Coventry Cinemas

This came up in a pub quiz a long time ago. IIRC there have been well over 20! Of course, at one time there was no tv or wireless. It amazes me they had movies before sound.

Good point, however photography was also invented before sound recording! The jump to movies from stills does seem logical when you consider the progression through flip-book animation.

I've posted this list before, but the link has since changed. Has anyone a copy of Ninety Years of Cinema in Coventry?

You can count them here: From the Coventry Evening Telegraph, June 1940.

Sad to report the old Paris Cinema (later The Empire Music Venue) is under threat of demolition. If I may, I encourage members to object to the application.

My grandma used to work in that café, during WW1 - she would fetch the fish from the market and a man from one of the factories round the corner offered to carry her bags every day! They began a relationship and their first child was born in 1916, but they couldn't marry as he wasn't free - he was my granddad. His wife died of TB in 1925 by which time they had four children and another on the way, but by then were living outside Coventry where nobody knew them and they could pretend to be married! It was "shameful" in those days, so when I was about 12 if I asked when they'd got married, gran always replied "At the end of the Great War" but it's only because of ancestry etc that I found out the Family Secret!

I can't remember the name of the cinema, maybe the Opera House, but it was along from the Coventry Theatre. I used to catch the 5 or the 5a to Coundon right beside it and scared myself looking at the photos they showed outside of the horror films they specialized in. The stills of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee were enough to give me the willies.

Opera House is correct

Hi Lindatee, Whenever I got the shudders over a weird film, my mum used to spoil it by saying "It's only a film".

Hi all, Just a little word on the subject of cinema interests. The cinema organ, from the Coventry Gaumont, is in the process of being rebuilt & assembled by members of Cannock Organ Society. Coventry Gaumont organ being played in 1960.

I've just been sent the detail regarding the redevelopment of the old Paris/Empire - looks like they are trying to keep the frontage but looks like another Lego-block-build to me. Planning Application.

Hi Neil, I knew I shouldn't have given our Michael's Lego away!

Silly story, but my brother was, for a time, the projectionist at the Roxy on Foleshill Road in the early '60s. He let me and my friend into a side door to watch some awful cowboy film. When the lights came up, we were the only ones in the cinema and hid under the seats until we were able to creep out. No wonder the theatres all went bust!