Coventry Cinemas

I'm not in 'dispute' with anyone here, I merely wish to learn more I think you meant 'Panavision' since VistaVision is a horizontal shooting format? VistaVision was a "poor man's 70mm" rather than a "poor man's CinemaScope". That aside, I don't recall the Alexandra (or indeed any cinema in Coventry at the time) having an equidistant-curved screen of greater than usual 1.33:1 aspect ratio? It may have done, but I certainly don't remember it. To the best of my knowledge the nearest true CinemaScope screen at the time was in Birmingham.

The greatest fault among those with a wide knowledge of things, for all their capacity of generosity (and I apologize for using the word "dispute" instead of the less charged "disagreement), is their capacity for not understanding "wide" in its cinematic meaning. (This generalization is merely a joke to set up a refutation of premises contained in you posting.) The Alexandra Cinema certainly was a CinemaScope cinema in every definition of the term. Loath and all as I am to say as much, I believe you are confusing CinemaScope with Cinerama. And Cinerama, in the time of which we write, was not available even in Birmingham, for the process had not been perfected. Later, sure, there were examples of early (imperfect) Cinerama on a small number of screens, but the three camera recording, or - more accurately, perhaps - the image on the screen that resulted from the three camera filming, was less than satisfying when a principal performer was seen moving from one section to another with a considerable degree of wobbly and imprecise images. Perhaps to save myself time, I should point out that CinemaScope filming still takes place to this day, CinemaScope movies are still played on screens (virtually all round the world) that can show such films, whereas VistaVision (much loved by Alfred Hitchcock) and Cinerama (much loved by 1960s potheads, and, for a time, Stanley Kubrick, if only for "2001") no longer are made. CinemaScope films, no longer bearing that label since they now are the norm, are what we watch in cinemas, what we watch on DVD players in the "letter-box" form, even on flat-screen LCD/LED televisions. We also might discuss the aspect ratio matter, but I think I've made my point; specifically, The Alexandra Cinema showed CinemaScope films on a bona fide Cinemascope screen long before any other cinema in Coventry. CINERAMA involved a curved screen, CinemaScope DID NOT! That much aside, I still retain the view that you are (save in this instance) the most erudite contributor to this site, myself included, but only by 35mm.

I'm acutely aware of the differences between Cinerama, Cinemascope and Panavison, thank you very much LongfordLad. However, I very much doubt that you are? Cinerama (using either 3x35mm prints or one 70mm print) is projected onto onto a slatted screen which is flat in the vertical plane but severely curved in the horizontal plain. LINK CinemaScope is projected onto a screen which is very slightly curved in the vertical plane and slightly more curved in the horizontal plain such that all points of the screen are equidistant from the projector lens. LINK To the best of my knowledge there were no such screens in Coventry during the 1950s and 1960s (although they are standard today). PanaVision is similar in concept to CinemaScope but can be projected onto either a slightly curved screen or a totally flat screen (but with some loss of brightness and sharpness in the corners). LINK Since the advent of the Panatar lens, CinemaScope and Panavision prints have been totally interchangeable. In practice, 'Scope films of either format were usually projected onto the bottom half of a conventional flat screen giving a 'widescreen' or (more accurately) 'letterboxed' appearance. This was certainly the case at the Empire although I can remember it happening only once at the Gaumont (for 'The Great Escape', which looked awful).

A picture of the Empire/ABC Hertford Street in the 1960's from Coventry Telegraph site

A better frontage shot of the Empire via CET site, this from 1952

I was wrong he worked at the standard cinema in Tile Hill and they used to get the bus with the news reels to the Plaza near the arches

Hi Deano Great photos that's how I like to remember Hertford street I don`t like it as it is now

Au contraire, mon ami. Having spent some thirty years in Canada's film industry, including two years a vice-president of the Canadian Film & Television Production Association and a similar amount of time as a consultant to the Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association, I am fully familiar with film production methods and with the various product delivery systems. I am unable to explain whatever possessed me to assert last evening that the CinemaScope technology did not require a curved screen. That assertion was erroneous. but my suggestion that you were mistaking CinemaScope for Cinerama was occasioned by the fact that Cinerama screens, requiring more adaptation - indeed, in many cases, occasioning the building of new, dedicated cinemas - was, perhaps, a logical assumption, and was by no means arising from a presumption that you were technically-challenged. I apologize that tenor of my post was such as to imply as much, whatever my intentions. Your own comments in today's post that expresses doubt that I know anything about film projection is understandable from what you inferred from my post, and further was tempered by the question mark at the end of the comment, thereby causing no offence. In discussing the VistaVision system, a system developed by Paramount Pictures, the only company to reject Fox's offer to make Cinemascope available to any studio in Hollywood, we both neglected to point out that the last movie bearing the VistaVision brand was released in 1961, or that it was the VistaVision technology that was the progenitor of the Canadian-originated IMAX system that attaches more significance to overall image size than image width. Incidentally, my comment on VistaVisions "poor man's" relationship to Cinemascope was merely an observation respecting the relative costs of the competing systems for film exhibitors, and not in any way to suggest identical technologies. I mistakenly wrote that 2001 - A Space Odyssey was a Cinerama release, but - shown in Toronto (with a lengthy run of four years) exclusively at the city's only Cinerama-equipped movie house, The Glendale - it was a Panavision 70 release. There is no dispute as to the eventual pre-eminence of Panavison, which leaned heavily on the vision of the Cinerama developers, and leaned heavily on the technical wizardry of CinemaScope and Todd-AO. But, before I put everyone to sleep, let me bring this post back to conformity with Historic Coventry's own mandate, and state categorically that the Alexandra Cinema showed films on a CinemaScope screen, and showed them with a sound system second to none it the city. Yes, it was a wide screen, literally (and I use this term accurately so as to avoid any notion that I mean "figuratively") from wall-to-wall across what was - by comparison to other city centre cinemas, I admit - a narrow auditorium. In 1954 I was 11, so I think that my pocket-money at the time was insufficient to stretch so far as a two-way bus tickets to the city centre to see the first two Cinemascope releases - THE ROBE and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE - and, stepping aside from Historic Coventry for a moment, the highest-billed star of that movie, Marilyn Monroe, made $750 per week, Betty Garble had a picture deal of $150,000, and Lauren Bacall was on a weekly fee of $5000. When I discovered the Alexandra and CinemaScope, I was a year-or-so older, enjoying small earnings from doing this or that for neighbours/family, none of which I am here prepared to discuss. Still and all, when venturing into the Alex, I elected for the cheapest seat in the house. Let me tell you, Dutchman, from three or four rows back, it was easy to see why the Cowboys failed to recognise the Indians creeping up on them (for all that both were on the screen at the same time) because I (left-hand side of the cinema) didn't spot them immediately either, they were miles away on the right-hand side of the screen. I exaggerate, of course, but only to reinforce that the Alex showed CinemaScope films in Cinemascope. All films were shown on a CinemaScope screen. Whatever the Alex was before it became the home of CinemaScope (of this I have no idea), whatever it became later (and of this we have more than an idea), the Alex in the mid-50s (albeit for a few years at best) was the finest experience any Coventry Hollywood cineaste might enjoy. Dutchman, I was there - I saw those films - and do you really think I was unable to recognize and value the difference? (Posted without editing.)

I'm sure you're absolutely correct LongfordLad it's just that I don't remember the 'Alex' that way. By the early 1960s it was run down and relying on increasingly sleazy second-string movies for its audience. Under-16s were eventually barred from entry altogether. The very first CinemaScope films in Coventry were actually shown at the Gaumont but as I mentioned above they did not look very good when letterboxed in the middle of their very tall, very flat screen and the idea was quickly abandoned. I've read that the Plaza in Spon End was equipped for CinemaScope as well but I've never seen inside as it closed as a cinema circa 1959 and under-18s were barred from entry when it reopened lbetween 1963 and 1968 as a bingo hall.

You surprise me that the Plaza closed so long ago. A cinema I never visited, but one I passed frequently on the Tile Hill bus in the early 50s on my way to see my elder sister who was married, had two children, and was "enjoying" life in a pre-fabricated "home" beyond the terminus of the Tile Hill bus, I think "hostel" was the word used to describe such places. The Plaza always looked magnificent, but, like the Regal on Foleshill Road, it was a second-run house, and these would also have included the Forum, Standard, Lyric and such. Now you mentioned in a recent post the Astoria, a cinema I once would have placed in the same category as those above (though I don't recall visiting that cinema, but - perhaps later in the mid-50s - it began to show first-run foreign films and also - as I recall - it was the first-run home for I AM A CAMERA, based on Christopher Isherwood's novel "Goodbye to Berlin", which later was the basis of the movie CABARET. Maybe the theme of the Isherwood novel was such that the major cinemas in the city centre were reluctant show a film based on a gay-themed novel, but later I saw I AM A CAMERA, a Romulus Films (British) release that starred Laurence Harvey, Julie Harris and Shelley Winters. Whatever may have been in Isherwood's book, and I certainly do not recall it as having an overtly-gay theme, and I AM A CAMERA, like the musical adaptation, CABARET, was an innocuous film, and probably carried no more than an "A" certificate, meaning then adult accompaniment. Having said as much about the Astoria and I AM A CAMERA (and I am not certain that the Astoria had the first-run) , I am far less certain about its being a home for foreign films. I know the Opera carried the occasional foreign title, but the cinema I recall - and not the Paris - was outside the city centre, farther afield than the Alex, but specializing in foreign films. The Astoria fills the bill on some accounts, but I'm simply unsure. What do you think? Was there another cinema, close to the city centre - not IN the city centre - that featured foreign-language films?

Perhaps 'La Continental' - Earlsdon Street?

The only cinema in the central area of Coventry I can think of which might have shown them was the Palladium in King William Street?

Try this one, vaguely recalled, vindicating moi by way of th Internet - La Continental, which opened on December 5, 1911 as the Imperial Picture Palace. This imperial edifice held 276 seats - all on the same level. As thing imperial go, this imperial gesture had more in common with an empire built by the rulers of the Isle of Capri, rather than one that mirrored the scope of the British Empire. In 1926 the cinema was closed, opening later it had lengthened the auditorium and added a balcony. The seating capacity now was 450 - is there no end to this cinema's greed! This cinema's home all along was at 3 Earlsdon Street, now you might see where I was going with the Astoria direction. The cinema was bombed in 1940, but restored and re-opened in 1946. On July 4, 1950, after a refurbishing, it came back as the Imperial Continental Cinema, featuring films continental, or -as we said when I wur a lad - films foreign. From the website I found: In 1956, with a change of name to La Continental Cinema, the exterior was modernised to the plans of Modernisation Ltd, and they also modernised the interior in 1957 when CinemaScope was installed. It (the website, goes on to say: n 1958, due to competition from the Paris Cinema which also screened 'Continental' films, the (sic) La Continental Cinema went over to screening un-rated 'Continental' films to members only, as it became the Moulin Rouge Cinema Club. It was closed in February 1963, and the building was demolished in July 1965. Here's what it looked like: a regular movie house from 1911, 'cos I can't copy and paste the image, something to do with the Geneva Convention and the treatment of war criminals - they should never have changed the name to La Continental. With this style of research, people will begin to call me Dutchman II, the Netherlander from Canada, or (sacre bleu) the Belgian. Now has anyone offered anything on the Rex Cinema, Corporation Street, that was bombed in 1940 and never re-opened? Unedited.

I missed your post - but well-played, that man.