Odeon Cinema

11 February 2011

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The Odeon opened on 6th May 1939 with “Three Smart Girls Grow Up” starring Deanna Durbin, and remains the largest Odeon ever built

In 1939, this ODEON Cinema was Europe’s largest with seating for 3088 people, 1684 in the stalls and 1404 in the balcony.

It had its own organ installed in 1946, when a Conacher 2 Manual/12 Ranks with grand piano was installed and opened by Al Bollington.

The Odeon was triplexed on 16th October 1975 with the two smaller screens 2 and 3 contained completely within the under-balcony area of the rear stalls. This meant that from the balcony located screen 1 there was no visible change to the auditorium

The Odeon is a Grade II Listed building.

Springfield Rd & Dickson Rd (2)

Springfield Road, junction with Dickson Road

Seen here in 1937 before the site was cleared for the Odeon Cinema

Springfield Road, corner of Lord Street. This view had long since gone.

Demolished when the Odeon was built on Dickson Road. This is the rear of what is now Funny Girls

Dickson Rd

Odeon Cinemas was created in 1928 by Oscar Deutsch. Odeon publicists have claimed that the name of the cinemas was derived from his motto, “Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation”, but it had been used for cinemas in France and Italy in the 1920’s, and the name is ultimately derived from Ancient Greek. The name “Nickelodeon” was coined in 1905 and was widely used to describe small movie theatres in the United States during that era.

Odeon (from the Ancient Greek, literally “building for musical competitions”, from the Greek for “I sing”, which is also the root of “ode” and “aoidos”) is the name for several ancient Greek and Roman buildings built for singing exercises, musical shows and poetry competitions. They were generally small in size, especially compared with a full-size ancient Greek theatre.