Regal Cinema
765 Finchley Road,
London,
NW11 8DS
765 Finchley Road,
London,
NW11 8DS
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The following was interesting reading. I found it in ‘Cinema News & Property Gazette’ (a cinema exhibition industry trade paper) dated Tuesday 29 October 1957.
Granada TV have sought planning permission from Hendon Council to use the Regal Finchley Road NW for studios and offices. The application has been granted on condition that no more than twenty people are employed there at night between 11.30 pm and 8 am and the premises are not used in any manner which in the opinion of the planning sub-committee “is detrimental to the amenities of the locality”. The outside of the building will be unaltered.
This was on my bus route home from school and I sometimes broke my journey to see a film. I recall Scott of the Antarctic, and The Prisoner with Alec Guinness.
I remember this cinema from when I was small and we lived around the corner. What I loved were the coloured lights in the ceiling. As the building used to be an ice rink these might well have been the compartment battens originally designed to flood the ice with changeable colours. It may have been an economy to keep these and just illuminate all of them as house lights. The cinema was reputed to have the longest ‘throw’ from the projection room to the screen of any cinema in the UK. I was very sad when I heard that it was closing.
Seymour; Great photo of the Regal Theatre/later Odeon, Marble Arch, now demolished and not to be confused with the current open Odeon Marble Arch, which is also on this site.
Which of the London Regal cinemas is this one?
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Here is a September 1949 photograph of the Regal Cinema, playing the Odeon release:
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