Coventry Cinemas

It might be necessary to knock the old place down but I , and I suspect many others , will always hold fond memories of the Ritz . in the 50s we knew it as the Dovedale and attended the Saturday morning rush - when we had a tanner or so . I think it was rebranded as the Ritz in the early 60s , I'm sure someone will know exactly when . As a teenager in 1963 and in my first job I could afford to take a girlfriend on a Friday night .We view the world now with a much more sophisticated , maybe defensively cynical experience , not with the freshness and wonder of youth .The Ritz will remain part of my kaleidoscope of happy memories , youth , Beatles , clothes , swinging sixties , romance et al. Not a bad epitaph for a nondescript fleapit in a Midlands backwater .

Ah, controversy. My recollection of the sequential faces of the cinema at the junction of Windmill Road/Dovedale Avenue with Longford Road is - as it opened - the Dovedale (well documented), followed by the Rivoli, then the Ritz, and, finally, back to its original name, the Dovedale, before closure. You - walrus - remember differently, but everyone is allowed to be wrong about some things, but not, unfortunately for you, about the Dovedale/Rivoli/Ritz/Dovedale. We shall set aside for all time your reference to "the Saturday morning rush", for what you describe as such was the "Chums' Club", a "rush" usually being associated - throughout the English-speaking world - with last-minute cheap seats for the "main event". Here in Toronto, for example, same-day tickets to performances of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra continue to be characterized as "rush" ($130 orchestra seats at $20 a pop, but were the orchestra to perform a matinee, the tickets to such a performance - even if at a significantly lower price - would not be described as "rush", for everyone would be paying the fixed matinee price. Ditto with the Saturday morning "Chum's Club" - the admission was a tanner, and there was no tuppenny rush for latecomers. "Saturday morning rush" having been set aside, I was perplexed by your using the term "nondescript" about this glorious cinema (and adding the pejorative terms "fleapit" - about the cinema - and "Midlands backwater" - about Longford and, I suppose, Coventry - hardly enhanced your case, for all that you appeared to be cherishing the memories), for the Rivoli - whatever its name once once, whatever its name eventually became - was hardly lacking in distinctive features, not least of which being the impressive steps from street level to box office. I have known alcoholics anonymous whose 12-step program featured not so much as one step that might compare with a step comprising the set leading from the street to the cinema's box office and lobby/foyer, and the Shakespeare quotation above the arch! Nevertheless, your piece was well-written, otherwise up it would not have got my dander (avoiding ending a sentence with preposition). I'm sure your parents would recognize this much from your history school reports: Must try harder! My carping aside, it was rewarding to witness your more than apparent love of the cinema, whatever its name at the time.

Oh! What an emotive subject this cinema has become! I can no longer remember the chronology of the names. I can no longer remember what the kid's matinee on a Saturday morning was called. But no matter, I enjoyed going there both to the kid's matinee and later seeing a few good films there. It was an impressive building for a cinema in the suburbs. I have often wondered what Longford/Foleshill did to warrant such a big cinema. There were other cinemas in the suburbs, but this must have been one of the biggest outside of the city centre. I had forgotten the Shakespeare quote until Longfordlad reminded me: "All the world's a stage ....." if I remember correctly. I am sure there were not many "fleapits" with a Shakespeare quote. Perhaps Longford was not such a cultural wilderness after all? I think I must have seen my last film there in the early 60's. The back row seats were doubles. --- Like you, Walrus, it brings back a multitude of memories. Much later, on one of my few visits back to Coventry it was a Sikh Temple! It is quite possible that we three sat through the same Saturday performances of Disney cartoons, Laurel & Hardy, and "Curse of Dr. Fu Man Chu" with its inevitable cliff-hanger final scene. Now, ca. 50 years later, thanks to the wonders of the Internet and the Historic Coventry Forum, we sit in front of our computers, in our respective corners of the world, reliving those memories. It is ironic that the electronic revolution that has made this possible was what led to the demise of the cinemas. A "fleapit" in the generic sense maybe, but I have sat in a lot worse cinemas. I have been fortunate enough to have visited some fantastic places on my travels, but never once have I considered that I grew up in a "Midlands backwater". Perhaps Walrus is right, and we tend to see things differently now, but for me these are great memories, and an indelible part of my past.

My mum and her mate came out of the Rex after watching 'Gone with the Wind'as the sirens went off, One lucky escape for them!!!!!!!!

the Ritz Longford Road via britain from Above site Courtesy: www.britainfromabove.org.uk

here is the former site of the Rex Cinema,looking at the photo you can see the slope where the seating would have been,leading down to the stage Courtesy: www.britainfromabove.org.uk

The Empire Cinema Hertford Street 1946,looks like roof has been repaired after damage from the blitz Courtesy: www.britainfromabove.org.uk

Prince Of Wales Cinema Stoney Stanton Road via Britain From Above, they state it is from 1920 Courtesy: www.britainfromabove.org.uk

I believe that Dutchman is wrong about this, no great crime, and - in any event - Dutchman asserts that the CinemaScope film shown at the Gaumont was not a full-screen example of a CinemaScope exhibition; rather, a showing on a regular sized/shaped screen, a showing that might give moviegoers some idea of CinemaScope's advantages. My own money is one the Alexandra, and I appreciate that most of the contributors to this site recall that cinema in its 1960s incarnation as a porno hovel, and I admit that - even in its heyday (for me, its 1950srogramming) - the cinema had none of the exterior majesty generally associated with the city centre cinemas of the day; in short, it wasn't particularly well-placed, and its frontage was not prepossessing, but that SCREEN and that SOUND - just about unbeatable! That much aside, I issue a challenge to those among us better at online research than I. Might someone more familiar than I with the Coventry Evening Telegraph archives take a look at those archives and help out all of us. I submit this much to guide you - the first CinemaScope movie was THE ROBE, released in September, 1953 in the USA, released in the U.K. in London on November 19, 1953. Now, as I would imagine, the movie did not enter the provinces until early-1954, and some of the exhibitors there would have shown it at the earliest opportunity; however, some, given the subject matter and all, might have waited until Easter , 1954, to program the movie. This much is conjecture, to be sure, but we do know (collective memory, and all) that the film/movie was exhibited as a first-run movie in Coventry, and that THE ROBE was the first CinemaScope film surely is not in question. What we do not know is when, precisely, THE ROBE's run in Coventry began, or what cinema exhibited the film. Consequently, so far as I can imagine, a view of the movies playing in Coventry, and at what cinemas, might - through the CET archives - reveal all. Is anyone up for such a task?

Also remember that CinemaScope is a trade name. Other 'widescreen' films used the Panavision, Vistavision, and Todd-AO brandings. In later versions of 'widescreen' movies 70mm film stock was used in preference to the standard 35mm film.

Coventry Telegraph articles on the subject are contradictory, one says the Standard was the first to have CinemaScope and another says the Gaumont was. (Read enough articles and every cinema in Coventry is claimed to have had it first!) Rank's own archives record the Coventry Gaumont as having CinemaScope lenses and Gaumont-Kalee stereo sound added to its GK21 projectors between January and May 1954. Various sources suggest the first CinemaScope film shown at the Gaumont was "How to Marry a Millionaire". Several sources give 1955 as the date when the Alexandra installed a CinemaScope screen and stereo sound. There probably is no definitive answer.

Ah, Dutchman, of course there is a definitive answer, though I suspect that answer might not favour my case. To elucidate, we know that CinemaScope was a 20th Century Fox trademark. We also know that THE ROBE was the first movie filmed in the new format. Then came HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE and BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF. So three films from 20thC. Fox, the first a second of which are well enough known by every cineaste with an I.Q. above 50 (and there are some), the third may have escaped the long time attention of those with I.Q.s above 150, for it was something of a floperoony, notwithstanding its (at the time) excellent cast of Robert Wagner, Gilbert Roland, Terry Moore et al, for it told the story of a father and son team of sponge divers - Roland and Wagner - off the coast of Florida. The story could have been even less impressive had Roland and Wagner - father and son - been engaged in searching the ocean bed for toilet brushes, but you get my point. The Florida coastline and the Atlantic Ocean were much more suitable to the new filming technique than was its storyline or its cast. So now we have the first three films - again, in order THE ROBE, HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE and BENEATH THE 12-MILE REEF. Shot in that sequence, their appearances on the screens was a tad haphazard. Nevertheless, these three films were shot in CinemaScope. Now, let's ask, what was their respective debuts on Coventry film screens? And, while the films themselves are of no moment to this discussion, where they respectively were exhibited is. Hence my suggestion that one of our contributors, fully seized of the imperatives of viewing Coventry Evening Telegraph archives, might find the answer, particularly if such contributors - knowing the time of the films' release in Coventry (late 1953-early1954) - are familiar with the "now showing" section of that newspaper, the section that advised what movies were showing and where. This matter of public interest - however narrow an interest that public evinces, no matter how insignificant this matter might be - is of more consequence than who might have been right (probably you), who might have been wrong (seemingly me), in this debate. By the way, I thought Robert Wagner's "page-boy" haircut in PRINCE VALIANT - a slightly-later 20th C. Fox production - quite the thing at the time, though that should colour nobody's view of the historical importance/unimportance of what is on this agenda. Respectfully submitted from Toronto, LongfordLad

Sold!