Cinema memories

The current Odeon in Loughborough

Last week I was lucky enough to go to a workshop in Leicester on cinema and memory, a session which was focused on people's memory of films they'd seen and research that is being done into this area, with the aim of developing more collaboration between community groups and researchers working in this area.

One of the points that was made was that if you asked someone something like what was the first film they went to see, they didn't usually remember much about the actual film, and were more likely to describe the whole experience. While I was thinking about this I was trying to remember my own experience of going to the cinema, and I found I was no different, so this is my story of the first time I went to the cinema on my own.


It was a James Bond film, with Sean Connery: it was 1971, so it was Diamonds are Forever. I can't remember anything specific about the film, except for the noise and the excitement, but I do remember other things, like: it was at the Odeon in Newport, which was situated on a busy road, at a traffic-light controlled junction. I went on the bus with a school-friend; we were both 11. I'd been into town on the bus before, to meet friends, and I knew where the bus stop was, but I also knew that the bus sometimes had to stop at the traffic lights, and people often got off there. My mother also knew this. She very firmly told me we were not to get off at the lights if the bus had to stop there, but to continue on and get off at the proper bus stop. As we approached the lights, they turned to red. We got off the bus! And that it what I remember about that cinema trip!!

You may be wondering what this has to do with Loughborough? I wasn't brought up in Loughborough, and I don't remember the double seats in the back row (apparently called Chummies in Scotland!) at the Victory, so I was going to ask you what your memory of your first cinema visit was: did you go to the Victory, or the Essoldo (or the Empire, or the New Empire, or the Classic)? Or, was it the Odeon the showing that film you desperately wanted to go and see? Maybe your first cinema-going experience was to the Curzon (yes, I know this was formerly the Essoldo, Empire etc.)? 

The former Odeon in Loughborough

And then I thought I wonder if the Newport cinema is still there, so I went off and searched the internet, as you do! And I was surprised! It's had mixed fortunes, and is a Grade II listed building, now called the Neon, and is showing films again. But that wasn't the only thing that surprised me! If you'd asked me to describe the cinema I visited over 40 years ago, I'd have been able to tell you the doors were kind of sideways on to the footpath, and there was a lot of black around them, but I wonder if subconsciously I remembered this, hence why I am so attracted to our own former Odeon, now Beacon Bingo? I used Google maps to walk virtually along the street I remembered and was shocked when I saw the building and how similar it is to our former Odeon! 


The similarity, of course, was because they were both built for the Oscar Deutsch chain, and designed by Arthur Price, of the Harry Weedon Architect firm, and built in the streamlined moderne style. Loughborough's cinema was built in 1936, Newport's in 1938: both are now Grade II listed.

Anyway, back to cinema memories: if you want to check the cinema memories website, which is still under construction, you can find it at cinemamemories.org    

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2016). Cinema memories. [Online] Available from: http://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2016/12/cinema-memories.html [Accessed 8 December 2016]

         

Loughborough and its cinemas

I recently had the good fortune to attend a lecture session and picture show in the Phoenix in Leicester. Lots of great stuff in the lectures, but I was particularly interested in Matt Jones's work to uncover the history of the many cinemas that have been in Leicester. There have been a number of books written on the history of Leicester cinemas, but Matt's own research discovered that many cinemas had been built along the routes of public transport, especially along the tram routes, so it was easy for people to get to the cinema. He also discovered that at first there were lots of small cinemas, in about the 1970s many were converted into two screens, and in the 1990s many introduced further screens. Some of the cinemas were known as flea pits, because people didn't have the opportunity to bathe so often in the earlier days of the cinema, so fleas were quite common in the buildings. Also, there seems to have been lots of name-changes going on!  

A friend, who has recently moved to Belper, told me all about the Ritz Cinema there, which was originally built as a municipal hall, and at various times has housed the library and a theatre, and has been a court and a meeting hall. Apparently there used to be two cinemas in Belper, and both The Ritz and The Palace were owned by the same family, the Morley family. 

Both these recent conversations reminded me of the cinemas in Loughborough, and that they have a very similar history to those in Leicester and in Belper. 

At one time there were 3 cinemas in the town: The Victory in Biggin Street (opened 1921, demolished 1967), The Odeon (built 1936, re-named as The Classic in 1974 and converted to a Beacon Bingo in 1977) on The Coneries, and The Empire (opened 1914, and still going strong as an Odeon) in Cattle Market. 

At one time both The Victory and The Empire were owned by Charles Deeming,  who also owned several other cinemas, for example The Olympia / The Regal in Coalville. 

A suitcase belonging to Charles Deeming

In its day, The Victory was known as the "flea pit", and like cinemas in Leicester had those famous "double-seats" in the back row!! I think The Victory has been immortalised in the 1957 film "The Last Show on Earth", a small "flea pit" situated in Sloughborough, and suffering a bit of a decline! Watch it, see what you think!

The Empire, which opened in 1914, was originally called The New Empire Palace of Varieties, although advertised as The Empire. In 1929 the façade was changed, and in 1936 extra space was added, the frontage again changed, to the Art Deco façade we see today, and the name changed to The New Empire. In 1954, when Deeming sold The Empire (as it had then become known) to the Essoldo chain, it became known as The Essoldo. 

As The Curzon

Then in 1972 the Essoldo chain sold The Essoldo to the Tigon Group who also owned the Classic (which is what the original Odeon became), but since there was already an Classic in town (the former Odeon), The Essoldo became known as The Curzon, before becoming The Classic when The Classic (i.e. the former Odeon) closed in 1973. Also in 1973 the cinema was spilt into three screens. The Classic name didn't last long though, and it reverted to being The Curzon in 1974, and a new screen was also opened. In about 2009 it was taken over by the Odeon chain.

The former Odeon, now Beacon Bingo

So, today we still have our Odeon cinema, with its Art Deco façade, but we are also about to have a Cineworld multiplex cinema, opening on the site of the former Baxter Gate general hospital. Not only is there going to be a cinema, but there will also be lots of restaurants and bars. The building work seems to be going well, and I believe things are scheduled to open in May. Here's a couple of pictures of how the site looked recently:

Taken from Jubilee Way

Building works on the former general hospital site Baxter Gate

The multiplex cinema will be set back from the former nurses' home on Baxter Gate

   

So who was A T Warbis?

If you pop down to the public library before the end of July you will see the exhibition cabinets near the Local Studies Library full of sketches created by A T Warbis. Alfred Thomas Warbis, or AT as I believe he signed his drawings, was a prolific artist, and created over 1,200 drawings for the Loughborough Echo, which appeared in a column called "From and Artist's Sketchbook".

Here are some pics from the exhibition; they don't do it justice and I'm still trying to get to grips with my new camera, so do try and pop in and have a look for yourself. And, if you're on Twitter and want to follow what's going on in the Local Studies Library, follow the volunteers - LLLSV @Loughlibvol

If you pop over to the internet (preferably using Chrome rather than IE (as the site doesn't work for me on IE)) you'll find some webpages on A T Warbis created by his son, David. This site also includes an obituary that appeared in the Loughborough Echo at the time of A T's death (1976). In his introduction, David makes a great point that his father's sketches were not only works of art, but now also contribute to a recorded social history of Loughborough. So, for example, in the public library exhibition you can see copies of A T Warbis's sketches, next to a photograph of what the same view looks like today: some are little changed, but many are vastly different.

The Loughborough Echo obituary tells you a little more about the artist's life, and it is wonderful to learn that he created about 5,000 sketches, was a pupil of, amongst others, Herbert Railton *, and worked for Brush.

Personally, I love these sketches. There is no substitute for a real drawing, but since I am no drawer myself, and I do like taking photographs, so I have recently been playing with some software that allows me to create pencil sketches from photographs, and I've used these in my walking booklets. Of course, as I said, they are no substitute for the real thing ...

The Manor House

The Odeon

The Sockman

Beacon Bingo

The Parish Church

The Old Hospital Site

The Old Rectory in the snow!

 * I've been looking for a connection between Herbert Railton, artist (who originally trained as an architect) and William Railton, architect, who designed, amongst other things, Nelson's Column, and the Bavarian Lodge at Garendon Park, but as yet have been unsuccessful!

The Empire Cinema, WW2 and Sir Malcolm Sargent!

In May 1939, Malcolm Sargent went on tour in Australia, conducting their National Symphony Orchestra. Sargent had been in talks with ABC, an independent Australian broadcasting corporation, and after he’d guest conducted a series of concerts and written a report on the future of Australian music-making, ABC asked him to return on a more permanent basis. He’d only been there about six weeks when Britain declared war on Germany. Ironically, on the day war was announced, he was conducting a performance of Britten’s Belshazzar’s Feast, a choral work about war and conquest. Sargent’s son, Peter was sure that if war hadn’t been declared, Sargent would have taken his whole family to Australia to live. ABC tried to persuade him to stay until the war was over, but the outbreak of war made Sargent think, and his sense of honour meant that he asked to be relieved of his duties so he could return home to Britain. ABC refused his request, and he had to conduct about 16 concerts before he was able to travel home to Britain, and arrived on 27 November 1939.

Apparently, English life hadn’t changed much, despite the fact that the country was at war, and Sargent was able to conduct many one-off concerts. But, by the summer of 1940, war had come a bit closer to home, as Hitler turned his attention to an invasion of Britain, sending bombers over British cities. However, the Royal Air Force was too powerful for the Luftwaffe and the threat of an invasion passed, although the Blitz continued. The areas attacked tended to be near ports, or manufacturing areas.

Just before the outbreak of war, the government had started an initiative (the Council for the Encouragement of Music CEMA), to take the arts to factory workers and to arrange for musical performances that were affordable for ordinary people. A number of Britain’s large orchestras performed such concerts, and were pleased to help boost morale. However, factory workers were not always keen on the classical music on offer to them, so in 1940 there was a need for someone to make classical music more popular.

One of England’s most well-known dance band leaders of the day, Jack Hylton, approached Sargent’s orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, to undertake a 3-month national tour, which would involve performing twice a night in music halls, mostly in big industrial cities in the North and Midlands. His aim was two-fold: To raise public spirits, and to boost the popularity of record companies. In America, some classical musicians had already been taking advantage of the new broadcasting medium and were quite revered, however, this wasn’t yet the case in Britain.

Jack Hylton reassured the manager of LPO that the orchestra wouldn’t have to play with any music hall acts, but that they did need a flamboyant conductor with a sense of entertainment: Malcolm Sargent was the obvious choice, because as well as being an orchestral conductor, he was also interested in lighting and staging, and he had also been broadcasting popular programmes on the BBC. Two weeks after being asked, Malcolm Sargent gave the first of the Blitz Tour concerts, at the Glasgow Empire on 12 August 1940. This concert really was the start of the attempt to take classical music to the masses, and seems to have worked as the Empire was full, the cheap seats having been sold mostly to workers from the dockyard.

The programme Sargent presented that evening comprised some of the more popular classical pieces, and the audience was most appreciative and it is often claimed that these “Blitz Tours” became part of the war effort.    



Ghost sign on the side of today's Odeon in Cattle Market.

Now, I’m hoping I’ve piqued your interest about where all this is going and what this has to do with Loughborough, but I suspect you’ve already guessed that Malcolm Sargent came to the Loughborough Empire cinema and conducted one of his Blitz Tour concerts! Moreover, a friend and I actually found a concert programme from one from of these London Philharmonic Orchestra concerts that Malcolm Sargent conducted!

What a joy! The programme was a simple fold-out A5leaflet, containing programme notes for each of the pieces being performed. As we already know, these concerts were set up with a view to raising spirits in the industrial towns of Britain, and to bring classical music to a new audience. It is wonderful to learn that the concert included Dvorak’s Carneval Overture, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, Delius’s Walk to the Paradise Garden, and the Peer Gynt Suite No. 1 by Grieg which filled the first half of the concert, while the second half was filled with the sounds of Tchaikovsky’s 5^th Symphony in E Minor. Each half would have lasted about 50 minutes.

 

The front and back of the concert programme

The middle of the concert programme with programme notes

 

Isn’t this all so exciting? However, in my efforts to find out a bit more about this concert, I trawled through the local newspapers of the day and found an advert for the event.

 

Loughborough Echo 30 July 1943, p.1. The prices are: 7/6, 5/-, & 2/6

 

And then, joy of joys, I found a couple of reviews! But wait!! Both reviews report that on the afternoon of the concert Malcolm Sargent was indisposed and never made it, his conducting role being undertaken by Warwick Braithwaite instead! Such a shame, although I do expect that Braithwaite was an excellent conductor too!

 

Review from the Loughborough Monitor, August 5th, 1943, pg.3

 

And this it the text of the review from the Loughborough Echo, Friday August 6th, 1943, pg.3: 

“London Philharmonic Orchestra”

“The London Philharmonic Orchestra, led by Jean Pougnet, gave an excellent programme at The Empire Cinema on Sunday afternoon. Dr. Malcolm Sargent was unable to conduct owing to indisposition and his place was taken by Warwick Braithwaite.*

 

The programme opened with Dvorak’s “Carneval” Overture, the brilliant, rhythmic character of which was much appreciated by the large audience. A feature of this item was the excellence of the percussion instruments, cymbals, timpani and tambourine, all of which helped to mark the strong rhythm, together with the persistent figure of the cor anglais, which stressed the melody.

Mozart’s Serenade Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, was perhaps the most popular item of the programme. Written for strings only, its effect was soothing and melodious, as Mozart always is.

 

The intermezzo from “A Village Romeo and Juliet” by Delius employs more instruments than the Mozart number and abounds in fragments of melody that seem to float about with but little decision. The work is characteristic of Delius, and a perfect diminuendo was produced at the end.

 

“Peer Gynt” Suite No.1 showed Grief to advantage. Once again rhythm was predominant and the ever-popular “In the Hall of the Mountain Kings [sic]”was excellently given. It was noticeable that in one of the pianissimo passages the crowing of a back-yard rooster in the neighbourhood could clearly be heard.

 

Tchaikovsky’s 5^th Symphony, in E Minor, concluded the programme and showed together with what had gone before, Mr Braithwaite’s complete control of the orchestra, whose light and shade throughout were delightful.”

 

M.R.

 

*Henry Warwick Braithwaite was a conductor from New Zealand who studied at the Royal Academy of Music and spent most of his career in Britain, particularly conducting opera. He played a part in the film “Battle for Music” which documents the plight of the LPO before and during the war.  

Of course, I’m now wondering about the identity of the Echo’s music critic: Who was M.R.? 

The Odeon during its life as the popular Curzon.