Electric Cinema in Birmingham is 100 years old this week.
Bette Mansfield an usherette at The Electric in the 1930's. For the original image please click on the picture.
BBC news ran a good piece on the history of the Electric Cinema on Station Street in yesterday’s new bulletins. If you missed it you can watch it here.
Tom Lawes – who now owns the building – lists some of the key parts of the history on his website:
1909 On the 30th of December the cinema shows its first performance.
1922 Renamed ‘Select Cinema’.
1931 On the 14th of November the cinema closed and became an amusement arcade.
1937 The building added a gallery upstairs (now screen 2) and becamethe 399 seat Tatler News Theatre
Jon Bounds wrote about their early 100th Birthday bash last month, saying
A real treat was footage of the re-opening of the cinema as a ‘Tatler News Theatre’ in the early 30’s — these showed newsreels and cartoons and locally shot news. The archive was found in a shed on the roof during work in the 70s and must contain a load of local Brum footage
Tom is always looking for more information on the history of what is now Britain’s oldest working cinema. To contact him please take a look at www.theelectric.co.uk.
Thanks to Created in Birmingham for linking to the BBC story.
It is great that The Electric Cinema has been revived again, and that this lovely 1909 cinema is still going. I do recall the original launch of The Electric in the 90s. However, slightly older Birmingham people will probably still best know The Electric Cinema by the name it acquired sometime in the 1960s, I think: The Jacey. In the 60s and 70s the building had a very different sort of reputation. There’s a nice bit of a Jacey memoir here, for example.
http://tinyurl.com/yfn24vu
Thanks for the link to the article on The Stirrer. Of course, others will also remember it as a place which once showed adult films!