Odeon Cinema, Perry Barr, Birmingham.

Odeon Perry Barr

 

Original Owners:  Picture House (Perry Barr) Ltd,  Oscar Deutsch.

 

 

Oscar Deutsch, the Balsall Heath-born entrepreneur, a former King Edward VI pupil and son of a Jewish scrap metal worker who had emigrated from Hungary, opened his first cinema in Brierley Hill, Dudley, in 1928, but it was Perry Barr, his second cinema, that launched the successful chain’s name.

In March 1929, Picture House (Perry Barr) Ltd was formed to acquire the site on Birchfield Road. However, it was soon realised that the new cinema could not be named Picture House, as the nearby Birchfield Picture House objected. Odeon was a popular name for amphitheatres of ancient Greece with the name beginning to be used by the 1920s to describe buildings and cinemas in France and Italy. Oscar’s friend and business associate, Mel Mindelsohn, had worked on setting up the Brierley Hill cinema. He spotted the name Odeon while on a family holiday in Tunis. It was an ancient Greek word meaning “singing place”. Oscar Deutsch and his team decided it wasn’t too exotic to risk to use the name for his cinema at Perry Barr.

Once the name was confirmed, Harold Pearce, of the local firm, Pearce Signs, quickly sketched out the font of what was to be used on signage of all the traditional Odeon Cinemas from 1933 onwards. This was the first cinema in the United Kingdom to be called Odeon, and was managed/operated by Oscar Deutsch who later founded his Odeon Theatres Ltd. chain in 1933. Years later, it would become apocryphally known as ‘Oscar Deutsch Entertains our Nation’, a mere coincidence that Oscar’s name could be included into Odeon, which his son, Ronnie, confirmed.

This unique Odeon Cinema, was situated on the corner of Birchfield Road and Canterbury Road in the Perry Barr/Handsworth district in the north of Birmingham. Architects Stanley A. Griffiths and Horace G. Bradley designed the building on a rectangular plot, in a Moorish style both externally and internally. The façade was painted a brilliant white and had rounded features that gave an impression of domes. Inside the auditorium seating was arranged for 1,160 in the stalls and 478 in the balcony.

A rarity in the auditorium plan was that the stalls area widened towards the proscenium, acoustically, not a good idea for a cinema showing sound films, particularly as the loudspeakers were placed in boxes on either side of the screen. The style of a Moorish palace differed from the streamlined modernism which the circuit later adopted. The secondary lighting was supplied by gas.

It was equipped with Ross projectors and a British Thomson-Houston (BTH) sound system. The screen width could be adjusted between 28’9” to 40’.

The Odeon Theatre, Perry Barr opened on Bank Holiday Monday, 4th August 1930,  with the feature ’Illusion’, starring Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers and Nancy Carrol. The supporting film was ‘Dark Red Roses’, starring Stewart Rome and Frances Doble.

Usherettes and ushers were kitted out in trousers, anklets, turbans and veils.

In 1931, Cellotex was applied to the walls in an attempt to improve the acoustics. Moorish scenes were painted over some of the treated surfaces. There was also a design problem with the rake of the balcony that allowed customers heads to catch the projection beam.

Oscar Deutsch had an apartment attached to the cinema where he stayed when he was working late. The cinema became part of the Odeon circuit from 17th July 1935. This Perry Barr cinema was a training ground for new recruitments and was constantly used to trial new equipment and furnishings.

The Odeon chain flashed into life and burned out quickly. Deutsch’s life and his legendary business ran like one of those old, pre-talkie films.

At the time of his death from cancer in December 1941, at the young age of 48, he had opened another 257 cinemas across the UK. His final contact with one of his cinemas was when the funeral cortege passed the Odeon Cinema, Perry Barr. A veteran member of staff who remembered the funeral cars stopping outside the cinema said, “The staff stood on the steps in silence to pay tribute to this visionary individual”. His wife Lillian quickly sold the family shares to Rank, thus relinquishing the Deutsch influence in the business.

In 1953 the façade of the building was re-faced in a plain design of bare brick. It was closed by the Rank Organisation on Saturday 3rd May 1969, showing its final film, ‘The Wrecking Crew’, starring Dean Martin and Elke Sommer. It re-opened on Thursday 14th August 1969 as a Top Rank Bingo Club which continued until closing on Saturday 19th February 1983. The building lay empty for a while until it was taken over by an independent bingo operator and was known as the Perry Bingo Club. Further take overs followed that included Granada and Gala Bingo. It finally closed on 5th April 1997. It remained empty for several more years until August 2002 when it was converted into the Royale Banqueting Suite which provided banquets and receptions.

The Odeon brand still exists and is one of the names AMC uses on its cinemas.

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