Film / Features
Could it finally be curtains for the Odeon on Union Street?
When the Cinema De Lux opened in Cabot Circus back in 2008, speculation was rife that this could mean curtains for its nearest rival: the Odeon on Union Street.
But the American Showcase chain’s central Bristol cinema sold itself on premium service, with two pricey ‘Director’s Halls’ offering at-seat service – perhaps over-estimating punters’ enthusiasm for watching movies while stuck next to fellow patrons who are consuming stinky meals.
The Odeon realised that there was only one way it could compete: by offering many of the same blockbusters at more wallet-friendly prices.
is needed now More than ever
Odeon ticket prices are as low as £5 – photo: Mersina Booth
Few would have predicted it would still be here in 2024, but that’s what’s happened. Now, however, the Odeon is under threat once again – this time by its own chain.
There’s been no official announcement, and the Union Street cinema could indeed live to fight another day.
But news that Odeon is to take over at least part of the 14-screen site of the mothballed Cinema De Lux may mean that the UK’s largest cinema chain will decide not to operate two venues in such close proximity.
It is unknown if Odeon will take on all of what was formerly the Showcase Cinema De Lux – photo: Martin Booth
Odeon has a long history in Bristol. Back in 1928, founder Oscar Deutsch made it his mission to build an Odeon cinema in every town that could support one.
Designed by renowned architect Thomas Cecil Howett and constructed on the site of the former Fry’s chocolate factory, the Bristol Odeon in Union Street opened on July 16 1938.
This was a boom time for cinema, mostly at the expense of variety halls. By 1939, Bristol had 56 cinemas.
Deutsch himself was present for the grand opening of the Union Street cinema. All 1,900 seats (1000 in the stalls, 900 on the balcony) were filled as he took to the stage to describe his new picture palace as the finest in the country.
The audience then settled down to watch the now-forgotten Deanna Durbin musical Mad About Music, with a full supporting programme that included the ‘Mickey Mouse Coloured Cartoon’ Donald’s Better Self.
The Blitz had a major impact on Bristol’s cinemas in 1940 and 1941. Five were completely destroyed, including the Odeon’s grand rival The Regent.
The Odeon itself had to close for a couple of weeks after the first bombing raid in December 1940 because a bomb hit the corner of Union Street, shattering a culvert that channelled the River Frome and filling the cinema’s basement with six feet of muddy water.
Incendiary bombs could have destroyed the Odeon altogether that night, had projectionist Don Cottle not climbed onto the roof to put them out.
Six years later, the Odeon made headlines again when its 32-year-old manager Robert Parrington-Jackson was shot dead in his office while a full house of punters watched the Ronald Colman thriller The Light That Failed.
The crime remains unsolved to this day and it’s been claimed the cinema is haunted by Parrington-Jackson’s ghost.
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Read more: Bristol’s oldest cold case murder
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Now under the control of J. Arthur Rank, the Odeon chain also swallowed up Bristol’s two Ambassador cinemas (in Bedminster and Kingswood) just after the Second World War. Both were closed in 1961, the former becoming a bingo hall and the latter a bowling alley.
By the 1970s, cinema was in decline and thought by some commentators to be fatally wounded by TV.
(Prophesying the death of cinema has been a popular sport among newspaper columnists for decades. This argument was revived earlier this year when audiences had simply tired of endless dull superhero flicks. The industry has certainly struggled to recover after the pandemic, but the Barbenheimer phenomenon brought audiences flooding back and right now cinema is in rude health thanks to the triple whammy of Wicked, Gladiator II and Paddington in Peru.)
Many of the grand old picture houses were carved up into smaller screens to maximise revenue. The Odeon was converted into a triple-screen cinema in 1974. In 1983, it closed for redevelopment.
The interior of the cinema was gutted and the stalls converted into a retail space, initially occupied by Mothercare and now the site of the Lidl supermarket.
The Odeon and Mothercare in 1992 – photo: Len Gazzard
Back then, only the big Bond films could be relied upon to drive punters back to cinemas. So it was that the new Odeon (actually the original circle divided into three screens) opened on June 13 1985 with Roger Moore’s last outing as Bond in A View to a Kill.
It looked and sounded great. This, everybody thought, was the future of cinema. Until the multiplexes turned up, beginning with Showcase’s Avonmeads site in September 1994.
Soon, Bristol was ringed by these out-of-town barns and the few smaller cinemas that had somehow managed to survive began to wilt in the face of intense competition that led to a 60 per cent drop in takings.
Early casualties included the family-owned independent Gaiety in Knowle and the ABC Frogmore Street (now the site of the O2 Academy music venue). Even that popular Henleaze community cinema the Orpheus was under threat until it was saved after a public outcry.
These days the Odeon chain is owned by the American company AMC Theatres, which is in turn owned by Chinese conglomerate the Wanda Group, and seems entirely unsentimental about its cinemas and their history.
In June 2023, Odeon announced the closure of five of its sites, including its historic art deco Weston-super-Mare cinema (also designed by architect Thomas Cecil Howett), where the Beatles played a summer residency in 1963 and which boasts a historic Compton cinema organ. Fortunately, the cinema was saved when it was taken over by the independent Merlin Cinemas chain.
There’s unlikely to be a queue of operators eager to take over the Odeon in Union Street, but for the time being it remains one of just six surviving original Oscar Deutsch Odeon cinemas in the country, whose ranks include the flagship Odeon Leicester Square.
Odeon closed their cinema in Weston-super-Mare in June 2023 but by the end of that year it had reopened as the Plaza – photo: North Somerset Council
Main photo: Martin Booth
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