Alida Baxter

Renowned London journalist and author

View from Soho,

Lost Cinemas, Lost News Theatre

and Lost Projectionists

You must have noticed how many films every year, and still currently, are set in the past. They drag the present-day audience into England , into London , as it used to be: the filth of Victorian slums, the bleak machinations of Cold War spying – the past is always with us, just read the reviews. And old films on DVD or screened on television show us even more accurately how people dressed in decades gone by, how they pressed button A in phone boxes, had books saved for them at Boot's library and how – a world within a world – they “went to the pictures”. I just love that expression, and it belongs to a time when cinemas were the cheap and popular entertainment, and there was a generation still alive who talked about “Picture Palaces”.

Here, in the heart of the West End , premieres are still a constant, with (often sodden) red carpets, stars, photographers, interviewers, and crowds waiting and waving in the rain. But almost everything else about the experience of seeing a film has changed.

And one of the biggest and most noticeable changes in my lifetime has been the enormous number of cinemas we have lost – some without trace, others commemorated by only a line from a fan on an internet forum or a reference in an old novel. It's happened all over London , but Oxford Street , Regent Street and Piccadilly Circus were peppered with film theatres large and small that have gone.

Let's describe a few for you – imagine you're with me, in my childhood, when (being typical) I loved Disney and his competitors. On the North side of Piccadilly Circus , where the curve of Regent Street meets Shaftesbury Avenue , there was a little cartoon cinema at which you went down pretty, shallow stairs to enter the auditorium and the wonderful world of Tom and Jerry and all the rest. I can remember everything but the name it had when I was little, and research, with the help of the Senior Archivist at the City of Westminster Archives Centre, has turned up a puzzle.

Opened in 1934, with a perfect art deco interior, it was originally the Eros News Theatre, and only decades later became the Eros Cartoon Theatre. Yet the renaming should have happened far earlier: we went elsewhere for newsreels (of which more in a while); cartoons were what it was known for and what I was taken to see.

That was why it was the natural choice for a special event: the screening of Disney's “The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad” – two separate animated features which, when released at the end of the 'forties, were shown as a package. “Mr. Toad”, of course, was a version of “The Wind in the Willows”; its extraordinary companion “Ichabod” was based on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, complete with headless horseman! (What a great choice for children – why not “The Pit and the Pendulum”, or “The Masque of the Red Death”?) But, not usually stoic, I was totally mesmerised by it, and I've never forgotten climbing the softly carpeted treads leading out to the street afterwards, chatting to all the others who were just as thrilled. One way and another, it's no wonder that I recall so clearly the visit and the cinema!

Unknowable then was its sad distant future: under other names becoming a pick-up and sex venue, showing programmes of soft porn and finally closing, worn out, in 1985.

But none of that could have been foreseen in the happy era when excited kiddies were being led down the stairs. Adults cheered themselves up by going to see Donald Duck or Micky Mouse, and children like me got so scared Tom was going to kill Jerry this time that cinema seats all over the rows crashed up like machine gun fire as we dived underneath them till the latest danger was over.

Piccadilly Circus always saw Jerry triumph, though, and almost as fascinating as the cartoon theatre, only yards from it and to be passed on the way home, relieved at his survival, was the cramped window in which two real ladies sat mending stockings. I could hardly be dragged away from them, but don't imagine the kind of display you might see in red-light Amsterdam – these were solid middle aged ladies, side by side, with their spectacled eyes focussed on their incredibly painstaking work. I know from contemporary sources that Etam used to have a silk stocking shop on the same spot in the nineteen twenties, so I suppose the dextrous workers I watched, nose pressed to the glass more than a generation later, could have been the inheritors of the Etam mantle, but when I think of the hours and hours every day spent hand-mending stockings in full view of the attracted public, my heart goes out to them and their strained sight.

Back in the cinemas, away from the toiling ladies, there was the Pathe news. Well into the 'fifties, televisions weren't a staple in many homes (friends came to watch ours every weekend until almost 1960!), and people didn't just go to the cinema for starry entertainment, they went for the newsreels. Those films turn up now as a priceless resource for historical documentaries, but they were of very real current interest to the audiences who went regularly to news theatres: a category quite distinct from cinemas (even the small Piccadilly one) which showed an entire programme of which Gaumont British bulletins or Pathe (by far my favourite, with its crowing cockerel) were only a part. And our local news theatre was Studio Two.

Studio One and Studio Two were striking cinemas, side by side, conjoined twins, in Oxford Street. They and their neon rose in perfect art deco geometric patterns, and they were right by Oxford Circus Tube Station, just east of the junction with Argyle Street (which carried traffic then, and wasn't a semi-pedestrianised mess). Studio Two was purely a news theatre, with only the occasional short or two thrown in, and was always packed, but Studio One had more cachet – it was a real cinema, showing major Hollywood releases.

I was taken to Studio Two all the time, and just as the Piccadilly cartoon theatre had separate but associated joys in a nearby window, so had this one. There was a chocolate shop at the top of Argyle Street , moments from the turn to Oxford Street , and the glorious scent of the precious sweets floated out from it. You cannot imagine how much everyone longed for chocolates – sweet rationing went on forever, long after World War Two – and I can remember my mother taking precious sugar (which was still rationed even when sweets weren't, after 1953) to that shop. I don't know how or why the system worked, but during rationing she had to hand over not only money and coupons but sugar too if she wanted to buy the tiniest quantity of chocolates, and everyone else did the same. Every time we walked up Argyle Street , past the Palladium, we saw respectable women entering that doorway as though they were sidling into the casbah to sell their bodies for dope, and we'd try not to sniff the aroma of cocoa solids as we passed them and went around the corner to Studio Two.

It was unimaginable, then, that those two cinemas should vanish without trace, and I'm amazed now that there's nothing to be found on the internet about them. Individually they weren't huge, but side by side, and given their style, they were unforgettable, and I also remember how comfortable they were when we were inside.

It has taken yet more delving by the wonderful Senior Archivist at the Westminster Archives to track down their history for me, contained in a book named “ London 's West End Cinemas”, by Allan Eyles.

Thanks to Allan Eyles' work and care, I've learned that they began as a single entity named Cinema House, opened in July, 1910, and containing “an auditorium in Jacobean style with panelling throughout in old oak”. A basement restaurant was added in 1912, and by the 1930s it had become a home of art films (of which more later). In 1935 it was closed so that the restaurant could be converted to house a second screen and auditorium, and in March 1936 Cinema House reopened as Studio One and Studio Two, becoming the West End 's first twin cinemas.

It's in that form that I went to them in the 'fifties and 'sixties, and recall them so fondly, but what truly astonished me was to learn that apparently they became a complex of Studios One to Four in 1977! Admittedly I spent a lot of that year in Australia and the Far East, and when back in London I was either at home writing or being taken to lunch at the Connaught , but I'm amazed that I didn't notice this transmogrification. Of course the same carving up into ever-smaller bits was happening to many picture houses, much to my fury, and I raged as it spread like a virus; they say shock can play tricks on the mind, and perhaps that's why four Borrowers' sized mouse holes where two treasures had been wiped themselves from my consciousness. But whatever the reason, I don't recollect the despoiled version of dear old Studio One and Studio Two. If only they'd been left alone – they were worth preserving, and the complex closed for good in 1984.

A different fate lay in store for another iconic venue. Far larger, imposing, and reserved for special, not regular visits, when I was very young, was the New Gallery Cinema in Regent Street . It was on the right hand side as you walked down towards Piccadilly Circus , in the block between Heddon Street and Vigo Street.

As a child I was a bit overawed by it, which isn't surprising. It wasn't cosy, like the cartoon theatre in Piccadilly, or Studio Two, and its history was one long series of dramatic upheavals from first to last.

In 1888 it was first opened as exactly what the name implied – an art gallery – a place of marble, gilding and columns covered in platinum leaf, noted for major exhibitions of the Pre-Raphaelite and Arts and Crafts movements. But despite all that opulence, and the renown of the artists whose works were shown, it closed in 1910, to have a brief life as a restaurant before being remodelled and launched as a cinema in 1913. In that form and in those days it thrived – so much so that it was enlarged in 1925, remodelled yet again, and had a Wurlitzer organ installed! There are references to the New Gallery in reminiscences describing the 'twenties and 'thirties, when lovers went to the pictures and sat in the magic darkness. But by the time I was taken there its heyday was long over, and the auditorium was almost empty. I can remember very few visits.

There weren't all that many opportunities, because what happened to it next was probably its strangest metamorphosis: in 1953 it was sold to the Seventh Day Adventist Church ! I used to walk past it from the 'sixties onwards, seeing through the glass doors what had once been a cinema foyer and still looked like one, apart from the cross and the lack of posters. Virtually unaltered, it was the entrance to a place of worship, and I was always struck by it, thinking how odd it seemed, not because it was on Regent Street in the midst of the shops but because the building itself (Grade II listed) was unchanged, retaining the shape and form of its previous incarnation, and bearing no resemblance to a conventional church. Only the texts that had been put up in the foyer substantiated the title. But it stayed there, like that, for decades. Right up into the 1990s, when it finally fell empty and was left that way for ten years.

It became a Habitat store in 2006 (commerce taking over from God again), and for the first time its entrance and frontage bore no resemblance to that of the New Gallery I had known. Beyond typically storefront glass perched samples of Habitat's range, and I could only assume the Grade II listing didn't apply to as much of it as I'd thought. But that enterprise, too, disappeared in 2011.

The replacement which opened in the autumn of 2012 wasn't a cinema – not exactly (wait for an explanation), but at last, after so long, the glory of its first incarnation has been conjured anew, albeit for a different kind of custom. Burberrys, which used to inhabit relatively modest premises farther up Regent Street, nearer to Oxford Circus, has opened a new flagship store there, and for once the term is no exaggeration – it's huge, their largest store in the world. The acres of glass are a loftier shape, all the building's decorative flourishes around its upper floors and the edge of its roof have been restored and refurbished, together with graceful additions; the palatial entrance is graced by a liveried doorman, and the well-reported interior contains a myriad miracles, including twenty five staircases.

But what touches my heart is that the New Gallery's old projection suite has also been restored, so that the shop floor can be turned into a venue for bands, talks and screenings. When so much in the West End has been wantonly lost, I love the nod to the building's history: short of a Wurlitzer, I will settle for that.

Back in my own past, by the time the 'sixties arrived I wasn't confining my picture-going to Soho . I'd acquired film-mad friends and was spending every available minute in the National Film Theatre under Waterloo Bridge , on the South Bank. We saw classic old movies as often as the very latest imports, and loved the special events. If you were to believe the internet, the Guardian-sponsored lectures which began there in 1980 were the first opportunity audiences had to listen to screen presences talking about their work, but as early as the 'sixties I sat only a few seats from Gregory Peck, listening to Groucho Marx discussing the difficulties of making one of his films, hampered by a sylph-like leading lady who'd put on vast weight and the total inability of a cast-member to remember his lines.

Thank Heavens the National Film Theatre, far from being lost or split into smaller sections, acquired larger premises when it was relaunched in 2007 as BFI Southbank, and remains completely true to itself. (Typical of its glories is that it was where I was able to see Roman Polanski's very first film, “Knife In The Water” in 1962, when he was still unknown to the wider world).

But in those days my home area could compete even with the NFI – nearby were two other cinemas which also screened not only the newest but the most fascinating and best.

At the top of Regent Street , within sight of St. George's Church and the BBC, is a building that's now part of the University of Westminster . But before 1992 it was a Polytechnic, and a very notable one. And next to it was a small cinema called the Cameo Poly (“Poly” for the Polytechnic, of course). That was where I sat, rapt and entranced by “Jules and Jim”, with the rest of the audience audible around me – indrawn breath, laughter, a gasp of shock – it's wonderful to be part of an audience like that, all engrossed and reacting to something utterly unexpected. And afterwards I knew that, just as with Polanski, I'd want to watch films made by this man, Francois Truffaut, for the rest of my life.

The Cameo didn't just screen foreign offerings – it was quality that was the criterion, so there were, for me, many unforgettable occasions. Such as when I reeled away from “The Hill”, shown there a couple of years later, as stunned as everyone else around me. It wasn't common, then, to be confronted with a terrifying depiction of the brutality of the British Army – an institution we were all supposed to admire – but I was left fearing that what I'd just seen might be closer to reality than to fiction. It wasn't just a time of art cinemas, it was a time of films that grabbed you and made you think.

And this was certainly the place for it, right next door to the Polytechnic. I am nostalgic for the designation that has gone, much as I admire the University of Westminster, because I find the history of the Poly such an inspirational example of the good that could occur in Victorian England – an era when there was so much that was bad. Forgive the digression, but if it hadn't been for what happened in that pleasant part of elegant Regent Street , there would have been no Cameo to visit in the next century.

The Polytechnic Institution had opened in 1838, offering an opportunity for people to learn, affordably, the branches of science connected with mining, manufacturing and the rural economy – in other words, a way for men to better themselves in an increasingly industrial age. The Institution was much more than an educational establishment, though – the public crowded to its attractions. There were exhibitions, working models of machines, photography demonstrations, and a diving bell in which they could take a ride. Even Prince Albert was a visitor, his patronage enabling “Royal” to be added to the name in 1841, and in the 1850s a director named Professor Pepper helped to establish evening classes, the combination of education and entertainment making the Institution ever more popular.

But it was Quintin Hogg's contribution and involvement that were so vital. A visionary philanthropist, in 1864 he had already founded a Ragged School (such charitable schools were at that time often the only means by which poor children could receive any kind of education), and later an institute where older youths could study technical subjects in the evenings. When the Polytechnic began to need financial assistance, here was the ideal man – he acquired the lease of 309 Regent Street , closed his other technical institution and opened the Polytechnic Young Men's Institute in 1882. The fees remained very low, and over the years the curriculum was expanded to include arts and humanities – all this in accordance with Hogg's avowed aim to educate “mind, body and spirit”.

Under his aegis, the classrooms were filled during the day as well as the evenings, and – far ahead of their time – by 1885 many of them were open to young women as well as to men. In that same year he had opened an Institution nearby where girls could study, and he went on to be involved in the creation of school after school. Quintin Hogg made an enormous contribution to the educational needs of his age, and there is a statue of him in Portland Place , just a few minutes' walk from what used to be the Polytechnic. Small wonder, given its vision, that it acquired an international reputation, and became the model for a network of polytechnics across London , and later the whole country.

It's hardly a coincidence, then, that in 1896 a hall which would eventually become the Cameo Poly was the location for the very first screening of a cinematograph performance in Great Britain by the Lumiere Brothers. The hall formed part of the original buildings, where being ahead of the times had by then been the norm for decades, and the impact was immediate – a large projector was purchased and displays of “animated photographs” and “living pictures” regularly took place.

After reconstruction of the entire institution between 1910 and 1912, the hall was regularly used for film shows, and in the 'twenties it was refitted and christened the “Polytechnic Theatre”. Further alterations and development increased the amount of seating, and in 1936 it acquired a theatre organ! This seems to have got the internet more steamed up than anything else about it, because the organ was still in place and being played less than ten years ago, long after the cinema had closed.

But back in the twentieth century it was busily changing names: closed briefly in 1940, it reopened within months under a management who added it to their circuit of Cameo cinemas. Initially a Cameo News Theatre, in 1947 it became the Cameo Continental Cinema, and from 1952 onwards the Cameo Polytechnic – or Cameo Poly – specialising in up-market foreign films (and up-market films in general, from my experience). It was taken over by Classic Cinemas in 1972, even became a live theatre for a few years in the mid 'seventies, and reopened as the Classic Poly in 1979. That was its shortest incarnation – it closed in 1980, and the Polytechnic took it back into use as a lecture hall and performance space. But not before I had been there to see “Autumn Sonata”, one of Ingrid Bergman's last films.

It sounds incredible, but when she was in London Ingrid Bergman went to the same Mayfair hairdresser's I mortgaged myself to, and I'd try not to faint when I found myself beside her at the washbasins. She talked to her stylist about working with Ingmar Bergman, and, as she was leaving the salon, she'd turn briefly and smile at the starry-eyed rest of us. It was as though she lit an internal Klieg light, and she could do it even when she was dying. Just as “Autumn Sonata” had glowed in a dying picture house.

But even now its story may not be over. There is talk of restoration, and reopening the building as a public cinema again, which, given the charm of the auditorium where I watched unforgettable, life-changing movies, would be a wonderful project.

There's a vast gulf between the part that place played in my film-going life and the few but extraordinary visits I made to the Casino Cinerama Theatre in Old Compton Street . You'd look for it in vain, now – it's long gone – but back in the 'fifties when I was at school something truly weird was on show there; something more like going to a fairground attraction than a conventional film show. But let me tell you the history of the once and future Prince Edward Theatre – because that's what it has become once again.

The theatre was built in 1930. It was a palatial building, with an art deco foyer and an auditorium containing only two levels – stalls and dress circle – at a time when most theatres housed two circles above the stalls, and a gallery (or “the Gods”). It was also equipped as a cinema, and despite the unusual design of the seating, it was so spacious that it could comfortably accommodate more than 1,500 people.

It was named, of course, for the Prince Edward who was then Prince of Wales and arguably the most desirable bachelor on the planet. The Prince of Wales who danced and dallied through the 'twenties, and who would have reigned as Edward VIII if he hadn't fallen in love with Wallis Simpson.

And strangely, despite its opulence, the theatre didn't do very well, as though the fateful events in the life of its namesake cursed it. I can remember being told by old Soho residents that it was considered unlucky, and it's true that one after another of its productions closed alarmingly quickly. In 1935 new owners converted it into a cabaret restaurant, and the stage became a semi-circular dance floor – when it reopened in 1936, it had become The London Casino, and with the name change its luck also changed for the better.

Even the Second World War caused only a temporary interruption: after two years of being “dark” it became an all-services club – a venue for the Forces, with popular shows that were broadcast on the radio. Post-War, alterations recreated it as a theatre, and once again it opened as The London Casino, a home of variety shows and Christmas pantomimes.

But in 1954 the big change happened, and it could hardly have been bigger. It didn't just become a cinema, it became the first in England equipped to show Cinerama, which required a huge curved 64 foot screen. The 'fifties were a time when (scared by the might of television) the American film industry looked for innovations which TV couldn't rival – 3-D was one of them, Cinerama another – and quirkiness was often considered more important than plot. So, to demonstrate 3-D, actors on the screen would throw things at an audience flinching behind their coloured glasses, before going back to the script; some films managed to be good despite this weird requirement – “Kiss Me Kate” is wonderful, and “Dial M for Murder” is bearable because it doesn't harp on depth perception and is genuinely ingenious, providing you can forgive Hitchcock for simply filming a one-set stage play.

Once a novelty, the system fell out of favour for decades, having been used so crassly, but it deserved its latter-day revival: in to-day's sophisticated hands, 3-D superbly serves a film's story.

But Cinerama was a whole different matter: this was a process where what you watched had no plot at all! The American critic Bosley Crowther was on to this when he reviewed “This is Cinerama” just two years before it turned up in Old Compton Street . He referred to “the shrill screams of the ladies and the pop-eyed amazement of the men when the screen was opened to its full size”, described people's spellbound wonder, and the show as “sensational”, but went on to wonder whether its very size might make it impractical for story-telling, or how it could be employed for intimacy.

As a schoolgirl, that didn't bother me, but I did keep noticing the fuzzy vertical lines. The name was a combination of “cinema” and “panorama”, and involved filming with three cameras and then projecting the resulting images from three projection booths on to a huge, deeply concave screen. I didn't know any of that, but I sat facing the biggest wall I'd ever seen, and squealed like everyone else when we shot up and plunged down big dippers, were flown over gorges, and generally spent our time safely risking death. It was only the woolly lines that I couldn't get over: from top to bottom, the enormous picture I was watching was divided into three – left, middle and right. Without having the faintest idea of how it was done, I saw through it, and like a trick that's explained by a conjuror, it had no magic for me.

Of course others didn't feel as I did, but I'm one of those maddening people who notice such things – it runs in the family. Even watching television at home there'd be a chorus of protests: “That wet road was dry in the last shot!”

So the novelty of Cinerama only merited a visit or two in my early life, despite staying nearby. It wasn't till the 'seventies that the Casino was changed yet again. In 1974, acquired by Bernard Delfont, it became both a cinema with a new, conventional screen, and a theatre once more, staging the pantomime “Cinderella”. I haven't the faintest idea how it managed its dual role, but in 1978, at last, its story became truly one of “happy ever after”. With some refurbishment, it was converted back purely to a theatre, rechristened with the name it had borne in the very beginning – the Prince Edward – and reopened with the stunning “Evita”. From that moment nobody said anything again about the Royal name being unlucky – “Evita” was a triumph that ran for nearly eight years, and was followed by one success after another: amongst them “Mamma Mia”, which premiered there, only transferring to another theatrical Royal, the Prince of Wales, after five years.

Of all the cinemas I have lost, the Casino Cinerama is the only one for which I have no regret. Looking at that monster screen was an experience, but it didn't involve or move me. The Prince Edward's audiences experience those emotions, and I'm delighted that they do – after all it's been through, it's become what was originally intended: a prized ornament in theatre-land, for Old Compton Street .

How different are my feelings for the Academy Cinema. This jewel of a place was on the South Side of Oxford Street, its foyer yards from the turning to Poland Street , and flanked on the other (West) side by the Pantheon branch of Marks & Spencer.

As far as I was concerned, it had always been there. Very small, I had toddled past it with my mother, on our way to stand at the top of some steps farther along Oxford Street, from which height we could see and wave encouragement to a friend of hers, imprisoned behind a grim window as she created beautiful handbags for a company in Ramilies Place.

But however familiar I was with its outside, there were years to wait before I entered it: this was a very serious and grown-up cinema, to which I and the rest of my class were taken by a form mistress to see afternoon screenings of short films about William Blake and the brushwork of the Chinese. Unfortunately I was required to watch these minor masterpieces in dread, before being interrogated to sensory deprivation point later, but it was wonderfully different when I'd escaped school, to go to the Academy for the revelation of magnetic movies spontaneously chosen, and about which everyone could have their own opinion.

It was opened as the Picture House in 1913, but although it's easy to follow a brief history of the building and how it was altered, it's taken far more ferreting to trace the point at which its name was changed to the Academy, and why – this despite it's having been described as “the first and most prestigious British art house cinema”.

Originally the Picture House had a single screen, with two levels of seating which accommodated 601 patrons and (I love this!) additional standing space for another 63. There was also a ballroom in the basement, presumably to satisfy under one roof all the possible wants of a pleasure-seeking public. But it was remodelled and transformed in 1929. And for the hows and whys of this, we need to know about a remarkable woman named Elsie Cohen, and her crucial involvement with this West End cinema.

Elsie Cohen was born in Holland but educated in England, and having become a journalist she joined the “Kinematograph Weekly” and interviewed D.W. Griffith. The encounter left her passionate about promoting film as an art form; she went on to become Associate Editor of “Pictures and Picturegoer”, and from there joined the literary department of the Anglo-Hollandia Film Company. By 1922 she was travelling to America to sell the US distribution rights to the company's films, and was described as “the first qualified woman film journalist in England ”.

Having spent time in Berlin , she returned to England in the mid-'twenties, determined to find a way of showing German and Russian films here. I was amazed to discover that 1928 saw her taking over the Windmill for a year, in pursuit of her aim (the nudes weren't around yet), but despite making a success of the venture, she set her sights on another venue, in Oxford Street.

I don't imagine the owner of the Picture House had a chance, confronted with someone that determined. She persuaded him to let her relaunch it as the Academy, with the same policy she'd tried out at the Windmill. And if you look at the dates, the remodelling was going on at exactly this time – it doesn't seem fanciful that she was involved in the entire project.

From 1931 she managed the cinema, playing a huge role in bringing European and art films to the British public: according to her obituary, “opening nights at the Academy became affairs to attend”.

No wonder, then, that I grew up listening to my mother raving about German expressionist films, and “Metropolis” in particular. I was to see it, and others of the same genre, much later at the National Film Theatre, but then, in the 'sixties, I still had a marvellous wealth of choice – in addition to the NFT, the Academy (like the Cameo Poly) was still going strong.

According to a couple of sites, the Academy suffered bomb damage which closed it in 1940, but the information supplied is so scant, and some of it so maddeningly wrong, that I prefer to trust Elsie Cohen's infinitely more detailed biographical material, from which it seems that bombing didn't close the Academy until 1942.

Even the most unreliable sources agree, though, that the cinema reopened in 1944; and ten years later, in 1954, it was given an entirely new and striking interior décor, designed by Angus McBean.

Another decade went by, and a second screen was built in what had once been the basement ballroom. It was opened in 1965, and followed by the creation of yet another, smaller, screen, using old office space, so that the Academy became officially “Academy 1-2-3”. But I never knew anyone who called it that, or by anything but its single name; there's a touching acknowledgement on one reliable website from somebody who mentions that “Les Enfants du Paradis” was shown for about a year, and adding that they had their first education in what cinema can do at the Academy.

Various visits stand out in my own mind: in my late teens and early twenties I belonged to an amateur film unit, and some of us went to see how “The Caretaker” had been translated for the screen. I remember everything about it, even how packed the cinema was and the tension around me. I've known far less attentive audiences for landmark plays in theatres.

And again, from many other occasions, the summer day in the late 'seventies when I met a friend in the foyer. “ Providence ” was showing, and we emerged at the end hardly able to speak. In case you don't know about these things, “ Providence ” was directed by Alain Resnais, had a dazzling cast, won seven French Cesar awards, and Sir John Gielgud felt this was his only completely successful attempt at film acting. Where else would such a film be shown, but at the Academy?

At that time it had, in addition, something else up its sleeve: an asset on top (almost literally) of what it screened. Vasco and Piero's Pavilion Restaurant was a few paces around the corner, in Poland Street . You climbed the stairs to sit under the tented ceiling that gave it its name, to eat well, drink far too much, feel romantic. And, of course, to talk about movies: the restaurant was entwined internally with the Academy building. If you went to the cloakrooms, you found yourself at the back of the highest auditorium in the place. It couldn't have been a more luxuriously civilised arrangement and, believe me, it beat popcorn.

Synonymous with excellence, and having shown for more than half a century some of the best films in the world, the Academy closed in 1986. It may sound exaggerated to say the closure was heartbreaking, but I don't know how else to describe its loss. There isn't a trace of it now – not a brick, nor even the plaque it deserves: just a modern office block with the glass fronts of a Savings Bank and a changing roster of shops. Nothing to commemorate what was so special, a gem in Oxford Street , and nothing (like the Cameo Poly) that might one day be restored.

I don't think anyone has written about it more movingly than Andrew Hoellering. His father, George, with Andrew's step-brother Ivo Jerosy, had chosen films for the Academy as carefully as a curator mounting an art exhibition – George running the cinema/s as Managing Director for thirtyseven years. Following his death in 1980, Ivo battled on until the already constant loss of money could no longer be ignored. A combination of factors were involved – the swamping of the quality film market with blockbusters, the gradual attrition of the Academy's old, loyal audience, and the weight of what had become a lonely job as he himself aged.

The cinema hadn't carved itself into smaller pieces to acquire second and third screens – it had used spare existing space. But now every inch of it was demolished: the entire corner building was smashed to nothing. The only survival was the Pavilion Restaurant, which relocated to premises farther down Poland Street , and still thrives.

The reality was tragic enough, without the stupid inaccuracies of some internet oracles. One states that Marks & Spencer's Store on Oxford Street now occupies the former site of the Academy. Oh, really? That'd be a good trick, considering the Marks & Spencer building and the Academy were of the same generation. There are two branches of Marks & Spencer in Oxford Street, but this (the relevant) one was opened in 1938, only seven years after the cinema, on a site that had been known as the Pantheon since 1772, and from which it took its name. Originally a place of entertainment, the Pantheon became a bazaar in the 1830s, and a new M and S one hundred years later. It's an art deco building with Grade II listed status, it stood beside the Academy throughout the art house's life, and it hasn't picked up its foundations and moved!

Going to the cinema became much less of a constant for me in the 'eighties, because it was less of a pleasure. Not because of the films, but because of the proliferating multiplexes: hunched in what felt like an egg box, I'd sit midway between the back wall and the screen with only a foot to spare in either direction, while a stranger with half my seat unpacked and ate an entire Chinese meal.

Even in roomier surroundings, and at a quiet time of day that guaranteed space, progress meant things might be worse and not better: a couple of friends and I sat alone in a sub-divided film theatre one afternoon while the movie we'd come to see jumped and juddered and whirred. I stamped off to ask for the Manager, but nobody believed they had one, and of course they didn't know what a projectionist was either. And this in what was still nominally a great movie theatre in the heart of the West End . We'd just been left alone in a cinema with a film running so badly it was unwatchable! The complaining letter I wrote elicited an apology – a problem had indeed been found and reimbursement for our tickets was enclosed. But the experience had been dreary, and the staff in the foyer hopelessly ignorant and unhelpful.

I could remember not only Managers on the premises, but usherettes who called the section of the auditorium nearest the screen “the long grass”, as they tramped down to it with trays of ice creams slung from their necks. Any problem, from a ticket mix-up to a flasher, could be solved by a friendly, helpful usherette. But now, once you were in, there was no guarantee of anyone being around to help you with anything.

Whether or not the absence of supervision was the reason, trying to hush people who talked loudly (a particular hate of mine, during either a theatrical or a cinema performance) had a worse effect than ever before: there'd just be the jeer that you should wait and buy the video.

Being able to enjoy a good film was purely a matter of luck, even when there were usherettes or ushers. Already missing some of my favourite cinemas, if I wasn't surrounded by an audience as attentive and film-mad as myself, I was irritable and maddened by their eating and chatting.

Thank God for the video. Long before my spinal troubles ruled out cinema visits, (and long before the DVD) I'd started amassing a collection of movies I could watch at home, concentrating in peace – the perfect answer. And of course I haven't stopped.

By now I have stacks of them, they're my main source of entertainment, yet I'm beaten hollow by a friend, an actor, who still ransacks charity shops and flea markets for rarities. He has hundreds of tapes (yes, tapes ) and the expertise and equipment to clean and restore them, and occasionally he's leant me one of his treasures. It's like having private access to the British Film Institute!

Like him, I particularly love old movies – one of my most adored comedies is “The Lady Eve”, which rarely seems to appear on lists of all-time greats, though it should. And I've an extremely soft spot for a British film called “White Corridors”, set in a hospital in the early days of the NHS – these days, for many reasons, it's well worth watching.

Old films – I'm an addict. I even like spotting the circle in the top right hand corner of the frame that indicated when a reel of film was ending, and it was time to switch to the next. Within seconds a second circle marked the beginning of what would have been the new reel, and these circles (sometimes filled in with a patch of colour) are still there, no matter in which medium we're watching to-day. Not all marks are so obvious – they could be barely visible – but the hawk-eyed projectionist was poised to act when he saw them.

Yet the projectionists are being lost and may be completely gone soon, like some of the best of the theatres in which they worked. The old reel-to-reel changeover gave way to single-reel methods, (most commonly the platter) in which the twenty-minute reels of film were spliced together and woven on to a horizontal rotating table, after which the projectionist had only to start the film running before haring off to start another elsewhere in a multiplex. No wonder the managements loved this system – only one employee and his record-breaking sprints for all those screens!

The disadvantage of having no-one in a projection booth throughout a screening might result in exactly the problem my friends and I had, trying to watch a juddering blur, but hey, who cares about the public – look at the economics.

An otherwise excellent website advises people faced with this trouble to go and find a theatre employee, because otherwise the projectionist will have no idea what has happened, but look what happened when I did that: absolutely nothing.

And the bell is really tolling now: here comes digitisation, which has reached boom proportions and having an effect on craft workers comparable to the Spinning Jenny! “Time Out” quoted Edward Fletcher, of film distribution company Soda Pictures, as follows:- “In place of the projectionist, you could have one person in a business park in Stevenage sat in front of a bank of screens. That person could programme their entire group of cinemas by doing some drag-and-drops on a laptop.”

Doesn't really remind you of the way things were done at the Academy, does it?

And, following up the “Time Out” piece, the quotes from projectionists were searing: a longing for a sniff of the smell of celluloid, fury (“you can see the ******* pixels!”), comments that digital is “soulless”, “it's like watching paint dry” and, over and over, references to redundancies, together with awful sadness at the loss of skills along with the people who possessed them.

I was particularly struck by a post from someone who wrote that in former days “you felt you were contributing to a cinematic experience”, and went on: “Cinema is now glorified TV … We may as well watch a DVD. The only attraction is the big screen – if that is an attraction these days. The auditoriums of to-day's cinemas have little appeal. There are no grand interiors like cinemas of old, with their fine plasterwork – they are just plain and drab.” That projectionist concluded it was better to stay at home.

Which of course is what I began to do long ago, like my friend with his vintage collection. He chooses not to go to the cinema, although it was once as much a part of his life as it was of mine – the experience has changed too much for him. He's my senior by a decade, and if he watches a selection from his library he does more than enjoy the film: he is taken back in time to the atmosphere, to the Picture Palaces, to our stretch of the West End full of cinemas as it once was.

I remember the fun and thrill of all that choice too – the splendour of the bigger theatres and the charm of the art houses. I can't restore what has been lost, but I can commemorate it for you, and I have tried to do justice to the cinemas where I once sat entranced. The debt I owe them can't be repaid: they left me with priceless memories, an education in movies, and a lifelong passion – loving films.

© Alida Baxter

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