No Tears – and a cinema quietly dies
By Keith Farnsworth
First printed in November 1963 in the Sheffield Telegraph, which was then the daily morning newspaper.
Fifty years and 75 million feet of film after it all began, The Coliseum, Spital Hill, one of the oldest remaining cinemas in Sheffield, closed its doors for the last time on Saturday evening.
There was no “Beatle-mania”, no brightly-burning Rag torches.
The row upon row of empty seats and the mere handful of customers reflected a sorry tale of decline and fall in an industry.
“Noboby seems to care that we're closing down,” said one female member of staff. The 22 employees were a little sad. But not one of the customers had expressed any regrets, the doorman told me.
On Saturday retired secretary Mr Horace Cavill, aged 73, of Greystones Cresent, Ecclesall, was a special guest of his next-door neighbour, Mr Harry Gent (42), manager of the cinema.
Mr Cavill, a confirmed TV addict nowadays, had not been to the pictures for 40 years. But he saw the Coliseum built in 1913 and was at the first Saturday night performance.
A souvenir programme of the opening records admission prices at 2d., 4d., 6d., and 1s. One advertiser, now a famous tailor, offered good quality lounge suits made-to-measure at £1 17s. 6d.
Few Sheffield people visiting Blackpool Tower and listening to Reginald Dixon will know that he used to practice daily on the Coliseum theatre organ.
That organ was removed in 1934, but it is still doing a good job – in a church in Worksop
In its last years the dying cinema that was neither suburban nor city suffered more blows from hooliganism. Seats were ripped, walls scarred and lamps smashed.
Harry Gent was very sad about it all. In the manager's office (which was originally a “crush room” in happier days when people queued for hours to see a film) the bespectacled grandson of the original manager said: “All this and a nearly empty house.”
“If there'd been any enthusiasm tonight I might have made a farewell speech at the end. But nobody seems to care.”
The man from the Film Transport Services (Great Britain) Ltd took the reels away at the finish. The job of winding up was all that remained.
A cinema had died and nobody took any notice.
