Coventry Cinemas

jonboy, dutchman Correct, and some kid would sing the words and we would pretend to do the paddling, and it swept down the street, from one crowd to another. I do believe he visited the hippodrome at some time.late thirties, and I may have attended the show. memories of my early childhood are in a limbo not quite forgetting, not quite remembering.

I didn't Dreamtime but thanks for pointing that out. The film clip was allegedly shot on the River Thames near Shepperton film studios. It's Jonboy who deserves most of the credit as I wouldn't have known what to look for without his help.

dutchman, yes thanks, missed the film first time, and thanks jonboy, wonder if you ever saw the old film?

Yes Kaga, I remember seeing the film at the Forum in the forties. It was really scary for a young lad and afterwards as it was nighttime, I ran home all the way via the lighted roads and not my normal route through the back entries. Thanks for the film clip Dutchman first time I've seen that for nearly seventy years and I actually remembered most of the words.( I'd have a job to think what I did yesterday though)

It's not just Coventry it seems: Why is the UK still knocking down historic cinemas?

Hi Dutchman, Hi all The answer to why is quite simple. Not enough folk are going to the cinema for them to stay open on a viable bases. We might then ask why that is. I have lost count of the number of radio & television interviews where folk have simply said that they will not go out in an evening for fear of suffering anti-social or criminal activity. Preferring to stay home & watch their cinema-sound & picture televisions. Regards the actual buildings, if they are no longer viable as cinemas, who can afford to upkeep them if they have no other commercial use? My own personal opinion is that folk love to go out & socialise, as I indeed do, but not in a climate of fear. That is what needs sorting before anything else. Most of you know that I am a profuse public transport user, which is correct, in the day-time. Not in an evening, for the reason as above. Providing my eyesight is up to it, evening is the one time where my motor gets an outing. If my eyesight is not up to driving, it is either a taxi, or I stay in, hopefully safe & sound. So often it is the perceptions that dictate the way we think. There have been a few occasions where I have been out late on public transport for a Belgrade show or the like & as yet I have been perfectly safe. It is often the perception, that things are so bad, when in fact I can remember very awful late evening behaviour in Coventry in the fifties & the sixties.

i have asked this question before, but does anyone know if there was ever a news/cartoon cinema in Coventry, where you could just spend and lose a hour, like in London when waiting for a train?

not that I know of post-war. But there was one in Birmingham I went to at one time with my dad while mum was shopping.

Thanks Philipin, but no thats not what I meant, there was a news and cartoon cinema on Victoria station, and one in Brighton during the wwii, wondered if Coventry ever had one, I know the Opera House did special one 'off' features, like Turpins world title fight, and the Queen in 53, I think they did the Boat Show one year etc Can you imagine a cinema show that only had two films and two records, constantly for over a year, watched by over a score of Coventry lads. made laughable by the wisecracks from the audience.

What you describe, Kaga, was called in its day a news or newsreel cinema. So far as I know there was not such a cinema in Coventry; indeed, for all that in 1951 there were somewhere in the order of twenty news/newsreel cinemas in London, no more than a dozen existed in the rest of the country. [Note: Seebohm Rowntree's ENGLISH LIFE AND LEISURE (Longman's, London, 1951) for more information]. Such cinemas existed in Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, but not in Coventry, methinks.

Hi Dutchman, Even I was confused over the new entertainment venue - 'Empire' ?????

Thank you Longford Lad, I wasn't sure if the Opera House started out that way in it's earlier days, I seem to recall it was a very small cinema, but then memory is getting lax. You remember the joke Tom Mix in 'Cement' or Wallace Beery in the 'Drunken Man' there were scores of them

According to the Theatres` Trust website, the Royal (yes, Royal) Opera House, Coventry, was an opera house from its completion as a building for that express purpose in 1889 until 1940 when it was bombed by the Luftwaffe. It reopened in 1941 as a cinema with a view to staying as such (a cinema) until funds might be raised to acquire it as a public building with a view to establishing a civic theatre. So, Kaga, it certainly wasn`t a small site; it seated 2000 in its last days as an opera house. But it also was not a cinema of the Golden Age of Cinemas - for, in the cinema`s Golden Age, the Opera House was an opera house! The return of the Opera House in 1941 presented many innovations in cinema; specifically, it was very big (about 1200 seats), and it had stalls, a circle, and an upper balcony. The latter was known as ``the Gods``, high and all as it was, but that was the term used for many theatres with an upper balcony. SMALL the Opera certainly was not, but it did play an admixture of first releases and classic (that is, older) productions. So far as Coventry cinemas of the time went, it was a biggie, for all that a gentleman of the day was recommended to ensure that his hat was placed firmly on the floor of the cinema, and not on the back of a passing rodent of unusual size, as he settled in to watch some postwar Apocalyptic bits of nonsense like THEM! or ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTER. Most of all, though, I liked the Opera screen - rear projection. Very posh in its anticipation of the multi-screen cinemas of a later era.