Showing at the Classic in Chorlton in 1974

Now for no other reason than I saw all four of these films and at one time was a regular at the Classic in Chorlton here is a movie list from 1974.

Not that any of them were new releases. By the time they were entertaining audiences at the Classic Electra Glide in Blue, How to Steal a Diamond and White Lightening  had been around for a few years while the rest were made in the late 1960s.

But that what suburban cinemas did.  They showed the not so new releases which if you hadn't already seen them was far better than paying the bus fare into town.

And so  if you grew up in Chorlton anytime before the mid 1980s you will have fond memories of the Rivoli before it became the Essoldo, the Classic and finally the Shalimar.*

It was opened in 1937 and our own brass band played at the opening ceremony.

It is a cinema I keep returning to if only because it was the last of our picture houses to be opened and the last to close.

So long after the Pavilion closed its doors down by the railway and the Palais de Luxe became a supermarket followed by the Gaumont which is now the Co-op Undertakers, the cinema by the Brook continued to show its films.

It too has now gone and instead of a hot dog, ice cream and Gone With the Wind the passer by can call in for fast food and a Coke.

That said the site can still generate discussion from those who think it was where the closed Blockbusters now stands and those who correctly identifiy the place as the present chicken takeaway business.

Pictures; Cinema list from the collection of Graham Gill, Essoldo Cinema m09200 March 1959 R E Stanley, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*The Rivoli, before it became the Essoldo, the Classic and the Shalimar and finished as our last cinema, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/rivoli-before-it-became-essoldo-classic.html  and Stories of the Rivoli and Essoldo http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/stories-of-rivoli-and-essoldo.html

Both from the series Chorlton cinemas, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Chorlton%20cinemas