Palace Theatre

Next door, the last film show at the Canadian Rink Cinema was Saturday 22 November 1924. It re-opened as a Palais de Danse on 26 December (Boxing Day) 1924. I personally doubt that the Palace used the name ‘Canadian Cinema’. Trawling newspaper archives comes up with the Tottenham Palace Cinema: except for the following. On 25 Sept 1925 The Bioscope mistakenly listed the long-closed ‘Canadian Rink Cinema’ amongst several others getting the first release of a film, presumably meaning the Palace. In Picturegoer of January and of February 1925 a brand-promoting advert for Provincial Cinematograph Theatres Ltd listed its halls and included ‘Canadian Cinema (Tottenham Palace)’. That has to be a mistake. Why would PCT want to give the Palace the name of the defunct cinema next door which was a converted roller-skating rink with exposed metal roof trusses and ties? Perhaps someone with access to Tottenham’s local newspapers for 1925 could resolve the matter - annoyingly, the archive of those ends in the early 1920s.

The Palace survived the London riots, (despite being in the heart of the first day rioting and looting) with apparently little more than a few broken windows, seen boarded up in these August 2011 views:–

PALACE THEATRE

PALACE THEATRE

PALACE THEATRE

When I was at a projectioist training school in London in 1963 one of the fellow students worked at the Palace Tottenham. So the teachers always had to remember to point out that the film lace up was reversed for that cinema (rear projection).
The student told me that sometimes at the Palace a person would mistakenly walk across the stage whilst the film was showing, so the audience got a large shadow ouline of them on the screen!.
Glad that the building is listed still in use and open.
Always looks impressive from the front.

John