The Odeon at

Kingstanding Kingstanding is an area in north Birmingham, England. It gives its name to a ward in the Erdington council constituency. Kingstanding ward includes the areas; Perry Common, Witton Lakes. The other part of Kingstanding falls under the Oscott ...

, Birmingham, was a 1930s cinema in the Odeon chain. Though closed as a cinema in 1962, the building survives as a bingo hall, and is

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

History

The cinema was constructed between 1935 and 1936 to a symmetrical,

modernist Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

art deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

design by Harry Weedon and Cecil Clavering, the latter having joined the former's practice, as an assistant, in 1933. It was commissioned as an independent cinema, and was due to be called "The Beacon", after nearby

Barr Beacon Barr Beacon is a hill on the edge of Walsall, West Midlands (county), West Midlands, England, very near the border with Birmingham. It gives its name to nearby Great Barr (the Beacon borders the Pheasey area of Great Barr) and to the local secon ...

, but Oscar Deutsch became involved, and the cinema opened as part of his Odeon chain on 22 July 1935. It was built to serve Kingstanding's new, 4,000-home working-class housing estate and had 968 seats in the stalls and 324 in the circle. The first film was '' The Lives of a Bengal Lancer'', starring

Gary Cooper Gary Cooper (born Frank James Cooper; May 7, 1901May 13, 1961) was an American actor known for his strong, silent screen persona and understated acting style. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor twice and had a further three nominations, ...

. The brick building occupies a wedge-shaped site between Kings Road and Kettlehouse Road, overlooking and facing Kingstanding Circle. The centre of the glazed cream and black tile ("''

faience Faience or faïence (; ) is the general English language term for fine tin-glazed pottery. The invention of a white Ceramic glaze, pottery glaze suitable for painted decoration, by the addition of an stannous oxide, oxide of tin to the Slip (c ...

''") frontage features three slender fins, also finished with faience, above a stepped brick parapet. Clavering, inspired by the Lichtburg cinema in Berlin, originally intended that these fins would be topped by a searchlight.Richard Gray, ''Cinemas in Britain: One Hundred Years of Cinema Architecture'', London: Lund Humphries, 1996, , p. 92: "The original idea was for a searchlight to be mounted on the fins which would scan the night sky, like at the Lichtburg in Berlin. This idea was dropped when Deutsch took over he cinema. The cinema closed on 1 December 1962, the final film being '' To Hell and Back'', starring

Audie Murphy Audie Leon Murphy (20 June 1925 – 28 May 1971) was an American soldier, actor, and songwriter. He was widely celebrated as the most decorated American combat soldier of World War II, and has been described as the most highly decorated enli ...

Bingo

The building was refurbished and opened as a Top Rank Bingo Club, subsequently becoming a Mecca Bingo Club, in which use it continues. It was given Grade-II listed status by

English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, a battlefield, medieval castles, Roman forts, historic industrial sites, Lis ...

just 44 years after its erection, on 10 October 1980. It has been described as "one of the best surviving examples of Odeon cinemas in Britain".

References

External links

*
Pictures
in the

archives
Blog post with early photos

{{BirminghamBuildings Kingstanding Grade II listed buildings in Birmingham Cinemas in the West Midlands (county) Former cinemas in England Odeon Cinemas Theatres completed in 1935 Streamline Moderne architecture in the United Kingdom Grade II listed cinemas