Souvenir Coaster

This souvenir coaster commemorates the cinemas conversion in to a two screen cinema by dividing the theaters auditorium into two decks. The Nottingham Odeon was the first two screen cinema in the country.

The Conacher 4Manual/22Rank Theater Organ 1933

The Cinemas first resident organist Jack Heyler, cinema organists provided enterntainment durings the films interlude playing popular music, classical arrangements and themes based around the features showing. Jack Helyer used to regularly write to film stars of the day requesting information about their films to display on screen during the interlude while he played. His residency at the cinema lasted until 1950 interrupted only by the second world war.

Angel Row foyer 1971

The the narrow foyer on Angel Row lead back to the larger auditorium building by 1971 the cinema had been converted once again into a three screen cinema. In 1971 Britain still had its own film industry and in the run up to christmas the Odeon is offering the Oscar Nominated Scrooge released in 1970, BAFTA winning Kes released in 1969, and the movie spin off of TV program Dads Army released in september of the same year.

Odeon 1

The Odeon screen was created on the second deck of the new cinema created in 1964, the screen was designed to be a showcase for road show presentations of event films and seated an audience of 924, This photograph taken the day before the cinema closed in 2001 shows how large the searing area was compared to a modern cinema screen, In today cinema audiences are much smaller than they once were.