In 2007 two Yorkshire businessmen re-opened the former Odeon Cinema (also in Eldon Street) to run it as the independent Parkway, thus reversing the national trend of cinema closures.

Now cinema and theatre historian Kate Taylor has provided an account of the history of cinema in the former Barnsley County Borough from the first showing of moving pictures at Berzac’s Colonial Circus at Town End in 1900 to the present day.

Miss Taylor recounts how some of the earliest licenses for the exhibition of films were granted to the Harvey Institute, the Temperance Hall, the Stores Inn, and a former potato warehouse which was named the Victoria.

All Barnsley’s purpose-built cinemas, from the Electric of 1911 to the Lundwood Savoy of 1935, are featured.

The author notes, inter alia, the opening of Barnsley’s super-cinema, the Ritz, in Peel Street in 1937, the fires which gutted the Pavilion in 1950 and the Empire in 1954, and the period in the 1940s when three of Barnsley’s cinemas were managed by women.

The book is fully illustrated with archive photographs and cinema advertising.

Cinemas of Barnsley is published by Mercia Cinema Society. Copies are available at £4 95p from the Department of Local Studies and Archives, Central Library, Shambles Street, Barnsley, and from Old Barnsley, Unit 14, in the Upper Market Hall. Copies can be obtained post-free from

Mervyn Gould
29 Blackbrook Court
Durham Road
Loughborough
Leicestershire
LE11 5UA.
Tel/fax: 01509 218393

e-mail: Mervyn.Gould@virgin.net (cheques to be made payable to Mercia Cinema Society)

Mercia Cinema Society is a national society dedicated to the research of picture-house history. It was formed in 1980 and is a registered charity.

Barnsley Cinemas – Kate Taylor A5 60pp saddle-stitched. Laminated card covers. £4.95 retail