The Chief Projectionist at the Roxy when it closed on Saturday, November 23rd,1957, was Jimmy Stockton and he had already applied to become chief at Focus, Longton, Stoke on Trent, the job to start on Monday, November 25th. The odd thing was that the last film that Jimmy ran at the Roxy was the X certificate horror opus “The Creature Walks Among Us”, which played a week at the Roxy and which Jimmy would run again for a week at the Focus, commencing on Monday, December 2nd, 1957. It seems that the creature followed him from the Roxy to the Focus and that it may well have been the same copy of the film on both occasions.
I remember when we were halfway through showing ‘Spartacus’ on the last run on a Saturday night in July, 1963, the navy blue Thames Trader lorry of The Potteries Transport and Cinema Supply Company arrived early at about 9 pm when there was still over an hour of the film left to run. The driver parked up his lorry and went inside to see the last part of the film. Eight reels had already been run and packed off into an unusually large eight reel transit case and I thought I would do the driver a favour by taking the case down the steps and putting it on the back of the wagon. Well, I dragged it downstairs, one step at a time and eventually reached the car park and dragged it an inch at a time towards the wagon. I dropped the side gate of the wagon and, puffing, panting and straining and using all my strength, tried in vain to lift it onto the wagon. Just then, there was a shout from the open window of the manager’s office. “OI!”, shouted Benny Norcott, “PUT THAT DOWN! YOU’RE AN OPERATOR, NOT A TRANSPORT DRIVER! IT’S HIS JOB TO LOAD THAT ON THE WAGON, NOT YOURS. IF YOU INJURED YOURSELF, YOU COULDN’T CLAIM A DAMN THING!” I dropped the case on the ground and it landed with such force that it made a three inch dent in the asphalt of the car park and I never did anything that daft again.
I remember back in 1968 that we were showing the X certificate film ‘Witchfinder General‘ and, ten minutes before I was due to start the film I was standing by the pay box with the manager, Benny Norcott, when this young lad came in. “You’re not coming in to see this!”, Benny told him. “Well, I’m over 16”, said the boy. “You haven’t seen 13, let alone 16”, Benny told him. “Well, they let me in to see it at the ABC, Hanley”, said the boy. “Well, you’re not seeing at the Plaza, Fenton!”, said Benny. “Now get!” and the boy got!
Here is a photo I took of the Plaza, Fenton, way back in August, 1971. I was working there at the time as a projectionist. This image was scanned from an original colour negative which is slightly fading after 45 years.
I heard a completely different story of the origins of CinemaScope, Mike. It began in the First World War when a French inventor, Professor Henri Chretien, developed a special anamorphic lens that optically squeezed a wide angle view of the outside terrain when viewed through the narrow periscope of a tank. Later on, in 1930, Chretien developed his Hypergonar lens, as he called it, for use on movie cameras and made a demonstration film with it. But the film industry, having just spent a fortune on installing talking pictures, were not interested in spending even more money on Chretien’s wide screen system during the Depression. So Anamorphoscope, as Chretien dubbed it, was put on the shelf until the 1940s when J. Arthur Rank took up an option on it but never used it.
In 1952, Rank’s option on it lapsed and Spyros P. Skouras, president of 20th Century-Fox, went over to Paris with his technical development man, Earl Sponable, to see Chretien and be given a demonstration of Anamorphoscope. They were impressed enough to buy the rights to the system off him and returned to Hollywood with the only three anamorphic lenses that Chretien had, and made a demonstration film for Darryl F. Zanuck, vice president at Fox. Years later, he recalled: “I went for it! It was the God-damnist thing! Today, it would look like nothing!” Gradually, the technical department at Fox developed Chretien’s system into CinemaScope and, with only three lenses, they engaged the Bausch and Lomb company to make more lenses based on Chretien’s design.
At that time, early 1953, THE ROBE had been shooting in the standard 4 x 3 format for a number of weeks and Zanuck took the biggest gamble of his career. He stopped production on THE ROBE and restarted it all over again in CinemaScope, although hedging his bets by making a separate 4 x 3 version in case CinemaScope didn’t take off. But it took off like a bird. It was a Fox employee that thought of calling the new system CinemaScope and the name was taken up by Skouras and Zanuck, until someone informed them that name was already copyrighted by a film store in Los Angeles. So Fox offered the owner $50,000 for the name. All the store owner had to do was to sell them the store’s name and rename his store. The store owner sold them the rights to to the name CinemaScope and the rest, as they say, is history. For creating the process, Chretien received a 1953 Academy Award at the 1954 Oscars ceremony.
I remember my father taking me here on a number of occasions and one film I particularly remember seeing here was PLYMOUTH ADVENTURE, an MGM Technicolor historical epic starring Spencer Tracy and Gene Tierney. That was in September, 1953, when I was 6 and a half.
Going to the Essoldo marked my introduction to cinemagoing. I was taken here by my mother and Godmother on my fourth birthday in April, 1951, to see the Cecil B. De Mille Technicolor epic SAMSON AND DELILAH. I can still see Victor Mature pushing apart the stone pillars that supported the Temple of Dagon and quite literally bringing the house down. I also remember I kept turning around in my seat and looking at the dancing beam of blue-ish light that came from way up there and seemed to have something to do with what was going on on the screen, never dreaming at that time that one day, I, too, would become a projectionist…although not at the Essoldo, Stockport.
CinemaScope was installed at the ABC Capitol in January, 1955 and their first presentation in the revolutionary new system was KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS, which began a six day run there on Monday, January 17th. At the same time, the other ABC cinemas in the area, the Empire, Longton; the Majestic, Stoke and the Savoy, Newcastle under Lyme, ran a ‘flat’ non anamorphic Academy Ratio version of the film, which had been filmed separately for showing in cinemas that had not yet been equipped for CinemaScope presentations. Filming of these separate non anamorphic versions of CinemaScope films continued until late 1956, by which time it was found that almost all cinemas had been equipped to screen films in CinemaScope and the filming of secondary versions was deemed no longer necessary.
In March, 1954, the Odeon was chosen to present the North Midlands Premiere of the first film in CinemaScope, THE ROBE. Equipment costing thousands of pounds was installed there for the presentation of CinemaScope films complete with a wide screen with moveable masking and four-track magnetic stereophonic sound. As the Odeon didn’t close for this installation, it must have been done at night over several nights and in the mornings and a three weeks long engagement of the film began on Monday, March 8th, 1954. The next landmark in the history of the Odeon occurred some five years later when it closed for two weeks for the installation of an even bigger wide screen and equipment for the showing of 70mm Todd-AO films. The opening presentation of the newly installed system being SOUTH PACIFIC, which opened on Monday, July 13th, 1959, and ran for an incredible seventeen weeks. However, the Odeon’s biggest hit was THE SOUND OF MUSIC, which opened in 70mm on Boxing Day, 1965 and ran for an even more incredible 46 weeks!
I was a projectionist at the Plaza on and off for nearly twenty years, starting in 1962. The film that was showing when I started work there was the X certificate drama A Kind of Loving, starring Alan Bates and June Ritchie. At that time, there was a staff of eight, including myself and, over the years, they’ve all since died except me. Yes, I’m the only one left. Benny Norcott was the manager from 1949 to 1981 and the Plaza was his life. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if his spirit is still there and has been seen on occasion. I wonder what the old place is like now inside and how they stop the snooker balls from rolling down the slope towards the screen.
Living at Weston Coyney at the time, the town of Stoke was way out of my area, as I usually went to the Broadway in Meir; the Alhambra in Normacot and the ABC Empire and the Focus in Longton. But I paid my first visit to the Essoldo, Stoke, at the age of 13 in 1960, to see revivals of Heaven Knows Mr Allison and The Deerslayer and a week or so later, the new release of The Story of Ruth. I went back there in August, 1962, to see King of Kings; Guns in the Afternoon; Village of Daughters; The Phantom of The Opera and Captain Clegg.
Following its demolition in 1959, a new F.W. Woolworths store was built on the site and that opened in March, 1960. The store still stands, but is now a Bargain Buys outlet.
Oddly enough, although there are photos of the Empire when it was a theatre and, from 1966 onwards when it was a Bingo Hall, there are no photos of the decades when it was an ABC cinema. You’d have thought that ABC would have taken at least one photo of the front of the Empire in all that time, but apparently, they didn’t. There were photos taken of the ABCs Capitol in Hanley; Majestic in Stoke and Cine-Bowl in Hanley, but none of the Empire. The front of the Savoy in Newcastle-under-Lyme would have been impractical to photograph, because the entrance was down a narrow alley way.
I only went there once, as a 12 year old in May, 1959, to see “Rockets Galore”, an Eastman Colour Rank comedy and a Universal International CinemaScope and Eastman Colour Western, “Last of the Fast Guns”. I remember it as having a very wide CinemaScope screen.
The Plaza closed on Saturday, January 9th, 1982, having been a cinema since 72 years since 1910. The last programme was Neil Diamond in THE JAZZ SINGER and Dustin Hoffmann in KRAMER VERSUS KRAMER. I have complete programme details of the Plaza from 1949 to when it closed in 1982, together with an almost complete run of children’s Saturday matinee programmes from 1956 to when they were discontinued in 1974.
I have a complete run of all the programmes shown at the Alhambra from May, 1930, to when it closed in 1977, with the exception of June 22nd to August 6th, 1959, when no programme details were published due to the six weeks long national printers strike of that year.
This photo was taken in June, 1959, during a reissue screening of “Mighty Joe Young” and “Where Danger Lives”, which began a three day engagement on Monday, June 15th, 1959. I have a complete set of Broadway programme details from when it opened in December, 1936, to when it closed in June, 1971, with the exception of the dates between June 22nd and August 2nd, 1959, during the national printers strike, when no programme details were published in the local newspaper. In fact, the strike went on for over six weeks and I only know the Broadway’s programmes for August because they managed to get a programme card printed for that month.
I don’t know why the YouTube link for the British Pathe newsreel clip doesn’t work where you are, as it works fine for me. I know you can’t click on it from here, it has to be copied and pasted into your browser and then click on it there or just press enter. Anyway, if that still doesn’t work, go onto YouTube and put the words England Under Water (1958) into their search engine and if that still doesn’t work, then maybe they clip can’t be seen outside the UK.
The Chief Projectionist at the Roxy when it closed on Saturday, November 23rd,1957, was Jimmy Stockton and he had already applied to become chief at Focus, Longton, Stoke on Trent, the job to start on Monday, November 25th. The odd thing was that the last film that Jimmy ran at the Roxy was the X certificate horror opus “The Creature Walks Among Us”, which played a week at the Roxy and which Jimmy would run again for a week at the Focus, commencing on Monday, December 2nd, 1957. It seems that the creature followed him from the Roxy to the Focus and that it may well have been the same copy of the film on both occasions.
A COUPLE OF ANECDOTES ABOUT MY TIME AT THE PLAZA.
I remember when we were halfway through showing ‘Spartacus’ on the last run on a Saturday night in July, 1963, the navy blue Thames Trader lorry of The Potteries Transport and Cinema Supply Company arrived early at about 9 pm when there was still over an hour of the film left to run. The driver parked up his lorry and went inside to see the last part of the film. Eight reels had already been run and packed off into an unusually large eight reel transit case and I thought I would do the driver a favour by taking the case down the steps and putting it on the back of the wagon. Well, I dragged it downstairs, one step at a time and eventually reached the car park and dragged it an inch at a time towards the wagon. I dropped the side gate of the wagon and, puffing, panting and straining and using all my strength, tried in vain to lift it onto the wagon. Just then, there was a shout from the open window of the manager’s office. “OI!”, shouted Benny Norcott, “PUT THAT DOWN! YOU’RE AN OPERATOR, NOT A TRANSPORT DRIVER! IT’S HIS JOB TO LOAD THAT ON THE WAGON, NOT YOURS. IF YOU INJURED YOURSELF, YOU COULDN’T CLAIM A DAMN THING!” I dropped the case on the ground and it landed with such force that it made a three inch dent in the asphalt of the car park and I never did anything that daft again.
I remember back in 1968 that we were showing the X certificate film ‘Witchfinder General‘ and, ten minutes before I was due to start the film I was standing by the pay box with the manager, Benny Norcott, when this young lad came in. “You’re not coming in to see this!”, Benny told him. “Well, I’m over 16”, said the boy. “You haven’t seen 13, let alone 16”, Benny told him. “Well, they let me in to see it at the ABC, Hanley”, said the boy. “Well, you’re not seeing at the Plaza, Fenton!”, said Benny. “Now get!” and the boy got!
Click on Photos to see a photo I took of the Plaza in August, 1971.
Here is a photo I took of the Plaza, Fenton, way back in August, 1971. I was working there at the time as a projectionist. This image was scanned from an original colour negative which is slightly fading after 45 years.
David Rayner.
I heard a completely different story of the origins of CinemaScope, Mike. It began in the First World War when a French inventor, Professor Henri Chretien, developed a special anamorphic lens that optically squeezed a wide angle view of the outside terrain when viewed through the narrow periscope of a tank. Later on, in 1930, Chretien developed his Hypergonar lens, as he called it, for use on movie cameras and made a demonstration film with it. But the film industry, having just spent a fortune on installing talking pictures, were not interested in spending even more money on Chretien’s wide screen system during the Depression. So Anamorphoscope, as Chretien dubbed it, was put on the shelf until the 1940s when J. Arthur Rank took up an option on it but never used it.
In 1952, Rank’s option on it lapsed and Spyros P. Skouras, president of 20th Century-Fox, went over to Paris with his technical development man, Earl Sponable, to see Chretien and be given a demonstration of Anamorphoscope. They were impressed enough to buy the rights to the system off him and returned to Hollywood with the only three anamorphic lenses that Chretien had, and made a demonstration film for Darryl F. Zanuck, vice president at Fox. Years later, he recalled: “I went for it! It was the God-damnist thing! Today, it would look like nothing!” Gradually, the technical department at Fox developed Chretien’s system into CinemaScope and, with only three lenses, they engaged the Bausch and Lomb company to make more lenses based on Chretien’s design.
At that time, early 1953, THE ROBE had been shooting in the standard 4 x 3 format for a number of weeks and Zanuck took the biggest gamble of his career. He stopped production on THE ROBE and restarted it all over again in CinemaScope, although hedging his bets by making a separate 4 x 3 version in case CinemaScope didn’t take off. But it took off like a bird. It was a Fox employee that thought of calling the new system CinemaScope and the name was taken up by Skouras and Zanuck, until someone informed them that name was already copyrighted by a film store in Los Angeles. So Fox offered the owner $50,000 for the name. All the store owner had to do was to sell them the store’s name and rename his store. The store owner sold them the rights to to the name CinemaScope and the rest, as they say, is history. For creating the process, Chretien received a 1953 Academy Award at the 1954 Oscars ceremony.
I remember my father taking me here on a number of occasions and one film I particularly remember seeing here was PLYMOUTH ADVENTURE, an MGM Technicolor historical epic starring Spencer Tracy and Gene Tierney. That was in September, 1953, when I was 6 and a half.
Going to the Essoldo marked my introduction to cinemagoing. I was taken here by my mother and Godmother on my fourth birthday in April, 1951, to see the Cecil B. De Mille Technicolor epic SAMSON AND DELILAH. I can still see Victor Mature pushing apart the stone pillars that supported the Temple of Dagon and quite literally bringing the house down. I also remember I kept turning around in my seat and looking at the dancing beam of blue-ish light that came from way up there and seemed to have something to do with what was going on on the screen, never dreaming at that time that one day, I, too, would become a projectionist…although not at the Essoldo, Stockport.
CinemaScope was installed at the ABC Capitol in January, 1955 and their first presentation in the revolutionary new system was KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS, which began a six day run there on Monday, January 17th. At the same time, the other ABC cinemas in the area, the Empire, Longton; the Majestic, Stoke and the Savoy, Newcastle under Lyme, ran a ‘flat’ non anamorphic Academy Ratio version of the film, which had been filmed separately for showing in cinemas that had not yet been equipped for CinemaScope presentations. Filming of these separate non anamorphic versions of CinemaScope films continued until late 1956, by which time it was found that almost all cinemas had been equipped to screen films in CinemaScope and the filming of secondary versions was deemed no longer necessary.
In March, 1954, the Odeon was chosen to present the North Midlands Premiere of the first film in CinemaScope, THE ROBE. Equipment costing thousands of pounds was installed there for the presentation of CinemaScope films complete with a wide screen with moveable masking and four-track magnetic stereophonic sound. As the Odeon didn’t close for this installation, it must have been done at night over several nights and in the mornings and a three weeks long engagement of the film began on Monday, March 8th, 1954. The next landmark in the history of the Odeon occurred some five years later when it closed for two weeks for the installation of an even bigger wide screen and equipment for the showing of 70mm Todd-AO films. The opening presentation of the newly installed system being SOUTH PACIFIC, which opened on Monday, July 13th, 1959, and ran for an incredible seventeen weeks. However, the Odeon’s biggest hit was THE SOUND OF MUSIC, which opened in 70mm on Boxing Day, 1965 and ran for an even more incredible 46 weeks!
After closure as a cinema, the Capitol became a Bingo hall for a while, but was finally closed and demolished in November, 1965.
I was a projectionist at the Plaza on and off for nearly twenty years, starting in 1962. The film that was showing when I started work there was the X certificate drama A Kind of Loving, starring Alan Bates and June Ritchie. At that time, there was a staff of eight, including myself and, over the years, they’ve all since died except me. Yes, I’m the only one left. Benny Norcott was the manager from 1949 to 1981 and the Plaza was his life. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if his spirit is still there and has been seen on occasion. I wonder what the old place is like now inside and how they stop the snooker balls from rolling down the slope towards the screen.
Living at Weston Coyney at the time, the town of Stoke was way out of my area, as I usually went to the Broadway in Meir; the Alhambra in Normacot and the ABC Empire and the Focus in Longton. But I paid my first visit to the Essoldo, Stoke, at the age of 13 in 1960, to see revivals of Heaven Knows Mr Allison and The Deerslayer and a week or so later, the new release of The Story of Ruth. I went back there in August, 1962, to see King of Kings; Guns in the Afternoon; Village of Daughters; The Phantom of The Opera and Captain Clegg.
Following its demolition in 1959, a new F.W. Woolworths store was built on the site and that opened in March, 1960. The store still stands, but is now a Bargain Buys outlet.
It can also be seen in the 1962 film ‘Don’t Talk To Strange Men’ as the cinema that Janina Faye goes into to see ‘Pocketful of Miracles’.
Oddly enough, although there are photos of the Empire when it was a theatre and, from 1966 onwards when it was a Bingo Hall, there are no photos of the decades when it was an ABC cinema. You’d have thought that ABC would have taken at least one photo of the front of the Empire in all that time, but apparently, they didn’t. There were photos taken of the ABCs Capitol in Hanley; Majestic in Stoke and Cine-Bowl in Hanley, but none of the Empire. The front of the Savoy in Newcastle-under-Lyme would have been impractical to photograph, because the entrance was down a narrow alley way.
I only went there once, as a 12 year old in May, 1959, to see “Rockets Galore”, an Eastman Colour Rank comedy and a Universal International CinemaScope and Eastman Colour Western, “Last of the Fast Guns”. I remember it as having a very wide CinemaScope screen.
The Plaza closed on Saturday, January 9th, 1982, having been a cinema since 72 years since 1910. The last programme was Neil Diamond in THE JAZZ SINGER and Dustin Hoffmann in KRAMER VERSUS KRAMER. I have complete programme details of the Plaza from 1949 to when it closed in 1982, together with an almost complete run of children’s Saturday matinee programmes from 1956 to when they were discontinued in 1974.
I have a complete run of all the programmes shown at the Empire from 1932 to when it closed in 1966.
I have a complete run of all the programmes shown at the Alhambra from May, 1930, to when it closed in 1977, with the exception of June 22nd to August 6th, 1959, when no programme details were published due to the six weeks long national printers strike of that year.
This photo was taken in June, 1959, during a reissue screening of “Mighty Joe Young” and “Where Danger Lives”, which began a three day engagement on Monday, June 15th, 1959. I have a complete set of Broadway programme details from when it opened in December, 1936, to when it closed in June, 1971, with the exception of the dates between June 22nd and August 2nd, 1959, during the national printers strike, when no programme details were published in the local newspaper. In fact, the strike went on for over six weeks and I only know the Broadway’s programmes for August because they managed to get a programme card printed for that month.
I don’t know why the YouTube link for the British Pathe newsreel clip doesn’t work where you are, as it works fine for me. I know you can’t click on it from here, it has to be copied and pasted into your browser and then click on it there or just press enter. Anyway, if that still doesn’t work, go onto YouTube and put the words England Under Water (1958) into their search engine and if that still doesn’t work, then maybe they clip can’t be seen outside the UK.
It was an ABC long before 1971. Here it is in a newsreel clip from June, 1958.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KzQ-GBfH-A