All change

This issue’s topic is cinemas changing equipment. I have spent my working life hauling equipment in and out of projection rooms (and I’m still doing it!). I have managed to find an assortment of images from the PPT archive of cinemas having such an upgrade, be it projectors, sound systems, or new technologies.

The first is dated 1948, showing a foyer display in St George’s Hall Bradford – in 1898 it was the first venue in Bradford to show films. They are obviously pushing the fact that the Kalee 20 was made “just down the road” (more details about the history of Kalee projectors and the Kershaw Projector Co. can be found on page 8 of this issue of Rewind).

The next picture is showing the installation of yet another post war projector, the BT-H SUPA. This time at the Odeon Bedminster in Bristol, sadly when I knew the Odeon it was by then a Top Rank Club.

However, the next installation looks like a new Duosonic sound system going in to the Exchange in Northampton. From the film posters this is 1947 and it looks like the poor doorman has got landed with the job off unpacking it all!

This next picture is a bit of a conundrum. It shows a pair of Kalees 20s on pedestals waiting to replace a pair of BT-H SUPAs at the Odeon Halifax. Now why would they do that? They were both manufactured at the same time so it is not as though they were updating something. Could it be that SUPA spares were getting scarce and they had a pair of displaced 21s available?

As well as replacing equipment, Odeon often installed experimental systems for a trial period and this next projection room at the Odeon Epsom shows a Victoria 18 single unit projector on test alongside the Kalees. This installation is dated 1966, and the idea of this piece of kit is that you only required a single machine. The plan was that the 6000ft reels held the adverts and trailers and possibly a short such as Look at Life. You then ran the feature off the big spools whilst hand winding the “odds and sods”. Then after the feature, it was back to the 6000ft spool whilst the feature was rewound in situ. It proved unsuccessful, as at the time here in the UK, cinemas ran double features.

The next pair of pictures are a before and after scenario at the Odeon Westbourne Grove. The GK-20s have already had an upgrade by removing the President arcs and replacing them with Cinemeccanica xenons. Later the Kalee machines were replaced with Victoria 8s with large spool capacity. These large spools and the “cut out” pedestal were originally designed for Cinerama and later used to give long running capability. At this time (1970) Cinemeccanica did not make a tower or platter system. Out of shot is a Cinemation console installed at the same time.

The next set of photos show a poor engineer stripping out the first of three old Victoria 10 projectors at the Odeon Leicester Square to replace them with three Victoria 8s. The pedestals had been selected as the low type which allowed the picture to go through the port hole without any alteration to the floor or port hole height. They were also completely rewired for interlock and variable speed.

The final photo shows the completed installation. Sadly it is no longer there having been replaced by digital projectors, although I believe one newer Vic 8 remains so the occasional film can be screened.