Hello, and welcome to Glasgow City Heritage Trust podcast, “If Glasgow’s Walls Could Talk”, a new series about the relationships, stories and shared memories that exist between Glasgow historic buildings and people.
Niall Murphy
Hello, I’m Niall Murphy and welcome to If Glasgow’s Walls Could Talk, a podcast by Glasgow City Heritage Trust about the stories and relationships between historic buildings and people in Glasgow. In this episode, we’ll be talking about Glasgow’s entertainment industry of the last few centuries, and in particular, we will be discussing music halls, theatres, and cinemas.
Given Glasgow’s population size and density, across the 19th and 20th centuries, it has been home to a huge number of music halls, theatres, and cinemas, which served and entertained that population. During that time these spaces occupied, and many still do a significant role in the social and architectural life of the city and in people’s memories.
The history of these places is intrinsically linked with the changes in the entertainment industry, and new inventions such as the revolutionary introduction of cinema and television that saw theatres struggling to retain audiences, forcing many to close as new sources of entertainment captured the public’s imagination. If we look at the number and variety of historic cinemas, musicals and theatres, Glaswegians were definitely spoilt for choice. Among the most famous and still active of Glasgow surviving historic theatres are the Theatre Royal, which is A listed which is the city’s oldest theatre and the longest running theatre in Scotland. The Citizens Theatre which is B listed, which has the most complete working Victorian theatre machinery in the UK. The King’s Theatre, which is A listed, which is in Bath Street and built in 1904 and famously described by Billy Connolly as like performing inside a wedding cake.
And finally, the Britannia Panopticon music hall, another A listed building and the focus of the first part of this episode. This amazing building is located at the corner of Trongate and New Wynd Lane. The music hall started in 1857, in the midst of the Victorian era, and the Industrial Revolution, the Britannia Panopticon had a very long and successful life, day after day entertaining audiences over 1500 people with singers, dancers, comedians, acrobats, and also a carnival freak show, and a zoo!
This amazing space survived the First World War, the 20s and the depression of the 1930s. But by 1938, after 81 years of service, the Panopticon could no longer compete with a new form of entertainment and it had to shut its doors. It was then sold to a firm of tailors called Weaver to Wearer, who refurbished the whole place, hiding the balcony and the auditorium behind the suspended ceiling. The balcony was left untouched and uninhabited until the late 1990s.
So today, our guest is Judith Bowers, founder and director of the Britannia Panopticon music hall campaign. Originally an archaeologist, Judith switched to social historian in 1991, when she established the Spirit of Glasgow walking tours, during this time she discovered the Britannia Panopticon, and made it her mission to raise awareness of the building’s plight. In 1997. She gained access to the music hall and has been running the building and the campaign ever since. So Judith, welcome to the podcast.
Judith Bowers
Thanks Niall, thank you for inviting me.
Judith Bowers
It’s a pleasure to have you here Judith, it is always a pleasure to hear you talk. So Judith. First question is, when did you find out about the Britannia Panopticon. And how did you get involved?
Judith Bowers
Well, in 1990, I really first came over to Glasgow. And at that time, I had a workshop in the Virginia Galleries. I don’t know if anybody remembers the beautiful old Tobacco Warehouse.
Niall Murphy
Oh it was wonderful, yeah, much, much missed.
Judith Bowers
And I had the privilege of having a workshop up in the Virginia Galleries and I love that building anyway, my lunch breaks were taken up by walking the Trongates, and I found it a fascinating area and the Merchant City, which at that time was not what we see today. You know, it was a lot dirtier, a lot grimier, Liz Davidson saw a lot done a lot of work to clean up the Merchant City along with, of course in recent years. The Glasgow City Heritage Trust and people involved as well. I mean, it’s a different area. And the Britannia Music Hall as a building always stood out to me with its its blue facade. It’s peeling blue paint.
Niall Murphy
I remember. Yeah. Yeah.
Judith Bowers
It’s very ornate and so different from everything surrounding and then I was researching to do a ghost tour in the area, I had a company as you said, Spirit of Glasgow, and it was walking tours. It was one of the first walking tour companies in Glasgow, and my ghost tour involved that building because I found out about the freak show in the attic. That’s what started my interest in the building, which included the freak show in my ghost tour, you know, because you had the headless man and the man who had the world record for fasting and the lion headed girl and it just fitted in with the ghost tour and then one of my ghost tour operators actually he was on the murder tour with me. Steven Duffy, he said to me that he was at the time was at the Academy, the Royal Scottish Academy, the Conservatoire as it now it is, and his, one of his lectures was on music halls and how they have seen photographs a slideshow of the interior of this musical and how Alasdair Cameron one of the lecturers at Glasgow University had also seen the inside of it and was trying to campaign you know, we put a theatre trail up up raising awareness to it and we, one day I’m walking along I look into up at the building and then I go into the lane to the side of it, the pens the covered bit, not the new lane, and I see Alisdair Cameron’s little plaque which was the theatre trail and had a cross section of the building and said the Stan Laurel debuted there were that was it.
I needed to know was anything surviving of this old music hall because I’ve been told by Steven they’d seen pictures of it from the council. None knew anything about it. They knew that there was a historic building, they knew is listed inside now A listed inside and outside.
And I just tried to get in and I couldn’t get in. I used to go upstairs. It was the Leather Club at that point. And it was ladies downstairs, gents upstairs, and I used to go upstairs, false ceiling obscured the music hall itself or the balcony level, but I could see the sloping ceiling of the balcony.
And after many, many, many attempts at trying to get in, in on February the 23rd 1997. I was walking past the front of the building, I looked up besought facade was still peeling all that beautiful detail was crumbling, my heart was breaking for the building, and then suddenly someone is knocking on the window furiously, furiously knocking on the window. And it was the window dresser for what was now which was amusements, and it was somebody hadn’t seen to the days of the Virginia Galleries, right? So she’s like, come in for a coffee. And we’re sitting having a coffee.
And down comes the owner of the building then with the lovely Mr Alam. And I just fluttered my eyelashes. I said, Can I see your darkened areas please? I kid you not that is exactly what I said. He said yes, of course. I’d love to show. It’d be lovely to show the old music hall upstairs.
So I went upstairs, up this old staircase, this twisting spiral stone stair up onto this fake platform, which it turns out was the roof of a toilet that had been built above the stage, pushed aside all these cardboard boxes full of coat hangers and I painted it out with torches it was pitch black and painted out and torch light and saw that the entire balcony, the projection room. A gents toilet, it was all still there. In fact, there was even bottles, beer bottles, but half a dozen of them sitting in about up to their necks in in pigeon poo and chicken poop. They’d obviously been left there in 1938. Right, amazing.
Well, all I wanted to do was see the interior. But basically, I ended up going back the next day because Mr Alam wanted me to take his kids on a ghost tour. And then he took me upstairs again with councillor, .John Molyneux. And then he contacted me again because Historic Scotland wanted in and then I thought I need.. I can’t do this. I have no idea how to do this kind of thing, he is getting me involved in something. So I went to Liz Davidson at Glasgow Building Preservation Trust. And she said, What do you mean you’ve got inside the building? I said, Well, they’ve offered me an office and everything from the Ghost Tour. She says if you can get in that building, you damn well stay there. Do it.
Niall Murphy
Do it. Yep, absolutely. And I’m there.
Judith Bowers
And I am still there, there you go. That’s the short version.
Judith Bowers
Fantastic stuff. We’re particularly interested in that kind of collections of objects that you found in the music hall. So which ones do you think are the most interesting? And what is that? What is the story behind them? What does it tell you?
Judith Bowers
Well, you know, famously, Niall, the what the objects that people get most fascinated by are the fly buttons. Archaeology is a wonderful thing. You take the objects left behind by the past and you put them together and you basically create a context for those objects one way or another. And it seems and it isn’t just us putting all these fly buttons found in this one area together and saying it’s prostitute corner. The evidence goes with it because of how that corner of the balcony is actually referred to in journals like The Quiz. You know, there’s a wonderful Quiz cartoon about you know, what a shame it is for the masses to take their duties up into the balcony, which is why we don’t abbreviate my name to Judy. Because they refer to prostitutes as Judies.
Niall Murphy
I did not know that. Right, there you go, you learn something new every day.
Judith Bowers
So, you know, we know that, that darkened corner of the balcony was notorious even by the 1880s.
You know, but my favourite objects, my favourite objects, are a little bit more poignant. We actually have a wedding band, and it’s made from a copper penny. Now, of course, in those days, people didn’t have the money to buy a gold wedding band. These were the poorest working class people of Glasgow, that works the industrial revolution for the city, you know, made the city the great place that it became. And they didn’t have any money. And so they would take a penny minted that year, the year of their marriage, they would take it to the shipyard and they would have it pressed into a wedding band. And this one even has the date inside of it of 1897. Right. So that to me, is very poignant. That is somebody’s wedding band. How did it end up under our balcony floor? How did it end up there?
Niall Murphy
I really don’t want to think.
Judith Bowers
But I have another favourite, I have another just to go with some poignant and more about music hall and more about comedy. And I think that First Bus should bring this back.
We have a collection of tram tickets. You’ve probably seen them. Niall, when you’ve been in. We have put them in a perspex frame, some of them. We’ve got hundreds of them. And on the back of some of them are jokes. And one joke that we’ve got, which I think is absolutely marvellous is from 1923. And on the back of this tram ticket, he says, “Why is a compliment from a chicken regarded as an insult? Because it uses fowl language.”
Judith Bowers
Oh, dear, that’s really dark, these, were these, were they printed on tram tickets with the tram tickets? Yeah, so there was like it was like a Christmas cracker.
Judith Bowers
Yeah, I remember being the old lollipops, the wooden stick used to get a joke on it. Same thing with the tram ticket, but in the 1920s. That’s amazing.
Judith Bowers
So Glasgow Corporation had a sense of humour basically.
Judith Bowers
Basically then, yeah.
Judith Bowers
That is so weird. Because otherwise I always thought they were quite paternalistic, but they wanted to entertain the people while he took the trams. That’s lovely.
Judith Bowers
At least during the 1920s.
Judith Bowers
Possibly. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so touching on that then, who were the people that went to the Britannia Panopticon, in its heydays?
And who are the people who go to the Britannia Panopticon now? And do you see any similarity between the two?
Judith Bowers
Well, the smell is a lot better of the audience today than it was back then. On occasion anyway.
The audience is well, let’s think about the audience, see Britannia Panopticon was a music hall, not a theatre. And that was a very different species, because music halls were not just, there was no theatre productions, you didn’t see plays, you saw variety. And you also got your news, your current affairs of the day, you know, this is where people petition for striking or not to strike, or the temperance movement or suffrage movement, you know, everything basically was in the music hall, it was TV for the day for the masses. And as a result, it was the working class masses that went, it was cheap. It was cheap entertainment.
Now, if you think of the living conditions and working conditions of these people, these ordinary working classes in the factories, the mills, the coal mines, the shipyards, they lived in hell, particularly in the 1850s, up to the 1880s, before the Housing Improvement Trust, it was awful. You didn’t want to go home to those conditions, you went to the music hall, if you had the money, and that became your living room, you laughed, you blew off steam, you got rid of the frustrations of the day. And you were in company with people suffering the same things as you. And of course, if an act did not satisfy them as a result the act on stage certainly got to find out about it.
And is the audience the same today? Yes, it is still people that are still working class, but they are not in the factories and mills necessarily they’re working in Tescos or Marks &Spencers or they’re working on phone lines, you know the telephone lines and things like that. But we also have the widest variety of audience. We have children coming in with their grandparents to see musical shows, you know, and we have all sorts of people coming in for all kinds of different things because we do a lot of cinema, silent movies with live band music hall shows, drag shows, variety shows. And as a result, it does bring in quite a cross section of audience but a lot of them come by bus, or local, you know, or tourists.
Niall Murphy
Yes, yeah, It is fascinating thinking about the difference between kind of at 1857 and nowadays, particularly when you look at things like the Ordnance Survey maps and you appreciate just how dense that part of Glasgow was. And kinda little lanes and everything and all the people that were crushed into them. And again, the contrast between 1500 people in that space, and what must be a fraction of that nowadays, you know, it’s still a significant number of folks coming in and seeing it, but how dense it must have been and how kind of hot and damp and moist and the atmosphere in that place must have been so intense. Absolutely smoky, very much smoky.
Judith Bowers
Very smoky. I mean, one of the great, one of my favourite reports from the Glasgow Herald in about 1898 was there was a riot in the Britannia Music Hall last night, because the smoke was so thick that the audience couldn’t see the act on stage. I mean, imagine sitting in that kind of environment, and then you’ve got the absolute animal poo that they used to throw, and the whelks that they used to eat and the smell of sweat, because people didn’t have indoor showers and bathrooms, or toilets per household, you know?
Niall Murphy
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Judith Bowers
Of course, they used to urinate where they stood because they couldn’t get to the one urinal or that was installed in 1893. By the way, girls, we got a toilet in 1922.
Judith Bowers
Progress, is that outrageous. I mean, it’s still, it’s really fascinating. When you consider the number of theatres, musicals that burnt down in Glasgow, all of that smoke and people smoking and plus what they were lit by, that it survived full stop. So given all of that, and then is is this incredible survivor, it’s really hung on what what do you see as the future being for the Britannia Panopticon?
Judith Bowers
More toilets. First of all, now, I think really not too many toilets. Now, what we were well, I mean, this is something that will come out in the feasibility study again, which the Panopticon Trust and Friends Trust and myself will be working on hopefully in the next year or so.
Sure, but it’s always been my dream to bring Britannia Panopticon back to life as this incredible music hall, she is the last original surviving musical hall intact. It would be criminal to turn her into a variety theatre, it really would, what we’re going to do is celebrate this early history of variety, which only this building can actually encapsulate. So turning her back into a musical and doing the things that we already do the music hall shows, cinema, the variety of entertainments they used to have in this the modern version of it, too. You know, so we’ve got modern variety entertainment, the modern version of music or sitting against the old experience of a Music Hall. Yeah, yeah.
And have the pub back on the ground floor. Not some little thing with little displays on the wall, but a proper experience of a real, what a Victorian pub would have been like, you know, with the staff all dressed up and Can Can girls or singers or comics spontaneously appearing like the old free and easy. Yes, and having things like the exhibition back in the attic, you know, so you can see what a waxworks and a freak show and a carnival was like, you can play the electric rifle range or see the automatons again, give people a real experience of what life must have been like at that time in Glasgow, as well as given the benefit of having one shows, and for the local population to and it’ll be great visitor attraction for the city.
Judith Bowers
Very much. So the Britannia Panopticon, it’s an A listed building. So can you take us through the changes that it’s been through since it was first built in 1857? And, you know, after it closed its doors in in 1938. Can you tell us something about that?
Judith Bowers
When it was converted in 1857, because the building was already expanded, but when it was converted into music hall in 1857, initially thought a department store, but they converted it into music hall because that’s what the area needed at that time. And they obviously put in their first music hall at that point, which we think although we don’t know for sure, because it takes a bit of theatre archaeology. And we haven’t got to that point yet. But we think that the original balcony probably came right up to the back wall of the auditorium, right, and there was a small clamshell stage underneath it, a very small stage. And that got adapted around about 1868. When the Rossborough took over, that might be when that changed and they put bench seating in. So that was the first adaptation was putting in bench seating, and also a proscenium arch. So it shortened the length of the balcony and it gave a more theatrical look to the building by giving a frame for the act on stage of proscenium being the arch in front of the stage.
And and over the years little adaptations have been made, for example, because of the gasoline, is being put in incidentally to burn off excess cigarette smoke, they had to actually put in ventilation in the ceiling. So we have this latticework ventilated ceiling in the middle. Because if they didn’t vent the gas fumes, people were suffocating, you know, basically suffocating in these places. Then, you know, and then in 1904 they bought in health and safety for the first time in these buildings, and they had to put in a fire exit as a result.
Then, of course in 1896 actually, they had to put in the electric lights, and that enabled us to show cinema for the first time on August the 25th 1896. In fact, Picard when he took over in 1906, added a staircase to take you up to the attic and turn the attic into the rooftop carnival wax works and freak show. And he also converted the basement at extraordinary expense underneath the pub into a zoo and Hall of Mirrors.
So these are the kind of adaptations that we’ve had over the years. And of course above the stage. The racking system was replaced by a pulley system we think in 1923 after a fire on the stage. Right, so those are their main changes. Other than that is pretty much the same old Victorian music hall that was installed by a bunch of shipbuilders back in the late 1850s.
Niall Murphy
Okay.
Judith Bowers
Yeah, oh yeah. And don’t forget the toilets, the toilets! The toilets were put in 1893 for the gents, one urinal, one cubicle. And ladies we got one cubicle in 1922. Obviously our clothing would not have accommodated the cubicle before then the big skirts and the big bustles it wasn’t going to happen.
Judith Bowers
Yeah. Okay, so if you could travel back in time, what show would you like to watch at the Britannia Panopticon and why?
Judith Bowers
Well, because it was music hall shows. It was variety and the bill changed every week. There wasn’t actually a show like you know, saying that you could go see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang or Mary Poppins. But there are certain artists I would have liked to have seen and obviously, the one I would love to travel back in time to see is Stan Laurel doing his debut at 16 years old. You know if I could travel back to that moment in time. Another moment in time I would like to travel back to though, is the very first time they showed cinema in the building people’s reactions to it. Having never seen anything like that before.
Judith Bowers
Oh my god, that train is gonna come through the screen!
Judith Bowers
Well except they had a slightly different thing, they didn’t have the train thing. In films. No, no the first films there was Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, comics scene in a restaurant, a blacksmith forge, soldiers marching or parading, a lynching scene and a cockfight.
Niall Murphy
Charming.
Judith Bowers
I forgotten the Mexican jewel.
Niall Murphy
Of course. Just just for good measure. Bizarre, when you think these things up it’s it’s really, cinema in its infancy is really quite fascinating. So which handling up brings me on to our next guest.
So Gary Painter, is one of the creators of the Scottish Cinemas Project website. So the Scottish Cinemas Project is a volunteer led nonprofit site dedicated to recording and archiving Scotland’s historic cinema architectural heritage. At present, there are around 1140 cinemas included in its digital database, with 800 photographs covering more than 250 different places around Scotland.
So Gary got interested in old cinema buildings in the mid 1990s. While working at the Odeon Cinema and the Theatre Royal in Glasgow. Gary is also a full time though now furloughed, stage doorkeeper at the Theatre Royal and occasionally at the King’s Theatre.
Cinemas in this country have had and continue to have a tumultuous and ever changing history.
By 1914 around 20 years after the first films were shown in the country, there were 4000 venues in existence. A very high number of the new cinemas were built between the 1920s and the 1940s, particularly as the talkies, that’s films with sound, took hold.
Cinemas were seen and experienced as social and meeting places and were part of the everyday life of thousands of people in Glasgow. From a postwar total of 4700, the number of cinemas fell to 3050 by 1960, and to 1971 by 1965 as televisions popularity grew. They suffered again in the early 1980s, with the invasion of home videos. Today, in 2021, there are 843 cinemas in the whole of the UK. Unfortunately, the high number of cinemas built in the space of a few years in the early and mid 20th century is linked to the high number of historic cinema buildings that are being demolished nowadays. Among the most remarkable historic cinemas in Glasgow we have the Glasgow Film Theatre, which is B listed and which was Scotland’s first art cinema, and that opened in 1939 and is still active today.
We also have the B listed Govanhill Picture House, built in 1926, and famous for its unique Egyptian style facade with columns and a moulded Scarab above the entranceway. It’s one that’s really much loved in the South side of Glasgow.
So at Glasgow City Heritage Trust, we certainly love all things cinema. And so we’re very excited to have Gary here with us today to discuss various aspects of old cinemas in Glasgow. Welcome to the podcast Gary!
Gary Painter
Thank you for having me. Very glad to be here.
Niall Murphy
It’s a pleasure, Gary. So first up question for you, why are you so fascinated by cinemas and why do you think they are so interesting and important?
Gary Painter
It started when I was working at the Odeon. So I had a student job. And like Judith, I studied archaeology. I was studying archaeology and Scottish History at Glasgow University. So I needed a student job and I got one a friend who works in the Odeon and Renfield Street.
So I got a job there in December 1995. And I was a popcorn wrangler, so I worked mostly in the shop. But usually that meant you had to work the bar. So upstairs, there was a, a bar which on a good night, you know, you were lucky if you made your wages back. It wasn’t terribly atmospheric or popular, so you just be sitting there reading a book sometimes and one day an old projectionist, a man called Frank, he’d worked in the building on and off since the late 1940s, and he wandered by and he showed me a magazine which had photographs of the building as it was when it first opened, and I was fascinated by this, because it looked nothing like that at the time.
It had been comprehensively subdivided in the 1970s, and then again in the 80s. So that at the time I started work there, it had six screens, which were really just one.
So the archaeologist in me started twitching and looking suspiciously at ceiling voids and hatches and wondering what was behind them all. So you know, I I would come back to my break covered in dust, where’ve you been? I was, I was just looking up this hatch and crawling around into this void to see what I could see. But it was very fragmentary, there wasn’t much left. So that was kind of how it started. That was how I got interested in this aspect of cinema, it was by working there and talking to staff who remember that as it was.
Niall Murphy
Sure, fascinating. So did that basically, was that were the kind of, the point of origin for the Scottish Cinemas website. Is that where it came from?
Gary Painter
Yeah, kind of a, you know, I was just sitting idling at University on day, googling Glasgow cinemas to see what’s coming up. And the website popped up. And it was very rudimentary, it had six cinemas or something on it. And it turned out it was another Glasgow University student who made it he was just practising his web skills to see if he could build a web page. And he lived near what was the Ascot cinema in Anniesland, okay, at the time, and it was it was, the auditorium was being demolished to build flats behind the retain facade. So he took a few photos of that, and he put this on the website.
And it kind, his two interests for him at that time was website design, and it was old cinemas, which he realised at the point, that at time that he quite liked, so I contacted them and we met up and you know what, that was about 2001- 2002. And ever since then, we’ve just been building this website. And so you know, we’ve become more formally involved in these kinds of things.
There’s an organisation called the Cinema Theatre Association, which is a kind of British body who, they’re all volunteers, mostly, and they promote the history of cinemas and cinema buildings and all aspects of cinemas. And that can, is what does it. We’ve become the Scottish caseworkers for them. But also, also we sit on the committee. So we started informally, you know, objecting to planning applications that were going to ruin cinemas, and then we started doing it formally under the auspices of the CTA.
Niall Murphy
Right. Okay. So how do you go about populating the website? Is it by submission? Or is this just all your own research?
Gary Painter
It’s a mixture of both really or, I mean, I should say at the moment, we haven’t had time, when we started this, you know, we were young pups in our mid 20s. Young, footloose and fancy free and we were able to devote lots of time and energy to it, now you know, now we are in our mid 40s, people look when people meet as they used to say, you’re much younger than we were expecting, but they don’t say that anymore.
Niall Murphy
Alas, this is you and Gordon Barr.
Gary Painter
Yeah, so now we are in our 40s, we’re not really, nobody expects us to be the same. But um, yeah, so a lot of the time it was just asking building owners can we come in and take some photos or, you know, when we put it up, people will submit photos or leave us to do it.
So we haven’t ,we haven’t updated now for a long time because life basically has gotten in the way. And it was always an entirely free time thing done completely for the love and then you know, nothing we were getting paid for. So it is a little bit out of date now, but, but it’s a complete mixture of things that people have sent us and things we’ve done. And, you know, things that we’ve bought on eBay over the years, a vast archive, you know, I’ve got a cupboard full of things that I’ve bought over the years from cinemas and theatres all around Scotland.
Niall Murphy
It is a fantastic website. I love going on it, because there are particular things I’ve got, I’ve gone and checked on at various times. And it’s just it’s an amazing resource. I mean, things like the, you know, the John, John James Burnett for Athenian Theatre.
Yeah, and you know, what happened with that? I mean, I know it’s Hard Rock Cafe nowadays, but for years, it was closed. And all the information was there on your website, I was really lucky to, to attend one of the last performances in there. But you know, what a fantastic space, which is kind of at least it kind of survives, but you know, it’s not, not what it once was. But to have those resources is is fantastic.
Gary Painter
Yeah, I mean, that was one of the early things we would end in. So it was the Athenian Theatre, it was still very much readable as a theatre, which is not so much now. It’s kind of hard when you’re standing there to think this was a theatre. But yeah, I mean, I was only ever in at once when I was, I think I saw a pre fame Harry Hill in there, many, many, many years ago. And it was the only time I was in as a theatre.
But yeah, I mean, it’s just, as a topic I think it just, there’s so many aspects of cinemas in theatre history, you know, cinemas that you’ve got the technology, you know, it all came about because of technology, you know, people messing around with this thing that they didn’t even know what the use for it was. Was it a science thing? Was it recording things? Was it entertainment?
So you know, people messing around with that, and the camera technology, suddenly, we have this ability to commonly project for film.
So you’ve got that and then you know how that technology changes over the years changes the buildings as well. You’ve got invention of talkies, and then colour and then widescreen formats, 3D. And nowadays, you get 4DX, where you set and get water sprayed in your face and stuff like that, as you’re watching film. And then you know, of course, digital now as well as changed the way cinemas are built and operated. So you know that there’s a technology aspect.
There’s also the business aspect and also a lot of people who are quite interested in it the people behind the cinemas and the companies behind the cinemas, the chains like like Odeon, and ABC.
ABC actually kind of got Scottish roots, Glaswegian roots. And that was a gentleman called John Maxwell who started ABC. He just kind of gathered up little chains of sort of variety theatres, round about the West of Scotland and eventually merged them and eventually became ABC cinemas, who ended up running a film studio as well. So ABC has Glaswegian roots.
Niall Murphy
I didn’t I didn’t know that because of course, there’s the Green, the Green family as well. Yeah. Incredibly powerful.
Gary Painter
They were Yeah, they were. So they were show people originally and they were really important in the early cinema. So because it was the sort of travelling showman who did take equipment around little halls, or around Scotland, or they would take it around fairgrounds. And they went on to develop quite a lot of the first permanent cinemas. So you know, the West of Scotland, and the Greens and the Singleton’s as well, as Singleton’s who helped because more than GFT they started off taking a screening equipment around little hall, they got the first one out and Hamilton.
I think it’s just, it’s just as a topic, I think it covers all these kind of things for me, you know, you get a cultural history, you know, both high and low are coming to the most unlikely places. You get the social history as well, you know, I mean, these buildings were mostly commercial ventures and people, you know, you get very nice commercial buildings, like banks and things like that, but people don’t think of them as fondly as they do with cinemas. Because it’s, you know, they’ve got memories of going there as a kid or, you know, they went there with people who eventually became their partners or you know you know, sort of first dating. So people really think of them fondly much more so than a lot of other commercial buildings.
Niall Murphy
Very much. Yeah, I mean, just thinking of things like, Earthquake in sensurround how are these, how they were all kind of pushed, and it was all the innovations and all kinds of experiencing that must have been fantastic at the time.
Gary Painter
It was an it’s extraordinarily fiddly things, cinemas were always reinventing itself and it’s always revisiting old ideas to try and bring them up to date with modern technology and also you juggled around in a 4DX and you think, Rollercoaster and Earthquake. We’re doing this in the 70s You know, they were putting speakers under your seat to make 3D of course, try to make a comeback about 10-15 years ago, now that you didn’t need the sort of coloured glasses.
And you know, the buildings themselves have changed to these values, or the early cinemas were just thrown up whatever they could be. Even shops, converted factories, churches, halls, the Victorians and Edwardians. Are fine for building halls. They didn’t they did like the gatherings. So they just used those spaces and existing theatres and musicals, of course, as well.
And then in 1910 a piece of legislation comes in the Cinematograph Act, in response to safety concerns about film, the film at the time was nitrate, and it was really highly flammable. So that brought in legislation when local authorities could licence cinemas and so a lot of the older conversions kind of drop off, because it’s too expensive or too tight because you have to be they have to be purpose built after that. Right. So after that, they have to be purpose built So then you have architects sitting down thinking, what on earth is a cinema so you know, they’re starting from scratch having to design the cinema with fireproof projection rooms and stuff like that. So that’s when we see the sort of first custom built cinemas.
Niall Murphy
Yeah. We’re looking at people like Thomas Baird at the moment. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Who is a fantastic cinema architect from Glasgow who did really interesting work.
Gary Painter
Yeah, and yeah, you know, things like the Salon in the West End, you know, being built entirely over Hennepin federal concrete. Yeah, as a response to it directly to that legislation. Yes, yeah, very much. And then, of course, you get the World Wars coming out, and the kind of, you know, between the World Wars and the first cinema buildings, and sort of the second kind of gap after the First World War, because materials are scarce, and then they start looking to America and building bigger and better ones. And then and then after the Second World War, they’re all knackered, so yeah, this is sort of nobody really built cinemas again for years after that. But then, but then the older buildings start changing, they start adapting, you know, by being subdivided. And then you start getting multiplexes. And a lot of the older ones, of course being changed, they became bingo hall. So a lot of the other ones have been, have been banged up still around. They’ve been bingo halls for far longer than they’ve been cinemas. So it’s really really faddy the entertainment in general.
Niall Murphy
Very much. So do you think that’s perhaps why so many old cinema buildings have been demolished in the UK? And do you think that’s something that will will either improve or get worse? Because of COVID?
Gary Painter
Yeah, it’s a tricky thing, because they always were really difficult buildings to adapt, this large single volume space. So when they stopped becoming a cinema, what do you do with them that sort of doesn’t compromise the architectural integrity of them too much. But they’re also incredibly fragile. Because you know, the minute you lock the door, water starts getting in, round it back, essentially, these were brick sheds with asbestos roofs. Yes. So you know that you close the door for 10 minutes, and suddenly there’s a a root in, the ceiling is down. Yeah, yeah. quite fragile, really, really quite fragile. And also they are built of staff that kills us, like asbestos. Yeah, things like that.
So that, you know, people don’t want to touch them. So we do end up losing quite a lot of them. Because of that, but and also the, you know, traditionally the site for them was on the high street so that really valuable real estate as well. So becomes much more lucrative just to sell them off for redevelopment. Whether that involves keeping any aspect of them more commonly not just getting rid of them. Sure, but with COVID as well, we’re seeing you know, things like a lot of the bingo companies have closed a lot of bingo halls during COVID and have said they’re not gonna bring them back.
So things like the Mecca, in Rutherglen at Main Street, right, which is one of the Singleton’s Vogue cinemas and then became.. they’ve announced that’s not reopening. So that’s one we’re gonna have to accept.
Niall Murphy
That’s a great shame. Right. So what are your top three favourite cinema buildings in Glasgow?
Gary Painter
I think one’s probably in the Gallowgate. In East End, it was called The Orient. And it was a few doors along from what’s still a sort of prominent 1930s building nearly Bellgrove Hotel, right, in a working man’s hostel. A few doors along from that was this Orient cinema and it was really, you know, externally had this kind of Ziggurat thing on the outside. But when you went inside, it was built in what they called an atmospheric style. When it had all these wee miniatures of buildings along the walls to make it seem like you’re sitting in some exotic courtyard. You know, the escapism wasn’t just about the film, you’re watching on screen, it was a bit where you were watching it. It was as if you’re watching this in a location, almost as exotic as what you were watching on the screen. So I had all these we minarets and sort of Disney Castle spires and things at the side.
And a wonderful cinema was built by a man called Albert Gardner, who was a slightly eccentric architect who specialised in cinemas. And he specialised in atmospheric cinemas, another sort of architect who did that was William Beresford Inglis who designed the Beresford Hotel, yeah, the two of them between them designed most of the atmospheric cinemas in Scotland. And I think The Orient in the Gallowgate would have been an absolute knockout to see on this day but sadly it was demolished about 15 years ago. Right.
Another one is probably the Hillhead Salon which I mentioned. It’s just, it was a little knockout in its day because, you know, it was using technology to respond to this issue of fire safety. So it was built entirely of concrete but not without beauty as well. You know, you go inside and it’s got these little ribbed concrete arches on the vaulted ceiling which have got plaster work directly applied to them. So even though it’s now a pub, you know, there’s still vestiges of it there that you can go in and see.
And the last one, it’s a bit of a tough one. The last one, it was a toss up between the Salon in Sauchiehall Street, which was this fantastic Moorish tiled cinema, which sadly, the building itself was adapted that it was very short lived cinema was only there between 1913 and 1923. But it was very short lived. And it became a kind of retail sports shop. And then it became all sorts of businesses. So one of the last things in there was a rooftops disco. And that was lost in the first of the Sauchiehall street fires a few years ago. Right. Right. So it was a toss up between now the absolutely wonderful Lyceum in Govan which I love, the Lyceum, the Lyceum opened just before the World War Two, and it you know, it was influenced by the Empire Exhibition, just along the road. So it was an ultra modern streamline architecture. And it was vast as well. It’s at something like 2300 people, it’s.
Niall Murphy
It’s wonderful, and it is enormous.
Gary Painter
It’s enormous. And it’s absolutely just sitting there dying for some viable use. And so. So yeah, those are probably my favourites.
Niall Murphy
Right. And if you could go back in time to see a demolished theatre or cinema in Glasgow, would you like to go? Seeing what show? And why?
Gary Painter
Yeah, I think I’d love to go see something at Odeon where I have worked, which is now just the foyer block that survived, which has a tower block behind it. I think I’d love to go see that in its heyday, when there was a big show, something like Bill Haley or the Beatles who played there. Yeah, absolutely. It had full stage facility so it would be fascinating to go in and see how it all worked there. Because you know, there were remnants of these dressing rooms, music rooms and stuff there when I worked there. But I’d love to have seen it all in its heyday, when it was all working and, you know, had the departments and staff of hundreds. And it would just be nice to see the people inhabiting the space where I inhabited, doing their jobs, and what it was, like years ago, so I walked by the Odeon in Renfield Street the other day and I looked up and there’s somebody sitting at a desk typing away because it’s just offices now. Well, I’m one of those ghosts now as well myself because it was yes, you have been 20 years ago, I was sitting at that very window, you know, fiddling the disparities in stock. When I was doing my stock count on a Thursday night and I was sitting making up wastage figures. And I thought, I wonder if that person ever thinks about me. Someone else who was sitting there in the past?
Niall Murphy
About the former uses of the space? Yeah, I wonder I wonder. So you told us that you work as a as a stage doorkeeper at Theatre Royal and occasionally at the King’s Theatre? Do you think your position is one of those traditional roles that stayed the same during the last century?
Gary Painter
I think it is because I found a few articles online about stage doorkeepers in the Edwardian and Victorian period. And it does seem to be remarkably similar. You know, but back then the described as a position that was usually reserved for gruff men. Well, I’m pleased to say we now employ women so we have our own gruff women there as well. But as quite an unusual job I tell people that I work as a stage door keeper, 95% of them just kind of screw up their eyes and look at me, what the hell is a stage door keeper.
But yeah, you know, you’re essentially just the guardian of the stage, you know, that you sit in there like a little troll in your broom cupboard, stopping people from coming in, who aren’t allowed, then answering mail and stuff. So you know, the only real differences are things like fire panels, which are much more modern these days. Sure, but yeah, we’re still little trolls who sits in cupboards.
Niall Murphy
Okay, I want to bring Judith back in at this point, because I have a couple of final questions for both of you. First off, do you think that Glasgow was or is a special city for entertainment? And if so, do you think it is the people? Or is it a form of escapism? Was it to do with the city’s industrial past? What do you think?
Judith Bowers
Do you want to go for as Gary or shall I go?
Gary Painter
You go Judith, I’m sick listening to myself now.
Judith Bowers
Well, sweetie, I love listening to you, I can listen to you for hours. The thing is with Glasgow is that entertainment was really illegal. It was illegal for a long time from the Reformation in the 16th century, up until what the 1790s. And ironically, if you were caught in any way, drawing public attention to yourself by singing or dancing or anything like that, you’d be publicly punished for it.
And that was the only legitimate entertainment in Glasgow was public executions and punishments. I always think that explains the Glasgow audience, to be honest, their attitude. But I think that Glaswegians have had a really rough deal, particularly during the Industrial Revolution, right the way through the Victorian era. Really, right up until the 1950s Glasgow had a rough deal, the working population, the ordinary working classes, it was tough. That’s why they need entertainment, you say escapism. So, basically all of the above, I think really Niall.
Niall Murphy
Okay, Gary?
Gary Painter
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, all the things we’ve touched on, you know, had to do with population density and the difficulty of work and you know, Glasgow in the 20s, 30s had a population of a million in a much smaller area than it it is now, you know, people needed space and you think about the theatre or the cinemas you know, it was relatively cheap back then there was none of this 8 quid a seat nonsense. You know, a few pennies, you could go ahead and sit in a cinema. Someone else was paying for the heating, it was probably probably slightly more lavishly furnished than your own house, you know, some, you know, I like to think of cinemas as the dogs of the architecture world you know, they come in so many shapes and sizes and degrees of lavishness and scruffiness.
Niall Murphy
You know, you can cosy and comfy somewhere yeah.
Gary Painter
You could go and sit there. Yeah, you could you could sit there for you could sit there all day be heated watch the film, you know, you didn’t just watch a separate film back then you sat there trough a whole programme and you could just stay there pretty much as long as no one didn’t kick you out you could stay there as long as you could.
But also there’s privacy as well you know everyone living on top of each other in their houses you know the cinema or theatre with someone you can go sit and have about privacy you know, sit at the back Yeah. And at big spaces, Yeah, absolutely what with or without your significant other you know, it’s up to you if you wanted just peace and quiet to do whatever you did in the peace and quiet.
Niall Murphy
Sure, sure enough. Okay, next question. And final question, and this is a loaded question for both of you. So what is your favourite building in Glasgow? And what would it tell you if its walls could talk? Who wants to go first?
Judith Bowers
I think we know what my favourite building in Glasgow, it is the entire reason I live in Glasgow? Well, my favourite building in Glasgow is the Britannia Panopticon, where there any doubts about what was my favourite building in Glasgow?
Niall Murphy
We could never have guessed that one.
Gary Painter
I was gonna go for the just along the road from where I’m sitting just know the factory in Polmadie but Right. But I realised you know it’s a factory so it’s well it’s probably didn’t hear very much so you know, what kind of building hears and sees something much more interesting is a hotel so I’m thinking the Beresford Hotel you know, back in its heyday when it first operated as hotel and it must have seen the height of glamour you know, what went on in its rooms? I think it can tell us quite a few good stories.
Niall Murphy
Definitely. Well, that’s where that’s where John F Kennedy made his first public speech. So so there you go. Wonder how many folks in Glasgow know that? Interesting stuff. Okey dokey.
Well, thank you very much. That was extremely enjoyable to have both of you on as ever. Always a pleasure with both of you. So to our listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and share and don’t forget to follow the hashtag #IFGlasgowsWallsCouldTalk. Thank you very much.
The following message was submitted by a member of the public, if you want to leave a message about your opinions, memories and thoughts about Glasgow’s historic built environment have a look at our website to find out how.
When I was four and a half, in 1941, my mother had another child, now she was taken into hospital prior to this, as she was ill, and she was ill even after she came home. So because of this, my maternal grandmother moved in to look after us, and my maternal grandmother had a cinema habit, she liked to go to the pictures, twice every week.
But unfortunately as she wasn’t the most pleasant of people and didn’t have any friends, and the family were reluctant to accompany her, from the age of about five, twice every week, I was volunteered to go with my grandmother to the cinema. It was a cinema in Parliamentary Road, so from an early age I was watching all kinds of, really inappropriate unsuitable stuff for a small child…censorship was different in those days, I realise now. And I just have this memory of being quite frightened of some of the films I’d seen.
But I didn’t care because I loved going to the cinema and even though my grandmother was really unpleasant and not really nice to be with, I didn’t care because by the time I was about 7 I was a complete cinema addict.
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