Coronet Theatre

Hi Ken. As a newbie here I don’t know how to email you. I think I may have moved on by the time you came to Classic. The Manager was my friend Marcus Wedge with whom like all local cinema managers we had very good relationship. Lending icecream, kiaora orange, getting drunk, that sort of thing. I think I met Martin. The Classic had Cinnemechanicas that we envied…though history shows that our ancient Kallees were the really “proper” grown up machines with popping arcs and clanking change-overs. That said I do know your name so perhaps paths crossed. Park Royal. Morden? Didn’t know many Classic mgrs. Terry Herold at Balham a notable exception. And Bryan Yeoman…But will save these names for email lest other readers are bored.

I was Manager of the Coronet (then Gaumont, one of Rank Organisation’s mighty chain) for a couple of years from 1965. Despite the problems inherent in managing a theatre largely unchanged from its heyday in the 1890s when Irving, Bernhardt, Terry et al had trodden its boards I look back on it as an unique experience.

After twenty years of legitimate theatre (its performances always critiqued in no less an organ than The Times) it became a silent cinema. The original 1100+ seating was considerably lessened by the closure for safety reasons of the very steeply raked upper circle. (Seats had also been removed in the Dress (or lower) Circle to accommodate the projection beam from the adjacent Operating Box). That upper circle was a time-warp, the key had simply been turned in the doors four decades before.

By the time I arrived the cinema was ‘off-release’, the product-cream going to Rank’s Odeon Bayswater. This had the virtue of allowing me to have a hand in booking what audiences suggested. This was a time of continuous performances from 1.00pm till 11.00, double-feature and the ‘Look at Life’ magazine programme that had replaced Gaumont British News some years before.

That Sixties Notting Hill, of race-riots, flower-power and some extremely pungeant smoking is a far cry from the upmarket neighbourhood now. But I remember the Coronet with affection.
The box at stage OP which had been King Edward’s had by my time become nothing more than a popcorn storage cupboard.
I recall the extraordinary lesbian-paintings with which an unknown patron adorned the plaster scrolls in the Circle ladies one afternoon, (an unusually boring matinee perhaps?). Little masterpieces which decorum -and an agitated Regional Controller – dictated my painting over in white emulsion. They are probably still to be found if you scrape carefully. The stage was still a fully-equipped Victorian stage, the fly area still displaying old-fashioned sailor pegs used to secure the ropes of flying scenery. Old war-time posters disclosed its understage area to have been a WW2 air raid shelter.
And it had a ghost. I remember Peter Hall, then Manager of the Rank flagship theatre, Odeon Leicester Square, seeking me out at a press show expressly to ask if I had experienced the spectre (which I had) and was identical to his experience some thirty years earlier when he too had managed the theatre.

I am glad that the Coronet survives in a list of diminishing silver screens. Long may it do so.

Some photographs of the Coronet Cinema here:
http://www.merciacinema.org.uk/gallery8.htm

The Notting Hill Film Festival is taking place at THE CORONET at the
moment and ends on the 17th October.

Yes our paths must have crossed at sometime.I was also there when Rank re furnished and re seated the cinema,and changed the projection equipment to a single spool,cinemacannica,and a 16 mm projector to show the old classics.We showed the first Al Jolson films half sound and half silent.Then there was Bette Davis in bobby socks with Leslie Howard,Humphrey Bogart in Petrified Forest.
I use to be relief projectionist several times at Westbourne Grove,Twickenham,Aylesbury,Holloway,Ilford,Shepherds Bush(Odeon 2)
Bury St Edmunds,Seven Oaks,Elephant & Castle,Cosham,Barking,Golders Green,Watford.
It was great tour of all the Rank cinemas at the time.
Wonderful days.
Please to have any emails anytime who remember or worked in those .nz

Thanks Nick

The new owners are bringing the CORONET into the new millennium.

Nick
What are blue bottles?

Rob

The new owners of the CORONET have a refurbishment programme up
and running at the present time,which includes the toilets!While the show continues with the usual outstanding presentation both in picture and sound.
With their state of the art digital sound system,and cinemacannica
projection equipment,as is used at the ODEON Leicester Square.
So there!!MOVIEWORLD.

Hi kiwidownunder!
The GAUMONT NOTTING HILL GATE early 70s.
Kalee 21 Projectors,Change overs.The manager Les Palmer
eventually went to the ODEON BARNET and the
short fat one went to the ODEON SWISS COTTAGE.
.uk

REPLY TO mba1 dated on 20 may 2004 11.46 am

As a customer,i totally agree with what Humbleman said about your organization.It’s a blatant lie on your part to state that you retained all the staff at the coronet cinema.When i walked in the other day i could hardly spot the usual joyful team.Morevoer , i learnt that apparently just the managers were kept to work in the cinema.Anyway , i always had a fantastic time in the cinema until now.Thanks to the cheering crew!!

I saw “Malcolm X” there, and you could smoke in the balcony, which many did!