ABC Coleshill Street
88 Coleshill Street,
Birmingham,
B4
88 Coleshill Street,
Birmingham,
B4
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Alan Barker The projection Equipment at Bristol Road was Cinemeccaninca Victoria 8s Supplied by Cinerama Philips DP70 did not go in until The Cinema was tripled. These were brand new. Screen 3 on opening had a Ross GC3 RCA Soundhead and I believe a Westrex Tower fitted temporary. I did Relief Management at this Cinema before and after the conversion.
Opening article:
Gaiety cinema opening 15 Dec 1939, Fri Evening Despatch (Birmingham, West Midlands, England) Newspapers.com
Now that the British Newspaper Archive has belatedly got around to putting the Birmingham Post from 1965 online, it can be seen that My Fair Lady opened at the ABC Coleshill St. for it’s 70mm roadshow run on April 18th 1965 and ran for five weeks before transferring to ABC Bristol Road on May 23rd (it ran there for a further 21 weeks). It would seem that this was the old Gaiety’s last 70mm presentation.
Further research shows that the ABC Coleshill St. (as it was known by then) closed for 70mm installation from October 11th to October 21st 1964. It opened the next day with Cheyenne Autumn in 70mm for a three and a half week run. The ABC Bristol Road closed for Cinerama installation in May 1963, so if the 70mm kit came from there it must have been in store somewhere for over a year.
A couple of small points. As the 70mm kit came from the ABC Bristol Road (which was being converted to 3 strip Cinerama), the projectors were almost certainly DP70s rather than the later DP75. As for only having the 70mm kit for eighteen months, Allen Eyles ABC book says the Gaiety had the Midlands premiere of My Fair Lady, which would not have been until 1966.