Granada Cinema, Tooting, London

When David Atwell wrote the first detailed account of cinema architecture in Britain, Cathedrals of the Movies (Architectural Press 1980), the front-cover illustration was of the Granada Cinema, Tooting, in south London.

The Granada cinema chain was founded by the brothers Sidney and Cecil Bernstein, and they named their company as a result of a walking holiday in Spain.

They employed a Russian emigré theatre-director, Theodore Komisarjevsky, to design a series of purpose-built cinemas, starting in Dover in 1930.

The Tooting Granada, built in 1931, was the flagship.

Its exterior shell was designed in a discreet Moderne manner by Cecil Aubrey Masey. Within, Komisarjevsky provided an utterly magnificent, Venetian extravaganza with a baronial hall and minstrels’ gallery in the foyer, a hall of mirrors in the circle lobby and a 3,104-seat auditorium with a coffered roof, Gothic tracery decoration and a cusped proscenium arch.

It had, and still has, a Wurlitzer organ bought second-hand from the Majestic Theater, Sacramento, California and subsequently enlarged.

All this was planted in a workaday part of south London, near the local tube station. Londoners came off the street into a palazzo of the pictures, inspired by the Doge’s Palace, the Ca d’Oro, and the Palazzi Cavalli, Pizini and Foscari.

Not that they needed to know the cultural references. Komisarjevsky and his left-leaning clients believed that ordinary people deserved the best that could be provided, and economies of scale made that possible.

In the opening-day brochure for the broadly similar Granada Cinema, Woolwich (1937) Komisarjevsky wrote –

The picture theatre supplies folk with the flavour of romance for which they crave. The richly decorated theatre, the comfort with which they are surrounded, the efficiency of the service contribute to an atmosphere and a sense of well-being of which the majority have hitherto only imagined. While there they can with reason consider themselves as good as anyone, and are able to enjoy their cigarettes or their little love affairs in comfortable seats amidst attractive and appealing surroundings.

In the pre-war period the Tooting Granada could easily fill three full houses a day.

It was the first British cinema to be listed Grade II*, in 1972, and the first to be upgraded to Grade I in 2000.

The building is no longer a Granada. It’s now operated by the Gala Bingo chain:  Granada Tooting – A palace to the golden age of cinema.

There are images of the parts of the building that the public don’t reach at Report – – Granada Cinema, Tooting – July 2015 | Theatres and Cinemas | 28DaysLater.co.uk.

A highlight for me of the Abbeydale Picture House Revival weekend was watching the first film ever shown there, The Call of the Road, with Vincente Stienlet, the grandson of the architect of the building, Pascal J Stienlet. As Mr Stienlet pointed out afterwards, his grandparents almost certainly watched the same film, in the same space, on the opening night in December 1920.

There is, to our mutual regret, no material about the Abbeydale in the archive of the Pascal J Stienlet & Son practice. However, Mr Stienlet showed me some fascinating images and plans of what was probably Pascal Stienlet’s largest cinema commission, the Majestic Cinema, City Square, Leeds.

The old Majestic is a much loved Leeds landmark. Designed by Pascal Stienlet in partnership with Joseph C Maxwell, and opened in June 1922, its dignified Beaux Arts façade, of Burmantofts ‘Marmo’ terracotta, is a delicate cream which for years was darkened by Leeds’ polluted atmosphere.

In the 2,600-seat auditorium, giant fluted Ionic columns and a Grecian frieze based on the Parthenon supported a coffered dome 84 feet in diameter. On either side of the proscenium were the pipes of the three-manual Vincent organ. In the basement below was a restaurant 110 feet × 110 feet with a sprung floor for dancing.

The Majestic became part of the Gaumont chain in 1929, and remained a premier film venue well into the 1960s – its run of The Sound of Music extended from April 1965 to September 1967 – but it went over to bingo in 1969. It’s unusual among city-centre cinemas because it was never subdivided. It was listed Grade II in 1993.

In 1997 the entire building became two night-clubs, the Majestyk in the auditorium and Jumpin’ Jacks in the ballroom below.

It was closed in 2006; an application for a casino licence was refused and the site became vacant.

In 2011 the Leeds developer Rushbond financed a clever refurbishment for retail use.

When the redeveloped building was almost ready for opening it caught fire on the evening of September 30th 2014. The fire brigade declared a major incident, closed off much of the city centre for over twelve hours, and by their skill and good judgement, though they lost the roof, saved the exterior walls.

Within a matter of days a 32-year-old man was arrested in connection with his suspicious behaviour at the scene. He was cleared of all charges in March 2015: http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/latest-news/top-stories/leeds-majestic-blaze-man-cleared-of-arson-charges-1-7183724.

Rushbond revived the burnt-out shell which became the national headquarters of Channel 4 in September 2021.

The story of the Majestic is neatly encapsulated in a Yorkshire Evening Post article – http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/news/latest-news/top-stories/proud-history-of-a-leeds-landmark-1-6871416 – and there is an illustration of the interior in original condition at http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/2718.