Happy nights at the Electra, Ritz and Regal cinemas in Oxford

Ushers were confronting a group of youngsters who had crept in the back door without paying.

It was a scene that was often repeated at the Electra cinema in Queen Street, Oxford, on the site where Marks & Spencer now stands.

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One incident of sneaking in was recalled by Memory Lane reader Bob Hounslow, of Squires Close, Brize Norton, when he read about the long-lost cinema on the Oxford Nostalgia website.

Singer Ronnie Hilton signs autographs in 1972 after the ABC Minors’ Saturday morning film show switched from the Regal to the Ritz

He writes: “The Electra was a very long building that stretched from Queen Street into St Ebbe’s. The main floor of the cinema sloped a long way down to the front, where the screen hung down in a proper stage setting, with curtains draped either side and a ‘Royal Box’ balcony looking down on the stage on the right hand side.

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“It also had an elongated triangular side section where the front seats were only 1s 3d (6½p) because you were looking obliquely at the screen over your left shoulder.

Teenagers outside the Regal cinema in 1959

“One Sunday night, the lads and I were watching a film when suddenly there was one heck of a commotion. It turned out one boy had paid to go in and was letting his mates in the back door. They were being chased by the ushers.

“One enterprising fellow scrambled up on to the stage, then climbed the curtain and was trying to get in the Royal Box when he was caught.

“Of course, we good boys in the 2s 3d (11½p) seats in the main hall disapproved of such behaviour – only because we hadn’t thought of it ourselves!”

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The Electra opened on March 25, 1911 with seats for 300 in its oddly L-shaped auditorium. The seating capacity was later increased to 1,200.

It closed on August 28, 1958 with Errol Flynn in ‘Too Much, Too Soon’ and was replaced by a Co-op store. The building was demolished in 1978 and replaced by the present Marks & Spencer store.

A fancy dress competition at the Regal in 1969 was judged by the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress, Alderman and Mrs Percy Bromley

Oxford was well blessed with cinemas, with the Ritz in George Street, the Super in Magdalen Street, the Regal in Cowley Road and the Scala in Walton Street.

The Ritz in George Street opened in 1936 with seating for 1,654 in stalls and circle. It was renamed the ABC in 1963, shortly before a major fire.

The likely cause was a cigarette or pipe dropped by a cinemagoer setting fire to a seat.

The alarm was raised by a policeman and a passerby who saw smoke coming from the building after the cinema had closed for the night. Damage was put at more than £30,000.

After various changes of ownership, it is now part of the Odeon group, with six screens.

Monty the python helped publicise It Shouldn’t Happen to a Vet at the ABC Magdalen Street cinema in 1976

The former Super cinema in Magdalen Street, dating from 1924, is also owned by Odeon, while the Regal, at the corner of Cowley Road and Magdalen Road, which opened in 1937 and closed in 1970, is now the Christian Life Centre after spells as a bingo hall and night club.

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Don’t forget, too, the Scala in Walton Street, now the Phoenix, the Ultimate Picture Palace in Jeune Street and the Moulin Rouge at Headington.