Oxford Rd, P Cummings, 1935 – present.
Cornerhouse Cinema One stands on the approach to our very favourite station.
Today it is an integral part of Cornerhouse, Manchester’s centre for contemporary visual arts and the moving image, longtime champion of independent film and experimental arts, complete with three cinemas, three galleries, a bookshop, bar and café/restaurant.
Opening with a flourish in 1985, it was ahead of its time, an arts venue that was also a cinema that was also a café. It was a little piece of Berlin or New York in Manchester and with its great location and glass fronted airy lookout, it quickly became a hangout for a generation of the city’s movie buffs, writers, artists and ne’er-do-wells. Novels have been scribbled, crossed out and agonized over endless refills of the legendary leaky teapots (the hallucinogenic Vurt by Jeff Noon is a classic drug fuelled 80’s vision of post apocalyptic Manchester), TV series and production companies were developed (Coogan, Aherne and Henry Normal made the table at the top of the stairs their unofficial office for many years before the money rolled in), music revolutions were hatched (Happy Mondays skulked midmorning, hung-over and worse for wear from a long night out, in the seats overlooking the station) and international footballers nurtured dreams of becoming French philosophers (Eric Cantona spent so much time in the cafe it’s a wonder he ever got any football practice in at all…)
Over the past 25 years it has survived the advent of the mega multiplex, a dozen coffee chains, a refurbished City Art Gallery and the short-lived glitz of Urbis, its unique combination of contemporary film and visual arts programming, alongside international film festivals, major art events such as New Contemporaries, workshops, talks and informal quiz nights, readings and music events ensures that it remains a key cultural and social centre for the city and its visitors and generally deserves this month’s Iconic status. In particular, its largest cinema is of modernist interest. Do read on…
This site houses many old ghosts of cinemas past, opening as the Manchester Electric Theatre as early as 1911. But as the days of the silent movie dwindled, the Majestic as it had then become, closed down for good in 1923 and was eventually demolished.
Cinema One as we see it today originally opened in May 1935 as the Tatler News Theatre, with a seating capacity of 300, designed by Peter Cummings, who built Appleby Lodge opposite Platt Fields, sharing its decidedly modernist shape and sleek minimalistic charms. Sited next to Oxford Road Railway Station this was in an ideal site for this ‘drop-in’ continuous programme of travel films, cartoons and newsreels including local items of interest, and this popular sub genre of cinema thrived here until September 1959, when the advent of television killed the need to leave the house and pay to watch the news.
After a brief closure the cinema reopened in 1961 reinvented as the Tatler Classic, becoming known as a home for movie buffs and discriminating audiences with a mix of subtitled European contemporary films and classic double bills. Derek Southall in his booklet Magic in the Dark remembers this second version Tatler fondly as having a ‘terrific programme’ but the cinema being a woefully rundown place (it took until 1997 to get that leaky roof fixed). Then in 1969 things took on a more exotic turn with another reinvention as the Tatler Cinema Club, specialising in uncensored films and occasional strip shows to club members only, a membership that handily could be arranged with an hour’s notice. As dismal as numbers often were (and as a young idealist involved in regular feminist raidings of the club, I can vouch for how empty many of the showings actually were! ps. Apologies for any distress caused to any former patrons who might be reading…I was very young and didn’t quite realise that the club was more tragic than dangerous) the cinema remained open for business until 1981, when doors finally closed.
Then in 1985 the former Shaw’s furniture showroom was bought to be converted into an arts complex of 2 cinemas seating 170 and 60, with galleries, café and bookshop. It was quickly realised that the former news theatre would make the best and largest screen of the complex and so it has remained, arguably enjoying the most popular and successful period of its life. A happy ending for a worthy Icon you might think, but if this month’s features have demonstrated anything, it’s that no matter how resourceful and adaptable this most beloved form of mass entertainment has been, public taste and demand is fickle and mercurial. Oxford Rd not so long ago was rich in picture palaces, sumptuous, vulgar, restrained, exotic – whichever direction you looked was a visual treat for the eye.
As the millennium kick starts its brand new decade just be on the alert to the dangers threatening the last of our peoples palaces and the tradition of varied, independent and local entertainment they uphold. If you love the idea of independent cinema and innovative programming, please use it and support it. And nag them about that innovative programming, which might have lost its mettle a little of late….
It just might be the last (great) picture show in town.
Maureen Ward
First published January 2010
P.S. in 2011 Cornerhouse announced their intention to move to a new build arts centre at ‘First Street’. This is surely the death knell for the city of Manchester’s sole remaining non multiplex cinema, and Oxford Road’s long cinematic history will finally reach its end.
manchester modernist society 
It would be good to see inside and behind the scenes, before the Cornerhouse moves. Does anyone think they would participate in Heritage Open Days?
worth an ask! i shall make enquiries but my contacts are low in the decision/policy making sense….
Is it alright to place part of this in my webpage if perhaps I publish a reference to this website?
of course what’s your website??