Western Talkie Theatre
63 Park Road,
Bradford,
BD5
63 Park Road,
Bradford,
BD5
1 person
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Located on the northern side of Park Road, about 100 yards along from the junction of Manchester Road and opposite Hawkshead Drive. The Park Road Cinema was opened on 22nd July 1922 with Charlie Chaplin in “A Gamble in Lives”. It was built for and designed by architect Ernest H. Dawson of Manchester. All seating was on a single level.
In 1932, after Western Electric (WE) sound was installed, it was re-named the Western Talkie Theatre.
The Western Talkie Theatre was closed on 14th January 1961 with Glenn Ford in “The Sheepman” and Denny Miller in “Tarzan and the Ape Man”. The building was later demolished with the wholesale redevelopment of the area and the widening of Manchester Road. By 2008 a housing estate of 5-storey blocks of flats had been built on an extended site. By 2012 they had been demolished and the site is a vacant lot in 2023.
Contributed by
Ken Roe
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Recent comments (view all 3 comments)
This was one of the first cinemas in Bradford to go over to showing Asian films. The projectionists were, however, English. The arrangement caused trouble one night when a feature had arrived with the reels wrongly number and got shown in the wrong order.
This was very common… You where lucky to get the print 30min before showing…. and Full of V cuts and dogy joins.. and Prayers had to be said at the side of the projectors so it would go through…
The location on the map is not accurate. It was actually on Park Road. Having overlaid a 1934 OS 25-inch map on the Google satellite view: the site of Western is (to a very close approximation) on the north side of Park Road opposite Hawkshead Drive.