Odeon cinema building was completed in 1937 by Sir Robert McAlpine according to the designs of Harry Weedon and Andrew Mather. It was built on a site that previously held Turkish baths and a large music hall from the 1850s called the Alhambra Theatre. The land cost £550,000, and the cinema itself was built in seven months for £232,755. It had 2,116 seats. The grand opening was on Tuesday, November 2, 1937, featuring the film “The Prisoner of Zenda.”
The cinema’s interior featured an art-deco style with a ribbed ceiling and side walls, hidden strip lighting, and two large sculptures of nymphs. The seats were covered in faux-leopard skin. In 1967, a renovation changed many of these original features, replacing ribbed plasterwork with smooth surfaces. A later update in 1998 restored some details like the sculptures and the seat covers.
The UK’s first widescreen cinema (screen ratio 1.66:1) debuted at this theater on May 14, 1953, with the movie “Tonight We Sing.” Later, the first British public showing of a CinemaScope film (screen ratio 2.55:1) was “The Robe” on November 19, 1953. Although the Odeon Tottenham Court Road was the first to install CinemaScope in the UK on June 9, 1953, it wasn’t open to the public until later.
