Cinemas remembered

by Gordon Lawton

My earliest recollection would be going to the Coliseum on Spital Hill in the late 1940's. They used to have two showings every evening but unlike most other cinemas where the program was continous they had two separate houses. The first house started about 5.45pm and the second house started at around 8.30pm. The evenings program usually started with a B grade film or maybe a “Three Stooges” or a “Abbot & Costello” short film. Then would be the Latest News of the week followed by a cartoon then the main feature film. The films I can just remember seeing were “Tarzan & the Apes” with Johnny Weismuller and a couple of love stories with Anna Neagle but can't remember the male actor. Later on when I was able to take myself to the cinema, around 11 years old would you believe, my pal and I went to the Victory on Upwell St. The movies shown were quite old, pre-war, but that didn't matter to us as it was very cheap if we sat in the first 10 rows at the front. Many a time we arrived at the cinema and find it was an “A classed film” which meant we were not allowed in without an adult. So for 15 minutes we would be asking every one that came to the ticket office if they would take us in. We soon learned that young couples were the best bet, and so we would hand over our money and accompany the couple into the auditorium and then duly vanish. I remember some of the scary actors like, Boris Karloff, Bella Lagosi they always created a lot of talk the next day at school. Unfortunately the Victory had a bad nick name of being called the “bug hut” and to be quite honest it wasn't the cleanest of cinemas. About 1960 I took my future wife there to see some old movie and we sat in the back row upstairs where as children we were never allowed by the management. The seating was a nice plush blue material and very posh compared to the rest of the cinema. Throughout my teenage years we went mostly to the Sunbeam definitely every Sunday night, the Paragon at Firth Park, The Roxy at Page Hall, The Forum (Esseldo) at Southey Green and the Capitol (Esseldo) at Sheffield Lane Top. In later years early 1960's Saturday night was a special night and we would go to the town centre cinemas, Cinema House, Gaumont, Odeon Fitzalan Sq, and the ABC on Snig Hill.

Going to the cinema in those days was fairly cheap and really was the only recreation teenagers had, some of the prices I remember from around 1957 and all upstairs in the balcony were:- Victory 1/- (10p), Sunbeam 1/3 (12.5p), Roxy 1/3, Paragon 1/9 (17.5p), Forum 1/9, Capitol 1/11 (19.5p) in the city it varied from 2/6 (25p) to 3/6 (35p). I forgot to mention the Hippodrome which had the gods, where the seating was just a pad on a step but the price was only 6d (5p) the most fondest memory of the gods was during the week “Black Board Jungle” was showing, we went three times that week just to listen to the opening and closing song which was “Rock around the Clock” sung by Bill Haley and the Comets and our lives changed for ever with the advent of rock ‘n’ roll.

Each Cinema used to print out a card of all the coming films for the following month. Here are two from the Victory for April 1956 and the Paragon for December 1955. I wondered about the crossing outs but I don't think I went that often to the Vic. They are more like referring to weeks that had gone so as I knew which week we were upto. I think I should also mention the News Theatre in Fitzallen Square. The program which consisted of all the news for the week and about 6 cartoons ran for three quarters of an hour but was continuous from 11am to 10pm. I lived on Petre Street so could catch the bus which stopped outside the cinema watch 2 runs of the program and then catch the Petre St. bus back on the opposite side of Fitzallen Square. Saturday mornings were the favorite times for going there.