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Blimey its hard to believe that small space was filled with screaming fans during the 60s for all those pop tours . Beatles, Roy Orbison , Everlys, Little Richard , Stones, Searchers etc etc.

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Another eighty years of history turned to rubble, what a shame my fond memories of the Odeon are not there for others to see. Shows like Little Richard, The Stones, & my all time favourite Bill Ha

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Regarding the earlier posts about what films were showing when the Odeon became a two-screen cinema, I also remember them as being The Sound of Music in Odeon 1 - and that it ran for over a year. Mar

Thats bought back some memories of the old saturday morning matinee

Chico The Rainmaker about a shrunken head

Sky Pirates about a bunch of kids using remote controlled model aeroplanes to foil a diamond smuggling gang, staring Bill Maynard (Greengrass from heartbeat) and Jamie Foreman (Derek Branning Eastenders)

Both of these films from the early seventies if memory serves. I also saw The Ten Commandments at The Futurist on Valley road Nottingham and Mary Poppins at the Metropole on Manfield road Sherwood

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It's a bit deceptive. What you see in the photos is the entrance area; it all opened out when you went further into the building.

odeo1.jpg

What was Maid Marion Way called in the days of that map then?

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Another eighty years of history turned to rubble, what a shame my fond memories of the Odeon are not there for others to see. Shows like Little Richard, The Stones, & my all time favourite Bill Haley & his Comets in 1957, did it rock that night, not a person in their seat for the final number Rock Around The Clock, the visible bounce of the balcony was frightening.

I didn't get to see The Beatles there but had seen them earlier at Coop House (Elizabethan Rooms for 6/6d), in 1963 I think. There was another venue gone without even noticing. Why did the last sixty years go so fast, and yet, thankfully, with a little jog of the mind, come back so vividly.

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A friend of the family worked for a salvage and reclamation company and knowing of my intrest in history and buildings took me along to the Odeon just after new year I think it was 2001 as he was doing a quote for stripping out the building after its closure. I remember downstairs behind partitioning there was an old bar and cloakroom still with equipment and glasses laying about it was like they boarded it up and for go it about it. In the main cinema the screen was in front of the old stage from when it was a theatre and there was a very dodgy spirals metals staircase that took you up into the fly pit, then a skylight and out onto the roof. It was a rabbit warren of passages and dead ends from all the conversions that had taken place and the projection room seemed to be full of old equipment held together by a wing and a prayer, looked liked it hadn't been updated or modernised for years.

From my childhood until now I can say that I have seen the Scala at Long Eaton, Ritz at Matlock, ABC & Odeon in Nottingham, Cosy in Heanor and Byron in Hucknall all close. Only one still going from childhood that consider traditional cinema is the Scala at Ilkeston.

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For the person who wanted to know more about the organ:

The Nottingham cinema opened as the Ritz (part of the County Cinemas circuit) late in 1933. County's musical director was the well-known broadcasting organist Reginald Foort, whose base was the Regal, Kingston-on-Thames. He was also an advisor to the organ building firm of Peter Conacher & Co. of Huddersfield, and as a result of this connection, Conacher were contracted to build three large instruments for three super cinemas then being developed by County.

These organs were of four manuals and twenty units (made up of twenty-two ranks) and included grand piano attachments playable from the console. The first to open was earlier in 1933 at the Regal, Wimbledon, Nottingham opened at the end of the year, and in 1934 they were followed by the Regal, Hull which had the third of the big Conachers. County Cinemas subsequently ordered smaller instruments from the firm of four manuals and twelve units, again with grand piano attachments, and these went to cinemas in Margate, Southampton and Southend - the latter being moved to the Odeon, Blackpool after the war. Conacher only built three other theatre organs - two for the Philpot circuit in Coventry, and one for an independent cinema in Rotherham.

The Ritz, Nottingham organ was heard regularly on the radio in the hands of Edmund V. (Jack) Helyer who was resident organist from 1933 until 1950 with a break for service in the RAF during the war. County Cinemas had been absorbed by Odeon (later combining with Gaumont under the Rank banner) in the late 1930s and the theatre renamed, so during the war the organ was played by guest organists from the Odeon circuit. Jack Helyer was made redundant in 1950 in a round of post-war cuts, but stayed with the company in a management capacity at the Gaumont, Nottingham, but up until 1960 he still broadcast from the Odeon, as well as the BBC Theatre Organ in London.

In 1964 the Odeon, Nottingham became the first cinema in the country to be subdivided into two, and the building works resulted in the sale and removal of the organ. Regrettably the organ was broken up for parts, the console being cut down to a two manual and used in a church in Surrey. Various ranks of pipes were used in church instruments and there are a couple of ranks still in use in theatre organ installations too. One of the Tibia ranks is in the midlands, and the Orchestral Oboe is playing in a residence installation in Weston-super-Mare.

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Are students smaller than they used to be? Now that the "new odeon" is beginning to take shape, you can try and guess how many students will be crammed into a very small space.

odeon1-4.jpg

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odeon3-4.jpg

Brings to mind the Pete Seeger song 'Little Boxes'.

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