Essoldo Manor Park
942 Romford Road,
London,
E12
942 Romford Road,
London,
E12
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An old friend rang today and mentioned the Essoldo Manor Park which prompted me to look it up here.
I recall ‘It’s Trad Dad’ being the very last film I saw at one of my boyhood local cinemas, the Hippodrome Shildon before it succumbed to Bingo later in 1962. The second feature only had a few minutes remaining when my mother,sister and I entered the circle and I remember wishing that we had seen it from the beginning as it looked exciting. To this day I have never been able to discover its complete title even though part of it was ‘…In Outer Space’
Assuming it was from the same distributor as the main feature I even checked all Columbia releases of the 1950’s and 1960’s but without success until today,that is, when I can finally say that the mystery has been solved!
An ABC Manager and lifelong friend (until his passing in 2017) had briefly managed the State Barkingside in 1970 before transferring to the ABC Regal Wembley thence back ‘up north’ to the ABC Ritz Wigan.
My sister and I made our one and only visit to this cinema (our regular haunts were the Odeon Gants Hill and the State Barkingside)in April 1962 as it was the only place locally showing It’s Trad Dad. I vividly remembered the supporting film, a Japanese sci-fi effort, but it took me years to figure out what it was. It turned out to be Battle in Outer Space and I now have both films on DVD so can recreate the double bill! The Essoldo takeover presumably made this a Fox circuit house between 1954-1958 and the only place in the Ilford area showing Fox CinemaScope films regularly (I believe the State Barkingside showed some but ABC would not commit it to the Fox output.)