The Queen's Coronation
My earliest memory of this wonderful little cinema was seeing the colour newsreel of the Queen’s Coronation – I would have been all of nine years of age!
Being the age of innocence, I often took the bus from Hove with my mates to visit the cheaper cinemas – there was one right on the seafront, opposite the West Pier, which was still showing silent movies at the time. The proprietor must have been a complete dinosaur as he refused to give in and show the new-fangled talkies, never mind colour! I wish I could remember the name of the place.
Returning to the Princes News Theatre (its proper title!), I remember the program line-up consisted of a serial such as ‘King of the Rocket men’, a couple of cartoons, a short film such as ‘the Marx Brothers’ and of course, the Pathe News.
One afternoon my mates and I were kicking an icecream carton along the row and it stuck to end of my shoe. On bending down to retrieve it, I spotted a pound note stuck in the remnants of the icecream! After an extremely short debate as to whether we should hand it in, we made a hasty exit and spent our ill-gotten gains playing the amusement machines on the West Pier! ( Our preferred pier as they only charged 9d as opposed to the 1/- for the Palace Pier – that’s my theory for the failure of the West Pier! )
My ex-wife used to work for a firm of chartered accountants with offices above the Princes Theatre – if I remember correctly the company’s name was ‘Friend-James, Sinclair and Yarnell’.
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I believe the cinema that Victor was referring to was the Palladium. When I went there on the odd occasion in the late thirties and early forties there was full sound. I also remember seeing the original version of “The Mystery of the Waxworks Museum”, remade many many years later as a 3D film.
I too remember the Palladium and am disappointed that this has not been included along with the Curzon in Western Road which is where the extended Waitrose is now. Any news or history of these please. Also what about the short lived Paris in New Road which showed mainly foreign films – a real revelation in those days (late 50’s early 60’s).
I recall seeing the Russian film “The Battleship Potempkin” at the Palladium with my Dad. Must have been in the mid fifties. It was a bit of a fleapit even then. John C Snelling
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