Speaker 1: Weirding Way Media.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to episode one hundred and thirty five
Speaker 2: of the Film Entryes podcast. I'm Jamie Benning, your host,
Speaker 2: and this time I'm talking with cinema historian and friend
Speaker 2: friend of the podcast as well, Nigel Smith, who runs
Speaker 2: the brilliant website Memory Palaces and leads walking tours through
Speaker 2: London's forgotten picture houses. Nigel has spent years unearthing the
Speaker 2: stories of buildings that many of us walk past every
Speaker 2: day without realizing that they once housed thousands of cinema goers.
Speaker 2: Could be a coffee shop, a church, a Bingohall supermarket,
Speaker 2: all of them, in another life were palaces of the movies.
Speaker 2: And what fascinates me about Nigel's work is the way
Speaker 2: he pieces together not only the just the architecture and
Speaker 2: the dates when things happened, but the culture of cinema
Speaker 2: going itself. He digs into archives, old trade papers and
Speaker 2: even community anecdotes to bring back the lived experience of
Speaker 2: going to the pictures. As we used to say here
Speaker 2: in the UK, or at least my parents' generation said
Speaker 2: that in the nineteen thirties through the nineteen fifties, people
Speaker 2: went week in, week out, often with little care for
Speaker 2: what was showing. It was about the ritual, the social space,
Speaker 2: the scale.
Speaker 3: Of the event.
Speaker 2: And you compare that with today's selective and sometimes prohibitatively
Speaker 2: expensive trips to the multiplex and you start to see
Speaker 2: how much has shifted in a relatively short space of time.
Speaker 2: In our conversation, Nigel shares how he weaves these discoveries
Speaker 2: into his tours, from the grand Egyptian revival facade of
Speaker 2: the Carlton in Islington to smaller cinemas, with stories of
Speaker 2: kids clubs, eccentric managers and community football matches. We also
Speaker 2: talk about what's lost when these buildings disappear, how they
Speaker 2: often find stranger after lives, and why repertory and community
Speaker 2: cinemas might be the most hopeful path for the future
Speaker 2: of film going in London. It's a wide ranging chat
Speaker 2: about architecture, memory and the social life of cinema, but
Speaker 2: it's one I hope you enjoy it now. As I said,
Speaker 2: Nigel is a friend. He's been on the podcast before,
Speaker 2: but he's got this new tour inside the old Carlton
Speaker 2: Cinema in Islington. And it turns out my mother in
Speaker 2: law was a patron of that very cinema. She lived
Speaker 2: in the area when she was a kid, and yeah,
Speaker 2: she's I haven't sent the photos that I took while
Speaker 2: I was at the tour with Nigel yet, but I'm
Speaker 2: going to do that soon and you're gonna hear snippets
Speaker 2: from that tour as well as my interview with Nigel.
Speaker 2: So I followed him around whilst he was doing the tour,
Speaker 2: miked him up, and I'm not going to give away
Speaker 2: the whole content of the tour, but just to give
Speaker 2: you a little bit of flavor in between the interview segments.
Speaker 2: So here's my chat with Nigel Smith, cinema historian, and
Speaker 2: I'll be back at the end for a bit more jabbering.
Speaker 4: On morning, morning, morning, Hi everybody.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, it is absolutely lovely for fee
Speaker 5: you all this morning for this tour, by my reckoning,
Speaker 5: I think this is the first time there's been an actual, ever,
Speaker 5: a sort of a proper tour of this building that
Speaker 5: is more than just sort of like showing people on
Speaker 5: open house and having a little round, but is also
Speaker 5: trying to attempt to tell the story of the building
Speaker 5: as well. So you are this is like the not
Speaker 5: quite as glamorous as a premiere, but this is like
Speaker 5: a premiere, and as you can see in front of you,
Speaker 5: you're standing in front of the former Carlton Cinema, opened
Speaker 5: in nineteen thirty as a cinema Grade two listed building.
Speaker 5: It's been a Grade two listed building since nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 4: And now a church.
Speaker 5: So the reason I'm wearing this this microphone is my
Speaker 5: friend Jamie Benning here has a brilliant podcast, and you're
Speaker 5: all film fans, I'm sure, brilliant podcast called called Filmumentaries
Speaker 5: where he interviews a lot of people who've been involved
Speaker 5: in production of films. He's just back. He was at
Speaker 5: he was on Martha's Vineyard, the location for the film
Speaker 5: Jewels for the fiftieth anniversary weekend of Jaws, hanging out
Speaker 5: with Richard Dreyfus and Joe Alves, a production designer who
Speaker 5: Jamie's making a documentary about. So hopefully Jamie's going to
Speaker 5: make a little bonus episode out of this tour, which
Speaker 5: is why I'm wearing the microphone.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: When you first started researching London's cinema history, was there
Speaker 2: a particular building or a story that made you think
Speaker 2: I have to share this with others.
Speaker 3: I started.
Speaker 5: Getting into the cinema history, and the walking tours was
Speaker 5: through Islington because it was the area closest to where
Speaker 5: I lived, and the buildings that were the sort of
Speaker 5: the really nice surprises. In Islington. There are two coffee shops,
Speaker 5: Cafe Nero and a Starbucks ten minutes walk from each other,
Speaker 5: both of which used to be cinemas, which nobody would
Speaker 5: barely know, and that was definitely a hook. And then
Speaker 5: when you discover both of these cinemas opened before World
Speaker 5: War One and they had this really well one matter
Speaker 5: of very short history, one had a much longer history.
Speaker 5: So that was definitely a spark. And then when I
Speaker 5: got interested in doing walking tours, it's like the challenge
Speaker 5: is figuring out how do you make a is there
Speaker 5: a story that's all within a nice walking distance between
Speaker 5: an hour and a half and and two hours. But yeah,
Speaker 5: so the Starbucks on up Street and the Cafe near
Speaker 5: on up Street were there too, sort of we're definitely catalysts.
Speaker 5: But then you know, in that same area you do
Speaker 5: have this building, the Carlton, with this incredible Egyptian facade. Yeah,
Speaker 5: that is so distinctive, You're like brilliant. Okay, well, if
Speaker 5: you can incorporate that, and when I do the walking
Speaker 5: tour and that's the that's the final stop. I was like, Wow,
Speaker 5: let's save the best building to last. Opened it in
Speaker 5: nineteen thirty. The architect is an architect called George Coles,
Speaker 5: one of the most prolific architects of cinemas in Britain.
Speaker 5: It's now a church. One of the biggest cinemas ever
Speaker 5: built in this country. I mean, one of the most
Speaker 5: bonkers buildings on Essex Road, but one of those bonkers
Speaker 5: buildings in London. You know, I would argue.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's pretty incredible that facade.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's you could expect that almost to be
Speaker 2: on Sunset Boulevard or something, you know, down the Hollywood
Speaker 2: Walk of Fame or something like that. It's that Egyptian
Speaker 2: design and very grand and it it's a completely different
Speaker 2: time for cinema goers, a time that existed before we
Speaker 2: were born. I mean, it closed before we were born.
Speaker 2: So this isn't particularly or necessarily a nostalgic trip for you.
Speaker 2: This is about something else. What is it about for you?
Speaker 5: I think for me the thing i've I I sort
Speaker 5: of discovered, although I already knew It was the fact
Speaker 5: that the more old cinemas I discovered in London, and
Speaker 5: specifically how many there were in close concentration to each other.
Speaker 5: You just realize that cinema going back in the nineteen
Speaker 5: forties and fifties, nineteen thirties, it's a completely different game
Speaker 5: to what it is now. And something that I found
Speaker 5: myself sort of saying often when I was doing on
Speaker 5: the walking tours, was this difference between today, if people
Speaker 5: go to the cinema at all, they're typically making a decision.
Speaker 5: I'm going to go and see that film. I'm going
Speaker 5: to go and see this new Superman movie. I'm going
Speaker 5: to go and see that film that I read or
Speaker 5: heard an interesting review of. Back when these cinemas were thriving,
Speaker 5: people just go week in, week out, and you have
Speaker 5: that phrase, I'm just going to the pictures, indiscriminate of
Speaker 5: what was on. So there's an element, like I said,
Speaker 5: it's not nostalgic because this is not a period of
Speaker 5: time that I.
Speaker 3: Have ended recollection of.
Speaker 5: In fact, you and I both grew up in an
Speaker 5: era which was literally the lowest time for cinema ever
Speaker 5: in this country. You know, ninety five, fewest tickets sold
Speaker 5: ever in Britain. That's when we were going to see
Speaker 5: like all these adventure movies and all this sort of
Speaker 5: stuff that we were into as kids. And so it's
Speaker 5: about kind of revealing that history and making people think
Speaker 5: a bit about that and that sort of history of
Speaker 5: history of movie going and how that's changed, and then
Speaker 5: just looking at these buildings and thinking, wow they are
Speaker 5: they are relics and they're not that old. So you know,
Speaker 5: you can do a tour of theaters in the West
Speaker 5: End they're still theaters. You go do a tour of cinemas,
Speaker 5: they're not cinemas anymore. And a lot of them are
Speaker 5: listed buildings, like the Carlton, so they sort of.
Speaker 3: What can you what do you?
Speaker 5: What do you do with a building that was designed
Speaker 5: to entertain two and a half a thousand.
Speaker 2: People and one screen? Like they were all one screen.
Speaker 2: Weren't they those big palaces movie palaces? Yeah, two and
Speaker 2: a half thousand people. It doesn't I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: think I've been in a cinema with that many people
Speaker 2: since probably nineteen eighty three when I saw Return the Jedi,
Speaker 2: the Dominion.
Speaker 3: I mean, it just doesn't happen like that. Anymore. I
Speaker 3: think you mentioned on the tour that.
Speaker 2: Average number of seats in screens today is tiny.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean the average, I think is about one
Speaker 5: hundred in the screen. Now, obviously you've got more screams
Speaker 5: any cinema you know, but but yeah, it's totally different.
Speaker 5: I saw Superman the other week with seven other people,
Speaker 5: I think, in a screen that only had the capacity
Speaker 5: for thirty. If you'd have walked through those doors any
Speaker 5: Saturday night between like nineteen thirty into the nineteen forties,
Speaker 5: you would have been in.
Speaker 4: A throng of hundreds, one hundreds.
Speaker 5: The capacity of this when it was a cinema was
Speaker 5: two and a half thousand, two and a half thousand seats,
Speaker 5: and like all of the old cinemas, one screen. So
Speaker 5: just by a little bit of comparison, if any if
Speaker 5: you're a local, you might know the screen on the
Speaker 5: Green about ten minutes walk from here, one hundred and
Speaker 5: twenty seats. The Cursain in Camden, where I go quite
Speaker 5: regular because it's now where I live, five screens, thirty
Speaker 5: seats each.
Speaker 2: These tours that I've been on a couple of your
Speaker 2: tours now they always have a great mixture of storytelling
Speaker 2: and historical details.
Speaker 3: How do you go about piecing together these.
Speaker 2: Narratives from you know, the archives and photos and local
Speaker 2: anecdotes as well.
Speaker 5: The basis is, I always you've got to get the
Speaker 5: basics right, So what actually happened? When did the building open?
Speaker 5: If it has architectural significance, what is that crucially when
Speaker 5: it closed? When it closed, and especially if you're doing
Speaker 5: a walking tour, all of these things start to collide like,
Speaker 5: oh wow, this was happening in nineteen twenty that was
Speaker 5: happening in nineteen twenty four, and so that's a way
Speaker 5: of sort of just bringing everything together and linking it.
Speaker 5: But in terms of the archival research, the best some
Speaker 5: of the best resources are just local newspapers. So I've
Speaker 5: spent quite a bit of time in the Cinema Theater
Speaker 5: Association Archive, which is a wonderful place where they've got
Speaker 5: a lot of clippings. They have a file on every
Speaker 5: cinema that has ever existed in this country.
Speaker 3: It's incredible.
Speaker 5: And then the local history, so in Islington, go to
Speaker 5: the local archives, go through the microfilms, scrolling through and
Speaker 5: I always look at the ads because you used to
Speaker 5: have you know, maybe two pages just full of ads
Speaker 5: of what was on all of the local cinemas. But
Speaker 5: you'll always come across little stories about, you know, the
Speaker 5: kids club football teams playing each other. Is Linketon getting
Speaker 5: a ten yel victory over you know, Hackney Odeon and
Speaker 5: all of those sorts of things. And then there's another
Speaker 5: brilliant periodical, the trade paper that's called the k In
Speaker 5: a matograph and Lantern weekly. And you'll have heard me
Speaker 5: quote from this on the tours that you've been on,
Speaker 5: and that's a trade paper, and they had things like
Speaker 5: they would the manager of a cinema back then was
Speaker 5: a really significant person, and they have like a column
Speaker 5: celebrating the managers or showmen that they would refer them to,
Speaker 5: so they'd always be doing stunts and so you just
Speaker 5: get together these little bits of stories, and again local
Speaker 5: history centers will often have some good oral histories of
Speaker 5: people whose memory. So on the tour in the Carlton
Speaker 5: you're talking about the kids clubs, some of that was
Speaker 5: just first pan testimony that I that I'd read, which
Speaker 5: of researchers had done. And then the great things about
Speaker 5: these archives is just stuff that was because even the
Speaker 5: nineties years old now you know. So even a there
Speaker 5: was a great article that I found about when the
Speaker 5: Carlton Cinema was a bingo club, and it was just brilliant.
Speaker 5: It just so vivid about describing these self described bingo
Speaker 5: addicts who were coming. So it's a mixture of that
Speaker 5: and then yeah, just figuring out a story. I'm always
Speaker 5: very conscious that it would be very boring. On the
Speaker 5: walking tours, we say, now here's a cinema that opened
Speaker 5: on this date. It closed on this date. So I'm
Speaker 5: always looking for sort of stories and narrative threads. And
Speaker 5: with this tour of the Carlton, it's an amazing story
Speaker 5: because you can see the building, so I really try
Speaker 5: to give a sense of like why it was built
Speaker 5: in this over the top Egyptian fashion, the context of
Speaker 5: moviegoing at that time. It was part of the ABC chain,
Speaker 5: so I was already aware of the ABC miners and
Speaker 5: the kids clubs, and then this story of decline and
Speaker 5: so many of the old cinemas that opened in the
Speaker 5: thirties closed in the early seventies. The nine o'clock every
Speaker 5: Saturday morning, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kids would
Speaker 5: come in here.
Speaker 4: It would cost sixpence.
Speaker 5: The real heyday the for the kids clubs was the
Speaker 5: nineteen fifties average pocket money, but then was a shilling.
Speaker 5: So your sixpence you'd pay your six months for the
Speaker 5: cinema still have change for you know, your kiura and
Speaker 5: your sweet So I imagine hundreds and hundred kids all
Speaker 5: doped up on lots of sugar pentop excitement and it
Speaker 5: would have been this amazing experience. They would have started
Speaker 5: by singing that song. The manager of the cinema would
Speaker 5: be on the stage welcome them all. If it was
Speaker 5: somebody's birthday, you came in for free, and I suspect
Speaker 5: everybody sang happy birthday to them as well. But in
Speaker 5: terms of supervision, you've got the manager, maybe a few wishers,
Speaker 5: and then some senior slightly more older children who would
Speaker 5: act as as monitors, and that was it. Often they
Speaker 5: wouldn't they wouldn't let the kids into the circle because
Speaker 5: there was so much sort of the weapon that I
Speaker 5: have read most about orange peel seemed to be very
Speaker 5: very popular for throwing at There's some nods of recognition here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you sort of mentioned it there, but I sort
Speaker 2: of see your churs as it's not just about cinema history.
Speaker 2: It's about the sort of London's broader cultural memory in
Speaker 2: a way beyond places that just showed films. And I
Speaker 2: like how you always put things in a context. And
Speaker 2: there are some moments in your tour this time as
Speaker 2: well where there's there's a little bit of theatrics going
Speaker 2: on as well, which I really enjoys.
Speaker 3: Is that something you like to introduce throughout these Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I go on quite a lot of walking tours
Speaker 5: right for inspiration. And there is an absolutely brilliant company
Speaker 5: called Minimum Labyrinth I'm a huge fan of and their
Speaker 5: tours are a mixture of almost I always say, sort
Speaker 5: of guided tour, meet street theater, you know. So there's
Speaker 5: a little crew, there's the unexpected things happen. And I've
Speaker 5: just recently been on their most recent tour all around
Speaker 5: Lambert and I've been on one of their things earlier
Speaker 5: and what I love about it is this element of surprise. So,
Speaker 5: and they do some stuff that is quite gorilla, some
Speaker 5: of which I tried to I do a tour in
Speaker 5: Acton and one of the cinemas we talk about there,
Speaker 5: the Globe was built in the nineteen twenties, got huge again,
Speaker 5: over two thousand seats got demolished in the late fifties.
Speaker 5: But I've got a really great poster for the opening
Speaker 5: night which advertises the musical artist that was but what's
Speaker 5: there now is a shopping center that was built fifteen
Speaker 5: years ago. And a few times I've stucked that poster
Speaker 5: up in the shopping center before the tour and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 5: look what we found here. And then the last two
Speaker 5: or three times i've done it this security it's only
Speaker 5: been a half an hour and it's gone. So one
Speaker 5: of the reasons that really appealed to me about doing
Speaker 5: this tour in the Carlton Cinema. It is indoors and
Speaker 5: I'm one hundred in control of the space, so little
Speaker 5: bits of just to manage expectations when we're saying theatrical Definitely,
Speaker 5: I'm not putting on any costumes, there's no it's just me,
Speaker 5: but little bits of surprise. Yeah, it was great, and
Speaker 5: figuring out how to do it and how to introduce
Speaker 5: it was really fun.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it got a little round of applause one of
Speaker 2: them when I was there. I think people sort of
Speaker 2: underestimate how much you know a building like this can
Speaker 2: tell us about sort of social life and habits in
Speaker 2: the community that surrounded it. And I think what was
Speaker 2: great about the tour that I went on with you.
Speaker 3: Was that there was a real eclectic mix of people there.
Speaker 2: There was a guy who'd been to that cinema and
Speaker 2: seen a film there, but so pre nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 2: There are people that have balked past it one hundred
Speaker 2: times on their daily commute. There are people there like
Speaker 2: me who'd never really known about it. I think I've
Speaker 2: vaguely been aware of it as i've driven past. Probably
Speaker 2: it was a bingo hall now a church, as you
Speaker 2: say in the tour.
Speaker 3: But I think it's just.
Speaker 2: Really important what you do, you know, in telling these stories,
Speaker 2: because they feedback into the press as well, like you've
Speaker 2: had a nice article out today, So when people are
Speaker 2: researching in the future, you're doing.
Speaker 3: Them a favor as well by kind of gathering this information.
Speaker 5: What is great is the tours evolve because of the
Speaker 5: participation of the people on them. So you've been on
Speaker 5: my tour in the West End. One of the best
Speaker 5: stops Prince Charles Cinema, and I start the stop now
Speaker 5: by asking pretty much, I mean almost everybody's been there.
Speaker 5: Anybody got any good memories from Prince Charles and the
Speaker 5: very so much depending on the age of the people.
Speaker 5: There was somebody, you know, younger person just talking so
Speaker 5: fondly about some Adam Sandler film they'd seen that, and
Speaker 5: then there are other people talking about like all nighters.
Speaker 5: And one guy remember memorably telling me about he went
Speaker 5: there before it was the Prince Charles and how his
Speaker 5: sister took him to see I think Emmanuel that.
Speaker 3: I think I was on that tour. I think that
Speaker 3: was the very Toy.
Speaker 5: So all of these sort of feeding and even at
Speaker 5: the at the Carlton, right, I've only done that tour
Speaker 5: three times now the practice rather than two public tours.
Speaker 5: And somebody spotted something I had not seen already. Firstly,
Speaker 5: there was a great deal of interest in a bit
Speaker 5: of carpet that somebody spotted and oh that's a carpet
Speaker 5: from definitely the Bingo era. But somebody else spotted the
Speaker 5: tip up seat for the usherret. Yes, yeah, And obviously
Speaker 5: I did the tour. You came in the morning. I
Speaker 5: did it again in the afternoon, so you integrated there, yeah,
Speaker 5: of course. And it's a delight for people, and people
Speaker 5: notice things on the facades of buildings that I won't
Speaker 5: necessarily spot. So there's a wonderful cinema in the West End,
Speaker 5: the Plaza on Lower Registreets now a view half.
Speaker 3: Of its view half of its tesco.
Speaker 5: But it was opened by Paramount Pictures in the nineteen
Speaker 5: twenties and it's got the stars on the ya on
Speaker 5: this dome thing. I've done that tour and dozens of times,
Speaker 5: and within the last twelve months I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: but you look closely. There's also the mountain carved into
Speaker 5: the never spotted it, all of these little things. So yeah,
Speaker 5: people's interactions really build it up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're you're sort of it's sort of an
Speaker 2: active history, isn't it.
Speaker 5: That's a very good question, right, just been asked this.
Speaker 5: I love this details that I'm not even repotted it.
Speaker 5: Just been asked about the carpet. There's a little carpet
Speaker 5: remnant here, Oh, a bigger piece of carpet. Let's take
Speaker 5: a picture. This to me exactly, this is bingo carpet.
Speaker 5: One Bingo carpet that's got that says mecha Bingo all
Speaker 5: over it, very very much the same colors. And again,
Speaker 5: if there's any sort of urban archaeologists among you, if
Speaker 5: you go around the back of the cinema, you'll you'll
Speaker 5: still see the mecha Bingo car park sign. Very exciting.
Speaker 2: What do you think if we failed to preserve these stories,
Speaker 2: what do you think we risk losing not just in
Speaker 2: terms of, you know, the architecture, but in terms of
Speaker 2: I guess, sort of local identity and local history as well.
Speaker 5: It's the really good question. I mean, the one that
Speaker 5: is top of mind at the moment is the Odion
Speaker 5: in Camden Camden Town Parkway, and it's a pretty bog
Speaker 5: standard Odian a little bit. It has not been luxed,
Speaker 5: you know, like many of the other Odiens as a
Speaker 5: lovely Idion Hall theway road near where I live, beautiful
Speaker 5: building and now really beautifully restored. But Odion announced a
Speaker 5: little while ago that they're just going to close that cinema,
Speaker 5: knock it down. Nobody seems to care less. But I
Speaker 5: do this tour in Camden, and when I talk about
Speaker 5: that tour and particularly it had this really unique time period,
Speaker 5: I think actually I may have talked like this when
Speaker 5: that's not on the podcast, but it had this really
Speaker 5: unique period in the eighties where it's an independent cinema
Speaker 5: run by this very very eccentric guy called Peter Walker.
Speaker 5: And it's like folk memory. And to some extent, when
Speaker 5: the building goes people will stop. The trigger for the
Speaker 5: memories gone as well. So as you get fewer cinema buildings,
Speaker 5: the memory of what cinema going was once like will go,
Speaker 5: even if it's being shared by people of my age
Speaker 5: who never even experienced it in that way. But I
Speaker 5: do also see the flip of these buildings were designed
Speaker 5: for another age. I've just been updating my website. I've
Speaker 5: got the website called Memory Palaces, which it's basically chronicling
Speaker 5: the stories of buildings that were cinemas but may not
Speaker 5: be anymore. And I've just upload just uploading some more
Speaker 5: photos to this week, and so many of these buildings
Speaker 5: that were built in this period just not being used.
Speaker 5: And there's like it was a nightclub for ten years
Speaker 5: and now it's not a nightclub anymore, or a tiny
Speaker 5: bit of it is a snooker club. So and often
Speaker 5: these buildings are listed. Yeah, so what do you do
Speaker 5: with a list in building that not has no purpose anymore?
Speaker 5: I don't have an answer to that, religious communities are
Speaker 5: answering a little bit because a lot of them are churches,
Speaker 5: but it's hard to find. Where are you going to
Speaker 5: find two and half thousand people to come to the cinema?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny that live span, isn't it. You know
Speaker 2: two and a half thousand people watching movies. Then you
Speaker 2: know potentially a half filled bingo hall, people praying to
Speaker 2: another god in a way, and now becoming.
Speaker 3: Churches as well.
Speaker 2: I think in this they are there, you know, and
Speaker 2: they weren't. I mean that when on You're toy you
Speaker 2: say that that was bought by the church, the Carlton,
Speaker 2: And if it wasn't for them, who knows what would
Speaker 2: be left inside that building? Because there are parts of it,
Speaker 2: of course that we saw that morning as kind of
Speaker 2: little urban explorers, that that some of it is quite derelict.
Speaker 5: I've done quite a lot of archival research, and the
Speaker 5: most surprising discovery of my everything, of anything I've discovered
Speaker 5: about the Carlton was when I came across this advert
Speaker 5: Your date for Glamour nineteen fifty eight. Next Wednesday, your
Speaker 5: dreams come true when a new luxurious salon opens in
Speaker 5: the Carton Cinema. Elstree Studio hairstylists will bring your very
Speaker 5: own beauty to new life. Whatever your type, there is
Speaker 5: a new hairstyle waiting for you. Jeanette Scott and John
Speaker 5: Fraser open the salon on Tuesday morning at eleven thirty.
Speaker 5: The appointment book is open. And if you know here
Speaker 5: that is it says ABC Services. That is the ABC logo.
Speaker 5: So this is all a hair salon under the ulspices
Speaker 5: of ABC. And I mentioned John Maxwell, who was the
Speaker 5: founder of ABC owned Elstree Studios as well, so Elstree
Speaker 5: Studio hair stylist. So it's the people who've been working
Speaker 5: at the studio right here in this room.
Speaker 4: You can't believe it, can you.
Speaker 2: This is a final difficult question to answer. What do
Speaker 2: you think is the key to getting people to go
Speaker 2: to the cinema now? Because I you know, I think
Speaker 2: I said to this, said this to you last time.
Speaker 2: My local picture is closed in Bromley. I recently, as
Speaker 2: I soon after that joined the sid Cup storyteller. I
Speaker 2: just got an email today saying that's also ending.
Speaker 3: It's going to be taken over by another chain potentially again.
Speaker 2: It was like a little multiplex five six screens. I
Speaker 2: wonder is the key to the cinema's future having more
Speaker 2: of these repertory cinemas. You know, my daughter's sitting next
Speaker 2: to me here, she's not listening, she's on the headphones.
Speaker 2: She went and saw The Devil wes Pride last night
Speaker 2: in Peckham on the rooftop cinema and it's pretty busy.
Speaker 2: They're all sat there with their headphones on and they're
Speaker 2: paying for comfany deck chairs and that making it a
Speaker 2: more experiential kind of thing. Do you think that's the
Speaker 2: key or do you think is the key?
Speaker 5: I think that has to be part of it. I
Speaker 5: think I think it's really cool. Actually in London that
Speaker 5: rep cinema seems to be thriving, the Prince Charles, the
Speaker 5: Garden Cinema, the BFI and in the last few months
Speaker 5: this bonkers cinema in Clarkenwell, the Nickel has opened. I
Speaker 5: went there, you know, within a few weeks of it opening.
Speaker 5: Tuesday night saw Lee van Cleef Spaghetti Western. It's got
Speaker 5: thirty seven seats. Wonderfully, they used to be at the
Speaker 5: odeon Shaftbury Avenue, which closed not too long ago, and
Speaker 5: they show a different film every night they're not even showing.
Speaker 5: You know, that was your one chance to see Lee
Speaker 5: van Cleef that week. Come from there's another Levan Cleef film.
Speaker 5: He made plenty of spaghetti westerns. But what was great
Speaker 5: there is Don the guy who's project it is, who's
Speaker 5: got it off the ground, who meets you when you
Speaker 5: go in. You go next door, which is where the
Speaker 5: auditorium is, and gave a really great introduction to the
Speaker 5: movie that was very personal and it felt unique. And
Speaker 5: then it's got a little bar area downstairs. Had a
Speaker 5: nice chat with some other folks who had been at
Speaker 5: you know, went on my own, had a nice chat
Speaker 5: with them, and it was the whole experience. I've been
Speaker 5: really enjoyed watching the film, but I really enjoyed Dom's introduction.
Speaker 5: I really enjoyed chatting with a can of Laga afterwards.
Speaker 5: And I think that that sort of thing has got
Speaker 5: to be part of it. So somebody who actually works
Speaker 5: in cinema, I said to me recently when we were
Speaker 5: sort of having this conversation, he said, I think every
Speaker 5: film will have an introduction, yeah, in the future, and
Speaker 5: it's a really it makes it personal. You don't get
Speaker 5: at home. I mean, I also think the prices have
Speaker 5: got to change. It's just not I talk a lot
Speaker 5: about on the tours. You know in the nineteen thirties
Speaker 5: and forties that cinema going it was an affordable luxury
Speaker 5: for people are luxury because these buildings are so spectacular.
Speaker 5: It's not a very few cinemas are affordable. I've paid
Speaker 5: twenty five pounds recently for a matinee ticket at an odeon.
Speaker 5: The ticket booth where you'd buy your ticket, your individual
Speaker 5: ticket was here. The pay box that you'd have come through,
Speaker 5: a little ticket, one of these little paper tickets, a
Speaker 5: bit like these. You've all seen these because I normally
Speaker 5: give them way at the beginning of the tours. But
Speaker 5: you know, one of those little tickets, these booze on
Speaker 5: the side. Those are essentially the overflow on busy nights.
Speaker 5: You might sell tickets here, but you really you basically
Speaker 5: have a pay box here.
Speaker 4: They weren't snack bars.
Speaker 5: If you wanted a snack, the.
Speaker 4: Usherret would come with a little tray.
Speaker 5: In front of you and serve you in your seat
Speaker 5: prices so the cheap seats, the cheap seats of the
Speaker 5: chip were downstairs, so the stalls sixpence the expensive seats,
Speaker 5: and you're going to get a view from the expensive
Speaker 5: seats towards the end of the tour two shillings, so double, quadruple,
Speaker 5: quadruple the price of the cheap seats. So I'm not
Speaker 5: very good on predecimalization currency, but if I think I'm right,
Speaker 5: twenty shillings to a pound. Yeah, so twenty shillings to
Speaker 5: a pound average weig. This is a very you know,
Speaker 5: working class area at a time, average wages nineteen thirties
Speaker 5: into forties, three to four pounds a week, so going
Speaker 5: to cinema was a very affordableluxury. And your sixpence would
Speaker 5: get you a loaf of bread, maybe a couple of
Speaker 5: pints of beer, a shilling, you know, a big plate
Speaker 5: of fish and chips. So those are sort of the
Speaker 5: price comparators. And again so it was an affordable luxury
Speaker 5: for people.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think on Comode and Mayo's podcasts recently they were
Speaker 2: talking about family four costs the best part of ninety
Speaker 2: quid to go And it wasn't even on like a
Speaker 2: big screen.
Speaker 3: It was a local multiplex.
Speaker 2: Because kids tickets no longer exist, you pay an adult
Speaker 2: price on the same price for everyone.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so if it's not affordable, I think if it's
Speaker 5: not an experience, but I think an experience that is
Speaker 5: I think the important thing for me, And I would
Speaker 5: say this is like the experience should be about the
Speaker 5: experience of watching a film, not eating a pizza.
Speaker 3: You know, there is an element of.
Speaker 5: The film is sort of like an adjunct to your
Speaker 5: sort of night out where you're going to get a
Speaker 5: meal and a cocktail and all of that stuff and nice.
Speaker 5: You know, like I like to have a beer while
Speaker 5: I'm watching a film. Great, but I want the focus
Speaker 5: to be the movie, which is why I think like
Speaker 5: having somebody passionate about the film introducing or what's the
Speaker 5: equivalent of. I don't know if this is even interesting
Speaker 5: or feasible, but you know, what's the what's the DVD
Speaker 5: extra that you can get a little bit of when
Speaker 5: you go to the cinema that's different from home.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Just as a reminder, where can people find your website?
Speaker 2: You find your tours?
Speaker 5: So my website is called memory Palaces, Memory Palaces dot
Speaker 5: Cody uka and I'm on Instagram at Nigel Smith Walks.
Speaker 5: So all of those places have got plenty around where
Speaker 5: the walking tours are about cinemas and if you go
Speaker 5: to the website you can have a really good delve
Speaker 5: through almost one hundred buildings. There's almost there's about a
Speaker 5: thousand photographs of cinemas and former cinemas in London to enjoy.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you Nigel once again for being on the podcast,
Speaker 2: and thanks for doing what you do. Keep doing it
Speaker 2: because it's great and I'll be certainly on more tours
Speaker 2: as they come, and bringing friends along to tours I've
Speaker 2: already been to, including my wife who really needs to
Speaker 2: come one.
Speaker 5: Of great great I would like that very much, So
Speaker 5: I hope you've all enjoyed it rare chance to have
Speaker 5: a sort of explore of this building and hope to
Speaker 5: see you again for another tour at some point in
Speaker 5: the future. Thank you, thank you.
Speaker 2: That was my conversation with Nigel Smith. There you can
Speaker 2: find his tours and extensive archive, as he said, at
Speaker 2: memory Palaces dot co dot uk and on Instagram at
Speaker 2: Nigel Smith Walks. As always, thank you for listening. If
Speaker 2: you've been enjoying my episodes lately, conversations with people from
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