Coventry Cinemas

I'm curious to know when the modern frontage was added? Every other picture I've seen shows it with its orginal decorative front:

Well Dutchman, you have done it again, clever boy. It looks like an actual Opera house then doesn't it. I too would be interested in when it was actually built or when it first showed movies . Is that the Coventry Coat of Arms i see on the front ?

PS........ Are you up late Dutchman or are you an early riser???

I'm always up late, typically till 4.00am. There are certain internet tasks which can only be done after midnight but preferably before I'm too drunk to stay awake any longer.

Thinking about pubs closed and pulled down set me thinking - what about cinemas? Ones that I used included: The Standard, later the Godiva (last time I saw it, it was a bingo hall) The Savoy, Radford The Opera House, Hales St The Alexandra (last time I saw it, it was a duplex) The Empire (became ABC) I think it was the Ritz in Spon End The Regal The Gaumont (became the Odeon) There was the Continental in Earlsdon; I never went there as such, but I think it changed its name...? There was one in Wyken, in the shopping centre, forgotten its name. The Opera House still had its organist when I went there as a kid. I remember seeing the film "Prince Valiant" there...and the film broke. The organist was a useful stop-gap while they mended it. I went to the Standard Saturday morning matinees, and I saw the Dam Busters there when it first came out. Cost all of sixpence. Even the Standard still had its organist, too, when I was a kid, but he didn't last as long as it took for me to reach my teens. OMG, I've almost forgotten what it was like to go to a cinema!

Became Theatre One The Plaza, last used as a bingo hall. Was originally the Imperial. Became La Continentale for a short period before closing. The latter was part adult nightclub/part cinema. There was another cinema in Earlsdon, the Astoria. It was a glorified shed and I hated it!

The Savoy is a bingo hall when it closed as a cinema, three of my friends who I went to school with at Hill Farm, went in when it was derelict, and found the camera equipment which contained mercury, which they ate, they were in hospital for a long time, one boy and his sister had taken it, one of the sisters told me she went after she had taken some to get off school

Yeah, the Astoria - I remember it now, and of course, the Savoy. There was the Forum, as well, wasn't there?

That was the one on the Walsgrave Road, forgot to mention it earlier.

The Forum was the one you couldn't name at Wyken

Reading the posts of late I would like to add, the person who took over the Crown cinema and revamped it into the Paris cinema also took on the Standard cinema and called it the Godiva, I got to know quite well. Cannot for the life of me remember his name. The amount of times me and my wife were greeted by him and given coffee with free entrance to the cinema became a bit of an embarrassment. I know it was genuine gesture by him as we were married and working two jobs each to save money to buy our first house. The reason he closed down the Godiva, as he stated, was because he could no longer get the right quality family films. Now there's a person who sticks by his guns.

I remember him too - and I can't remember his name either! My brother knew him really well; one night, my brother came out form a film went over the road to the car park, and there was a car pretty much filled with thick black smoke. Bro went back, and grabbed the manager/owner - it was the Standard cinema then - and having failed to get the car's owner to respond, both went back, and broke a window to get into the car. There was an oily rag smouldering away nicely inside it. If I think hard enough for long enough, I might just remember the guy's name..... As the 'Godiva', I think the last film that my wife and I saw there was 2001: A Space Odyssey. I remember that was his reason for closing the cinema, but I'm not totally accepting of the veracity of it. The cinema was really full when good films were shown, and there seemed to be plenty of suitable films. It could be that he had just had enough of it, because he must have been getting on a bit then.

The Opera House has been mentioned as a cinema but I'm not sure if it has had a mention when it was a theatre. This is an advert placed in 1899 in the Midland Daily News (now the Coventry Telegraph). I like the mention of a late car to Bedworth.

I don't know when it was turned into a cinema, but I have happy memories of seeing films there in the early 50s, and it was really helpful when the film broke, and the organ, complete with its organist, rose up majestically and took over while they fixed it! It seems that it was made into a cinema after the 1940 bomb damage. Like the advert, though! Info link I was surprised to see that the Hippodrome has been demolished - b----y vandals!!!

My brother told me of the times, as kids, he and his friends, during the war, would walk down from Radford and enter the Opera House from the rear, and watch the films from behind the screen for free. Apparently this was a regular thing until one kid was killed, he was run over when he got his foot caught in the tramlines in Bishop St, he was wearing his mother's shoes at the time.