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As famed director David Lynch said ‘cinema enables a person to go into another world and have an experience’.
Films make us cry, laugh and often give us a much-needed distraction from anything we might be going through and with the new Arc cinema opening in Preston city centre, we’ll have even more chances to escape.
But did you know Preston has been building cinemas for over 115 years? Or that at its peak, Preston had 22 cinemas?
How it started
Preston’s first cinema was created in 1908 by Hugh Rain, also known by his stage name, Will Odna. He took over the Temperance Theatre on North Road, turning it into a cinema for silent films, before then doing the same with the Prince’s Theatre in 1913. Additionally, Hugh’s interest in films led him to create Kinema House. This was located opposite the Harris Institute, which became a leading film distributor in the North of England.
If you build it, they will come
As cinemas began to attract promoters and increasing investment, the first national cinema chain, Provincial Cinematograph Theatres (PCT) was created. PCT aimed to build film theatres which attracted wealthier audiences and their cinemas often had more extravagant features like private boxes, orchestras and writing desks, with free stationery!
Due to their desire to expand, PCT went onto buy an unfinished cinema in Preston! This was to become the New Victoria Theatre and it was designed by PCT Chief Architect W.E. Trent who also designed the Apollo Victoria Theatre in London. Opening in 1928, it was able to seat 1,450 people in the stalls and another 670 in the stands, giving it a total capacity of 2,120.
Not only that, it also had an organ which was played by famed organist Leslie J. Rogers on its opening night, and was continually played alongside the silent pictures. The New Victoria later become an Odeon and was actually redesigned to contain a cinema on the top floor and a dance hall on the ground floor in the 1960s.
Look who’s talking!
It wasn’t long before the ‘talkies’ became all the rage and Preston’s cinema scene needed to keep up. In 1932 the Carlton Cinema opened its doors on Blackpool Road and although it only had capacity for 650 people, significantly less than the New Victoria Theatre, it had a very attractive feature…it was fitted with sound! Although audiences were initially sceptical with some worrying ‘talkies’ would ‘adulterate the English language’, they became a hit. A survey conducted in 1935 revealed that Lancashire had 699 cinemas and at its peak Preston had 22.
Further expansion came in 1937 when the Ritz cinema was built on Church Street for a budget of £45,000, equivalent to around £2.5 million in today. It had the capacity for 1,650 patrons and a huge 40-foot cinema screen, the average modern cinema screen would be between 45-50 feet big. On its opening weekend it showed the comedy film, ‘Keep Fit’ which starred Lancashire’s own George Formby and it had around 2,000 attend its opening night.
It was clear that Preston’s love of cinema was only on the rise…or was it?
Just when you think you’re out, they pull you back in
With television ownership increasing across England in the 1940s-50s cinema attendance started to decline. However, multiple cinemas in Preston, such as the Regent cinema were still showing major Hollywood blockbusters and local patrons couldn’t resist.
A great example is the release of the first James Bond film in 1962 which brought more than 25,500 people to Preston’s Ritz Cinema in its first two weeks.
But the cinema industry took another hit in 1978 when VHS tapes became available. With films readily available to watch at home, the public didn’t need to go to the cinema or wait for a film to come on the TV, they could just buy it themselves. Additionally, the rise in multi-screen cinemas in the 1980s meant many cinemas, such as the Odeon, had to undergo revamps or faced closure, like the Ritz in 1987.
But by the 1990s it seemed to ramp back up with theatres such as the Vue Cinema in the Capitol Centre opening in 1991. By the turn of the century, Preston’s cinema scene was doing well and the city had successfully transitioned from traditional, single-screen cinemas for silent films to muti-theatre cinemas offering a wider range of films, from blockbusters to more niche offerings.
A quarter of a century later Preston is still investing in cinema and with the Arc cinema complex opening on 21 February, it proves that people still want ‘to go into another world and have an experience’.
If you enjoyed this piece then you might also enjoy Lisa Brown’s three part series exploring the old cinema sites of the city, there’s part one, part two and part three and this piece from Geoff Whittaker looking back at the former Odeon cinema (which became Tokyo Jo’s) and is now demolished.
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