Looking back on Hull's much-loved Cecil as it prepares for the final curtain
History of landmark city centre cinema, from Rocky mania to bingo hall supreme
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Police were called to help manage crowds of teenagers queueing to see Rocky 4 at the Cecil, Anlaby Road, Hull, in February 1986. (Colourised picture from the Hull Daily Mail archives.)
It boasted the largest CinemaScope screen in the country when its doors swung open for the first time in November 1955.
A giant cut-out figure of Marilyn Monroe standing over a New York subway grate with her white dress billowing in the air loomed large above the entrance of the new Cecil cinema on
Anlaby Road as guests arrived for the official ceremony and a screening of her latest comedy The Seven Year Itch. Among them were John Davis, the managing director of the Rank film group, and his actress wife Dinah Sheridan.
The glamour of that night is perfectly captured in a newsreel still available to watch on YouTube. As well as the fur coats and the civic chains gathered together for a cocktail party in the building's restaurant, there's a palpable sense of luxury about the building itself and a real sense of a bomb-scarred city emerging from the gloom of post-war austerity.
Read more: The hidden 400-year-old house in the heart of Hull
Designed in a modernist style by leading Hull architects Gelder & Kitchen, the cinema could seat just over 2,000 people in one huge auditorium featuring stalls and a 678-seat balcony. It really was a theatre of dreams.
Later this month, however, the curtain will come down for what will almost certainly be the final time at the venue which is now operated as a bingo hall by leisure group Mecca. It's due to close on February 26.
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ROCKY MANIA: Fans queueing outside the Cecil, Anlaby Road, Hull, to see Rocky 4 in February 1986. (Colourised picture from the Hull Daily Mail archives.)
The Cecil actually started life on the
opposite side of Anlaby Road where the curving glazed Monocle office block - still better known by its former name Europa House - now stands. Back in 1911 the Theatre de Luxe cinema opened for business there before being renamed Cecil in 1925 after a major re-build.
The first Cecil featured a stylish Art Deco design and a cafe created by converting shops and offices next door. Sadly, it was left in ruins after being badly damaged during a bombing raid in 1941.
Occupying the site of a former hospital for seafarers, the post-war Cecil arrived towards the end of the golden age of cinema in Hull. The number of cinemas in the city had peaked at 36 in 1938 but by the end of the Second World War there were only 25.
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Bingo at Mecca, held at The Cecil Cinema, Ferensway, Hull, in 1996 (Image: Hull Daily Mail)
Competition from television - ITV first became available in Hull a few months after the new-look Cecil opened - soon started to have an impact on audience numbers. Like many others, the Cecil experimented with live music shows and hosted what was probably Hull's first experience of high-octane raw American rock 'n' roll when Jerry Lee Lewis topped the bill in May 1962 five months before The Beatles first performed in the city.
The era of multi-screen entertainment was embraced in 1971 when the Cecil's restaurant was converted into a 137-seater cinema. A year later the stalls in the main auditorium were replaced with a bingo hall while the balcony was split into two smaller cinemas.
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Changes of ownership during the 1980s reflected similar fluctuations in cinemagoing trends, although big Hollywood blockbusters still managed to pull in the crowds. Some memorable images in the Hull Live archives show police officers being deployed to keep an eye on hundreds of teenagers queuing to see Rocky IV in 1986.
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Cecil Cinema in the 1970's
Trading under the name Take Two, it finally closed as a cinema just over a decade later when the two screens in the old balcony were removed to make way for a new snooker hall with daily bingo sessions continuing in the auditorium below. The old screen in the former restaurant is still in situ.