O is for Odeon

Well, I thought long and hard about whether or not to write about Occupations, Ostlers, and Osier Peelers, but in the end decided on an all-time favourite, Loughborough’s Odeon!! But which one?!

If you’ve arrived in Loughborough around 2009 or later, you’ll know that our Odeon is on Cattle Market, sandwiched between a NatWest Bank and a nail bar. But, as I suggested, it only became on Odeon around 2009.

Loughborough’s original Odeon, on Baxter Gate, opened in November 1936, despite there already being two cinemas in the town. Oscar Deutsch for whom the cinema was built, had opened his first cinema at Brierley Hill near Dudley, in 1928, before starting the Odeon chain. There was much building of new cinemas across the country, and by 1937 there were probably about 250 Odeons.

Deutsch had a preferred partnership with the architectural practice of Harry Weedon (partly because they had been born near each other around the same time, and so probably knew each other) and it was Arthur J. Price from Weedon’s firm who actually designed our Odeon. In 1936, the Art Deco style had reached its streamline modèrne phase, and it is this that gives our Odeon its beautiful lines; that and the local Hathernware faience tiles with which it is clad, in a basket weave pattern, with highlights of black and green.

The Odeon opened showing the film ‘Mr Deeds Goes to Town’ starring Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur, and directed by Frank Capra. The first manager of the Odeon was Clarence George Starkey, who had come straight from being the manager at the Rialto Cinema in Briggate, Leeds. This opening was a month too late to play host to the Jarrow Marchers, who were given free seats at one of Loughborough’s other cinemas, when they arrived in Loughborough from Nottingham, on their way to London.

That other cinema was the New Empire on Cattle Market. It had originally opened in 1914, advertised as The Empire, and had had a bit of a refurb in 1929. However, perhaps sensing that the competition was hotting up, the owner, Charles Knight Deeming (who also owned Loughborough’s other cinema, The Victory, the Regent Theatre, and cinemas in nearby Coalville), the Empire had a major extension and refurb, which led to the wonderful Art Deco façade we see today. Its local Hathernware tiles complemented by a striking angular tower, and green and yellow repeated motif. Deeming must have been very proud to host the Jarrow Marchers in his New Empire Cinema!

Later, around 1954, the New Empire was sold to the Essoldo Chain, before being sold to the Tigon Group who named it the Classic for a while, before becoming the Curzon! Meanwhile, over on Baxter Gate, the Odeon became the Classic around 1964, before closing as a cinema in 1974, and firstly became a Mecca Bingo, then a Beacon Bingo, before closing its doors permanently. And so, our Odeon might have been our only remaining cinema, until the General Hospital was demolished and the Cineworld Cinema opened in 2016.      

____________________________________

This post is one in a series of posts for the ‘April A-Z Blogging Challenge’

 

____________________________________

Posted by lynneaboutloughborough

With apologies for typos which are all mine!

_______________________________________________

Thank you for reading this blog.

Copyright:

The copyright © of all content on this blog rests with me, however, you are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follows:

Dyer, Lynne (2024). O is for Odeon. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2024/04/o-is-for-odeon.html [Accessed 17 April 2024]

Take down policy:

I post no pictures that are not my own, unless I have express permission so to do. All text is my own, and not copied from any other information sources, printed or electronic, unless identified and credited as such. If you find I have posted something in contravention of these statements, or if there are photographs of you which you would prefer not to be here, please contact me at the address listed on the About Me page, and I will remove these.

External Links:

By including links to external sources I am not endorsing the websites, the authors, nor the information contained therein, and will not check back to update out-of-date links. Using these links to access external information is entirely the responsibility of the reader of the blog.

Blog archive and tags:

If you are viewing this blog in mobile format, you will not be able to easily access the blog archive, or the clickable links to various topics. These can be accessed if you scroll to the bottom of the page, and click 'View Web Version'. Alternatively, there is also a complete list of posts, which when clicked will take you to the page you are interested in.

Searching the blog:

You can search the blog using the dedicated search box that appears near the top of the blog when viewed in the web version. Alternatively, you can search using your usual search engine (e.g. Bing, Google, DuckDuckGo etc.) by following this example:

site: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/ “Radmoor House”

NOTE – the words you’re actually looking for must be in “” and the first of these must be preceded by a space

Thank you for reading this blog.

Lynne