Old Manchester cinemas

[Johnny Mars Bar]

Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate a bit of well acted porn as much as the next man.

But the thought of watching it in a cinema surrounded by weird fuckers who are quite happy to be sat there wanking away in front of a bunch of strangers, is enough to make me physically sick.

What sort of not right would go to a place like that?

Better getting it done there there than at the school nativity play I suppose.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Looking at how fine the old cinemas were — not just in Manchester, but all over the country — you realise what an immense architectural heritage has simply been trashed.
It's staggering what was simply thrown away in the fifties and sixties in the name of ‘modernity’.
They were, for some, the temples that they grew up in. I know that my first visits to the cinema, especially on my own, first in Pinner, at the Langham (north-west London, you can look it up on the internet, there are superb photos), then Harrow at the Granada (same area of London), another fine old art deco cinema which I think is being refurbished at present, I know that those visits were part of a coming of age for me.
Very first film I saw in Manchester was Dr Doolittle. The family was on a visit to Manchester prior to moving up. This would have been around Christmas, 1967. I remember it being freezing oop north. (Wasn't much warmer at Watford Junction, to be fair). I'm almost certain that I saw that in a cinema off Piccadilly Gardens, maybe in Portland Street. Or is it possible that it was in the Gardens themselves? I think it was an Odeon. Any old timers able to confirm that there was such a cinema as central as that?

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

Looking at how fine the old cinemas were — not just in Manchester, but all over the country — you realise what an immense architectural heritage has simply been trashed.
It's staggering what was simply thrown away in the fifties and sixties in the name of ‘modernity’.
They were, for some, the temples that they grew up in. I know that my first visits to the cinema, especially on my own, first in Pinner, at the Langham (north-west London, you can look it up on the internet, there are superb photos), then Harrow at the Granada (same area of London), another fine old art deco cinema which I think is being refurbished at present, I know that those visits were part of a coming of age for me.
Very first film I saw in Manchester was Dr Doolittle. The family was on a visit to Manchester prior to moving up. This would have been around Christmas, 1967. I remember it being freezing oop north. (Wasn't much warmer at Watford Junction, to be fair). I'm almost certain that I saw that in a cinema off Piccadilly Gardens, maybe in Portland Street. Or is it possible that it was in the Gardens themselves? I think it was an Odeon. Any old timers able to confirm that there was such a cinema as central as that?

Can't recall a cinema in Piccadilly. Perhaps yer trying to tell us that it was Dr. Doolittle at the Cinephone on Market Street?

 

[Big Swifty]

Don’t know what happened to the Coronation. I have not been to Northenden for donkey’s years.
Saturday morning Forum was a regular ritual in my day. 4d. iirc. I saw the 1955 cup final there on Pathe news and became a blue on the spot.

The Coronation was little more than a tin shack.

Does anyone remember the Tudor in Didsbury? (I am really goimg back now). It was a lovely cosy little cinema tucked away down a residential side street in Didsbury village, and never had very many customers. I wondered how it kept going and was very sorry when it closed, way back in the early 60s I suppose.

I was fascinated by the names - the Radnor in Hulme, the Cintra (Harpurhey?) and rhe Roxy (Hollinwood). And where were Harpurhey and Hollinwood? There was a whole page of Manchester cinemas in the Evening News (when the Evening News was a broadsheet), with dteails of what was on, the times of showing, etc.


I loved the Art Deco picture palaces - the Regal Levenshulme. the Forum in Wythenshawe and so on. To feature films, trailers newsreels, and if you were lucky a theatre organ that rose up and played all sorts. You got value for money. And you got change out of a tanner (6d, to you youngsters). Or so it seemed.

 

[Dave Ewing's Back 'eader]

Not too many shouts out for North Manchester Cinemas. I used to go the the Saturday afternoon matinee, kids used to stamp their feet when the film broke or stopped

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Where was the Mayfair? North Manchester had The Empire on Factory Brow, the Cintra in 'Apper'ay, The Avenue on the corner of Viccy Avenue, the Essoldo in Collyhurst, The Fourways up in the bandit country of Moston. The number of cinemas was incredible. The MUEN had page after page of what was showing. LCP was everywhere. Bloody great names - all yer get now is Odeon, Vue.

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Not too many shouts out for North Manchester Cinemas. I used to go the the Saturday afternoon matinee, kids used to stamp their feet when the film broke or stopped

View attachment 110255

Aah, the rowdiness of those matinées! It was the same down south. I went to a few, and it was astonishing. The entire auditorium filled with raucous, laughing, shouting children. Not an adult head to be seen, other than the usherettes.
Pirate films and westerns and the like. Poor films, generally, but it didn't matter. Rabble-rousing stuff.

 

[Barcon]

Was that the adult cinema next to the medlock River? Can't say I went in there but knew it was there. Watched Rocky 4 at the Odeon though.

Tatler?

 

[DenisHasDoneIt]

Where was the Mayfair? North Manchester had The Empire on Factory Brow, the Cintra in 'Apper'ay, The Avenue on the corner of Viccy Avenue, the Essoldo in Collyhurst, The Fourways up in the bandit country of Moston. The number of cinemas was incredible. The MUEN had page after page of what was showing. LCP was everywhere. Bloody great names - all yer get now is Odeon, Vue.

The Mayfair was on Bury Old Road diagonally opposite Besses o’th’ Barn train (now Metrolink) station. Gone the same way as the Classic in Bury, now some hideous puggie arcade, and the fabulous Art-Deco Odeon, also Bury, - which showed many a belting James Bond double-feature when I was a kid - and which became a bingo hall, a night club, and finally a pile of bricks.

The ABC on Deansgate - now a Wetherspoons, opposite the Barton Arcade - was the last cinema I had a cigarette in. Must have needed one, because the movie was River’s Edge, Dennis Hopper’s Blue Velvet follow-up, and even nastier than that.

 

[old blue]

Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate a bit of well acted porn as much as the next man.

But the thought of watching it in a cinema surrounded by weird fuckers who are quite happy to be sat there wanking away in front of a bunch of strangers, is enough to make me physically sick.

What sort of not right would go to a place like that?

Probably referees that didn't have a game that weekend.

 

[lazerblue]

thats one from my distant past, down the new road, beswick