CINEMAS, DISAPPEARED OR REPURPOSED

The Academy Cinema

The Academy Oxford Street was a noted art house cinema. It was run by the Austrian migr film director George Hoellering. It showed foreign films. In 1948 Anne Allnatt (1926-2016), the daughter of a successful property developer, started working in an office in the building. She learnt of the cinema's existence and attended it by means of a hole in a wall from an adjacent bomb sit. In the mid-1950s she and her father bought the building. The cinema was enhanced in a number of ways. A first-floor restaurant, The Pavilion, was added. Its decor was designed by the photographer Angus McBean. In 1956 Miss Allnatt married Mr Hoellering.

The Academy closed in 1986.

Location: Marks & Spencer, 165 Oxford Street, W1D 2JW (orange, turquoise)

The Astorias

There were four great Astoria cinemas in London. In the 1970s The Finsbury Astoria was The Rainbow, a noted rock venue.

Location: 157 Charing Cross Road, W1T 7RJ (blue, red)

The Universal Church of The Kingdom of God, 232 Seven Sisters Road, N4 3NP

See Also: MUSIC VENUES, DISAPPEARED

The Carlton

The Carlton in Essex Road, Islington, was given an Egyptian exterior.

Location: 161-169 Essex Road, N1 2SN (red, grey)

The Gaumont State Cinema

The Gaumont State Cinema.

Location: 197-199 Kilburn High Road, NW6 7HY

Granada

The Granada is an art deco cinema in Walthamstow was designed by Cecil Massey. The interior was by Thedore Komisarjevsky. It closed in 2003.

Location: 186 Hoe Street, E17 4QH

The Himalaya Palace

The former Himalaya Palace cinema (1928) in Southall is a listed building with dragons on top.

Location: 14 South Road, Southall, UB1 1RT

The New Gallery Cinema

The New Gallery Cinema opened as a gallery, became a restaurant and then a cinema. The building was taken over by Adventists who retained the cinema fittings, including its 1925 Wurlitzer organ. The building became a branch of Habitat. The organ was sometimes played when the shop was open. In 2012 the building became the flagship store Burberry, a clothing brand.

Location: 121 Regent Street, W1B 4HS (purple, grey)

Porn Cinemas

Theatrical clubs had enabled the acting profession to evade the censorship of the Lord Chamberlain's Office. The department s right to censor plays was ended by the Theatres Act of 1968. The pornographic film director John Jesnor Lindsay appreciated that the same legal loophole could be applied to cinemas. He opened the Taboo Cinema Club and London Blue Movie Centre cinemas In the 1970s pornographic blossomed in and around Soho.

Previously, some of these had screened cartoons. While living in London the American filmmaker John Landis had come to know of the cartoon cinemas. When he wrote the script for the movie An American Werewolf In London (1981) he incorporated them into it. By the time he was able to film what he had written, the cinemas had converted to showing pornographic films. He adjusted the text accordingly and incorporated his own British pornographic film See You Next Wednesday. This featured Linzi Drew, a Page 3 model.

In the early 1980s videos began to become commonplace. This development killed off the porn cinemas. The films became retro porn.

Location: London Blue Movie Centre, 37 Berwick Street, W1F 8RJ (purple, orange)

The Taboo Cinema Club, 15-18 Great Newport Street, WC2H 7JE (blue, black)

See Also: PORNOGRAPHY

Jacey Cinema

In 1936 the foyer of the Queen's Hotel was converted into a 350-seat newsreel cinema. In the late 1950s newsreels stopped being made. In 1960 the premises were acquired by Jacey Cinemas and became the Jacey Cartoon Cinema. A decade later it was renamed Jacey Leicester Square and started showing soft porn movies. The building stopped being used as a cinema in 1978.

Location: 7 Leicester Square, WC2H 7NA (red, brown)

The Queens Cinema

The art deco Queens Cinema (1932) in Bayswater was designed by John Stanley Beard of Beard & Clare.

Location: 96-98 Bishop's Bridge Road, W2 5AA (blue, red)

The Scala Cinema

Location: 60 Charlotte Street, W1P 1LS. The building was demolished in 1970. (blue, yellow)

The Trocadero

The Trocadero in Elephant & Castle was the first cinema in Britain to show Rock Around The Clock. The local Teddy Boys slashed the venue's seats, creating a precedent that was copied by the peers around the country.

Location: Metro Central Heights (formerly Alexander Fleming House), 119 Newington Causeway, SE1 6BA

David Backhouse 2024