This short film marks an important chapter in the history of cinema, being the first cinema to be built on a new site anywhere in Britain since the war. The film has no credits, although David Salmon, on his splendid website on cinemas in Hull – which also features this film – states that it was filmed by a newsreel crew. It certainly has the feel of a newsreel short film, with a commentary typical for newsreels, which at that time were commonly shown in cinemas.  Another, longer film, was made on the cinema in 1960, Full House - Cecil Cinema Hull.  This provides a much fuller portrait of the cinema, and shows other Hull cinemas of the time – we hope to have this film also on YFA Online before too long.

 

In the early twentieth century places licensed to show cinema mushroomed throughout the country, and Hull was no exception; with 29 cinemas or public halls showing films by 1914 – a higher proportion per population than most other large cities. The first major circuit of cinemas in Hull were developed by William Morton, including the Theatre Royal, the Grand Opera House, the Alexandra, the Prince's Hall, the Majestic, and the Holderness Hall. By 1938 36 cinemas and halls were licensed in Hull to exhibit films. This had been reduced to 25 cinemas and halls by 1945, 21 in 1959, 15 in 1960 and just 10 by 1964.

 

Cecil cinema was owned initially by a senior chartered accountant, T Fawley Judge, who set up Associated Hull Cinemas.  Geoff Mellor states that in fact it was his first acquisition, starting out as the old Electric Palace on the Anlaby Road, opening in 1911, until he re-built it as the Cecil Cinema Theatre in 1925 (the second theatre in Hull with this name).  David Salmon claims that it was originally the Theatre de-Luxe, operated by National Electric Picture Theatres (Salmon has photographs of both on his website – see References for Mellor and Salmon). Judge later acquired other venues, for example, the Plaza, turning William Morton’s Majestic into the Criterion, the Grand Theatre, which became the Dorchester, also from William Morton, along with the Princes Hall, the Priory, and the Central in Prospect Street. His successor as Chairman of Associated Hull Cinemas, Brinley Evans – Salmon has him as the founder of Hull Cinemas Limited – later added Langham on Hessle Road, Charlton, Savoy and Berkeley to the circuit (the company went into liquidation in 1978). For more on Brinley Evans see Bernard Goodwin, "Carry on Showing" (References).

 

Among the other many cinemas in Hull, there was the Tower Cinema on Anlaby Road, the Regent opposite, and the Regal Cinema opposite Hammonds. The East Hull Picturedrome, on the corner of Holderness Road and Brazil Street,  was opened in 1912, later, after modernisation, becoming the Ritz Cinema in 1928 (AKA the Savoy, now the shop Boyes). A list of Hull cinemas and when they closed can be found at British History Online (see also Allen Eyles – References). 

 

During the blitz of 1941, the Central and the Cecil were entirely destroyed, and five other cinemas, including the Carlton, were damaged.   As the film states, it was built to replace the old cinema which was situated across the road and which was bombed on the night of 8th May 1941 when Hull came under extremely heavy bombing (the site wasn’t cleared until 1953). It is doubtful whether the German bombing crews knew that on that week the Cecil was showing Charlie Chaplin’s spoof of Hitler, The Great Dictator!

 

During the 1920s new large plush picture palaces replaced the smaller venues. From then through to the 1950s was a boom time in cinema, before the large scale coming of TV (ITV didn’t start broadcasting to Hull until 1956). During the decades of the 1940s and 1950s, there were in excess of 200 cinema circuits of sizes varying from three sites to the many hundreds of major operators. As in so many other business areas most of the smaller enterprises have been taken over to leave just a few very large operators: Terra Firma, Empire, Cineworld.  

 

In the 1930s the average annual admissions to the cinema in Britain was around a staggering 1,000 million each year, making it by far the most popular paid-for leisure activity. The highpoint was 1946 when there would have been a strong desire to escape post-war reality, with 1,635 million admissions (31.5 million each week). This compares with 174 million for 2009, itself the highest total since 2002. Still, TV was on the way, and between 1956 and 1960 cinema attendance dropped from 21.1 m to 9.6m. Brinley Evans had been optimistic: the new Cecil having 1374 seats in the stalls and 678 in the balcony – 2052 in total. The demographics of cinema going have changed markedly since that time too: note the age group of the audience! 

 

Work on the new Cecil was begun in April 1955 and it was opened on 28^th November 1955.  It being a state of the art cinema of the time may explain how they managed to get the Managing Director of the Rank Organisation, John Davis, to open the cinema. At that time Rank owned the biggest chain of cinemas in the UK, starting out with Odeon and later buying up Gaumont-British Picture Corporation and Paramount. They also owned five major film studio complexes and were branching out into TV and other media products. His wife, Dinah Sheridan – seen in the film giving Brinley Evans a kitten – played in the TV comedy Don't Wait Up in the 1980s and starred as a ‘Time Lady’ in the Dr Who special, The Five Doctors, in 1983.

 

As can be seen, the cinema opened with Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch; followed by The Glen Miller Story, a Hitchcock film (needless to say) and Carmen Jones. Although heavily cut by the censors, The Seven Year Itch is the film that has the famous scene when Marilyn Monroe’s steps onto a subway grating and has her dress blown into the air – apparently precipitating the end of her marriage to Joe DiMaggio.

 

The Cecil was the longest lasting of Hull cinemas (the old ABC cinema closed about 6-7 years before Cecil). In 1971 the restaurant was converted into a cinema seating 137 (Cecil 2), and the following year the main auditorium was spilt into 2 smaller cinemas in the balcony (Cecil 1 & 3 each seating 307). This was renamed the Cannon triple until 1992 when it closed operation as a cinema on 26^th March 1992. It then became part of the MGM chain from 1994 (later under Virgin ownership) as Take Two triple, functioning as a bingo. 

 

The closure of so many wonderful old cinemas, or their conversion into multiplexes, is considered by many a national scandal. But there are those who aim to see some being restored. The East Riding Mail (03.11.2010) reported that The Cinema Theatre Association (CTA) were hoping that a buyer would help to restore the striking Edwardian building on Anlaby Road – which was the Tower Cinema and more recently a night club – back to its former glory. The Cinema Theatre Association is the first port of call for all those who like to join them in their mission of preserving and restoring old cinema and theatre buildings.

 

 

Allen Eyles, Old Cinemas, Shire Publications, 2001.

Kinematograph Year Book, 1914.

Geoff Mellor, Movie Makers and Picture Palaces, Bradford Libraries, 1996.

Jim Nelmes, An Introduction to Film Studies, Routledge, London, 1996.

British History Online, 'Social institutions', A History of the County of York East Riding: Volume 1: The City of Kingston upon Hull

 

 

David Docherty, David Morrison and Michael Tracey, The Last Picture Show? Britain's Changing Film Audiences, BFI, London, 1987.