Electric Palace Cinema
Encyclopedia
The Electric Palace cinema, Harwich, is one of the oldest purpose-built cinemas to survive complete with its silent screen, original projection room and ornamental frontage still intact. It was designed by the architect Harold Ridley Hooper
of Ipswich, Suffolk and opened on 29 November 1911.
Other interesting features include an open plan entrance lobby complete with paybox, and a small stage plus dressing rooms although the latter are now unusable. The original Crossley
gas engine, which provided, in conjunction with a 100V DC generator, the electricity for the "Electric" Palace until 1925 is also still present. Unfortunately it is neither practical to restore, or remove, this engine.
The cinema closed in 1956 after being damaged in the 1953 East Coast floods
, but re-opened in 1981, retaining the original screen, projection room and frontage as well as much of the original interior. It is now a community cinema and until 2006, when a Wednesday screening programme was introduced, films were shown at weekends only. The building also hosts regular jazz
concerts.
The cinema is a Grade II* listed building and in 2009 was removed from the Buildings At Risk Register maintained by English Heritage
following structural refurbishment, the completion of which, was celebrated on 15 July 2009.
In November 2006, British actor Clive Owen
became patron of the cinema and at his first official visit he helped launch an appeal to raise funds to repair this historic building.
with his Bioscope shows. Such travelling 'moving picture' shows were common at the time, but with the introduction of the Cinematograph Act 1909
, which imposed strict fire prevention regulations on any venue in which films were shown to the public, it became effectively impossible to put on a legal film show in a fairground tent. Hence Thurston decided to build a permanent "Picture Palace" in which he could continue to screen films to the public.
In 1911 he was able to obtain a lease on a site in Kings Quay Street, Harwich which had become vacant due to the previous building on the site being destroyed by fire. He engaged the young architect Harold Hooper to design the building, which was to be known as the Electric Palace, for him. Hooper was a dynamic young man of 26 years who demonstrated his imaginative flair with this his first major building.
The Electric Palace was built in 18 weeks at a cost of £1,500 and opened on Wednesday, 29 November 1911, the first film being "The Battle of Trafalgar
and The Death of Nelson".
The cinema was an immediate success and continued to be financially successful through WW1 thanks to the presence of Navy personnel in the port of Harwich. However almost as soon as the war was over business at the "Palace", as the cinema was now called, went into decline due to the loss of population from Harwich to nearby Dovercourt and competition from the newer, plusher, cinemas there.
For nearly four decades the Palace struggled on, never doing badly enough to close, but never doing well enough to justify enlargement or a major facelift. The coming of sound in 1930 gave a boost, but it was short-lived. Then in 1953 the cinema was inundated by seawater due to the East-Coast flood of that year, which forced it to close. Although it was dried-out, repaired and reopened, the floods had affected more than just the cinema, nearby housing had also been affected reducing further the local population. This proved to be the 'last nail in the coffin', and the Palace closed after 45 years of operation, following a final showing of the Glynis Johns
comedy: "Mad about Men", on 3 November 1956.
, who was leading a group of students on a survey of Harwich. He was amazed to find this virtually unaltered relic of the early period of cinema architecture lying forgotten in a Harwich side-street. He was also disturbed to discover that the town council was intending to demolish the entire block of which the cinema was a part to provide additional parking space for lorries.
With the aid of the Harwich Society he obtained a listing for the cinema as being "a building of sociological interest" in September of that year.
This action infuriated the council, and split opinion in the town. The local newspaper carried letters variously describing the building as "a derelict flea-pit of no interest", or as "a potential asset to the town". An unknown wit wrote:
They came from Kingston to survey the town,
and stopped us from pulling the old Palace down.
If they like it so much,
this tumbledown shack,
to Kingston-on-Thames may they carry it back.
For a couple of years the arguments flew, it even made the national newspapers. Meanwhile Gordon Miller researched the history of the building from the council archives, contemporary newspaper reports and interviews with surviving members of the Electric Palace staff.
In April 1975 the Electric Palace Trust was formed with the avowed aim of restoring the building so that it could, again, be used as a fully operational cinema. The council granted a "repairing lease" to the Trust in May of that year and restoration started, initially using mostly volunteer labour. Later the council was to sell the freehold to the Trust.
The cinema, having reverted to its original name of Electric Palace, re-opened in 1981. The Grand re-opening on 29 November 1981, the 70th anniversary of the original opening , was filmed by the BBC for their children's programme "Blue Peter
".
The Electric Palace now runs as a community cinema showing films every weekend.
was Patron from 1975 until his death in 1984 whilst film historian, and lecturer on the art of cinema, John Huntley was Patron from 1985–2003. The current Patron Clive Owen
made his first official visit to the Electric Palace on 10 November 2006 when he helped launch the Electric Palace Appeal.
. From the beginning the programmes were full of variety and often the major part of the bill would be taken up with vaudeville rather than films. The venue was regularly played by a wide spectrum of entertainers including acrobats, burlesques, conjurors, hypnotists, impersonators, singers, patterers, knockabouts mimics, dancers and comedians. Notable among this latter group was the young Scottish comedian Will Fyffe
who was stationed at Felixstowe
during the First World War. Billy Good, who was later the resident pianist, remembered well Will Fyffe's appearances at the Palace and it seems that they were an exception since most of the variety acts between 1915 and 1918 were either juveniles or those too old for active service in the World War
.
In the golden age of the Electric Palace society was still fairly rigidly stratified into classes and this reflected in the seating arrangements. Entry to the better seats was through the front entrance foyer, the prices being sixpence for good seats and one shilling
for the very best.
The cheaper seats were simply wooden benches and entry to these was past another paybox down an alley at the side. This entrance was known as the 'tuppenny rush.' One doorman remembered the rush being so great that he ended up flat on his back with the children stampeding over him as in a Mack Sennett comedy – and most of them getting in for nothing!
The programme advertisements in the local paper, the Harwich
and Dovercourt
Standard, of 1912 and 1913 are full of fun and exclamation marks. Great play is made of the superb ventilation, the regular disinfection of the auditorium
, the sedate and orderly composure of the clientele, and the exclusiveness of the films.
From the outset the films and vaudeville acts were accompanied at the piano. Billy Good, the pianist from 1920–1922 recalled the very long hours worked by all the staff and particularly himself arduously craning up at the screen from the rather dingy pit recessed into the floor in front of the stage. However, the 'pit neck ache' didn't matter since he was 100% engrossed in the music and loved every minute of it playing two houses every night except Sunday for £1-15s–0d. a week. Billy's career changed course in 1922 when one day a potato chip machine took slices from his fingers rather than the potato. He carried on playing 'with left thumb and little finger 'hors-de-combat' but it didn't take 'old Gilbert', the manager, long to notice the difference. He poked his head over the pit rail and said "You young rascal, you've got a bloody cheek" which under the circumstances was rather appropriate, and possibly literally true. So Billy went off to sea to harden up his injured fingers and when the cinema reopened in 1981 Billy Good, by then in his eighties, returned to the cinema to provide musical accompaniment once again to the occasional silent film.
The cinema has no subsidies except for very special events when a grant makes it was possible to present gala screening, for example – of a silent classic with live orchestral accompaniment. The motivation for the project has been the saving and restoration of a very special building and the renaissance of cinema in a community that had had no cinema for many years. This has been a considerable benefit to many different parts of the community. Special films can be booked for groups such as local schools of relevance to their school curriculum, societies with a specific interest, the showing of art films combined with a meal at The Pier Restaurant. Live events include regular jazz
concerts and productions by amateur drama groups. The local authority is now totally in tune with the preservation and upkeep of the cinema and has been very helpful. The success of a venture such as this is fragile as it depends on inspiration, goodwill, and continued enjoyment by all the volunteers who have made it such an outstanding success.
Programming is carried out by the volunteer directors on a pragmatic basis. In general most of the selected films come from the Screen International Top Ten each month. Films are shown about two months after the films are first released. This has the advantage that the percentage rates are lower and knowledge of the track record of product is higher. This enables the cinema to make a modest profit on most films and this is transferred to the Trust for maintenance and upkeep of the building. Independence also means that other films, which may not necessarily appear in the top ten or even top twenty, can be shown.
films to be screened. The first 'talking picture' shown was Warner Brothers' "The Singing Fool
", staring Al Jolson
, screened on 10 March 1930.
analogue soundtracks as well as those with a 5.1 Dolby Digital
soundtrack. The reel arms were extended to take 6000 foot reels and inverters were installed for the drive motors. New Isco wide screen and anamorphic lenses were installed. For the main shows the old twin projector system is still being used, and a Sanyo PLC-XF12B multimedia projector is provided for use with a computer or for showing DVDs or Blu-ray discs.
age. The cost of the new digital equipment is estimated at £55,000 and the Electric Palace Trust aims to raise the money by November 2011 when the cinema celebrates its centenary.
The cinema will retain the two 60 year old Kalee model 20 projectors
which currently are used to show new and old 35 mm films so that in future when new releases will all be digital, it will still be possible to screen pre-digital-age films such as those from the National Archive of the British Film Institute
. Over the years the Electric Palace has built up a very good working relationship with the BFI because it can project these historic films on the class of machines on which they were projected at first release.
Harold Ridley Hooper
Harold Ridley Hooper was an English architect based in Ipswich, Suffolk.He was elected ARIBA in 1910, having been articled to John Sewell Corder, and started his own practice in Ipswich in 1912. He was a Colonel in the 4th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment during World War I...
of Ipswich, Suffolk and opened on 29 November 1911.
Other interesting features include an open plan entrance lobby complete with paybox, and a small stage plus dressing rooms although the latter are now unusable. The original Crossley
Crossley
Crossley, based in Manchester, United Kingdom, was a pioneering company in the production of internal combustion engines. Since 1988 it has been part of the Rolls-Royce Power Engineering group.More than 100,000 Crossley oil and gas engines have been built....
gas engine, which provided, in conjunction with a 100V DC generator, the electricity for the "Electric" Palace until 1925 is also still present. Unfortunately it is neither practical to restore, or remove, this engine.
The cinema closed in 1956 after being damaged in the 1953 East Coast floods
North Sea flood of 1953
The 1953 North Sea flood was a major flood caused by a heavy storm, that occurred on the night of Saturday 31 January 1953 and morning of 1 February 1953. The floods struck the Netherlands, Belgium, England and Scotland.A combination of a high spring tide and a severe European windstorm caused a...
, but re-opened in 1981, retaining the original screen, projection room and frontage as well as much of the original interior. It is now a community cinema and until 2006, when a Wednesday screening programme was introduced, films were shown at weekends only. The building also hosts regular jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
concerts.
The cinema is a Grade II* listed building and in 2009 was removed from the Buildings At Risk Register maintained by English Heritage
English Heritage
English Heritage . is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
following structural refurbishment, the completion of which, was celebrated on 15 July 2009.
In November 2006, British actor Clive Owen
Clive Owen
Clive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
became patron of the cinema and at his first official visit he helped launch an appeal to raise funds to repair this historic building.
1911 – 1956
In the early years of the 20th century the travelling fairground Showman Charles Thurston was touring East AngliaEast Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...
with his Bioscope shows. Such travelling 'moving picture' shows were common at the time, but with the introduction of the Cinematograph Act 1909
Cinematograph Act 1909
The Cinematograph Act 1909 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom . It was the first primary legislation in the UK which specifically regulated the film industry...
, which imposed strict fire prevention regulations on any venue in which films were shown to the public, it became effectively impossible to put on a legal film show in a fairground tent. Hence Thurston decided to build a permanent "Picture Palace" in which he could continue to screen films to the public.
In 1911 he was able to obtain a lease on a site in Kings Quay Street, Harwich which had become vacant due to the previous building on the site being destroyed by fire. He engaged the young architect Harold Hooper to design the building, which was to be known as the Electric Palace, for him. Hooper was a dynamic young man of 26 years who demonstrated his imaginative flair with this his first major building.
The Electric Palace was built in 18 weeks at a cost of £1,500 and opened on Wednesday, 29 November 1911, the first film being "The Battle of Trafalgar
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
and The Death of Nelson".
The cinema was an immediate success and continued to be financially successful through WW1 thanks to the presence of Navy personnel in the port of Harwich. However almost as soon as the war was over business at the "Palace", as the cinema was now called, went into decline due to the loss of population from Harwich to nearby Dovercourt and competition from the newer, plusher, cinemas there.
For nearly four decades the Palace struggled on, never doing badly enough to close, but never doing well enough to justify enlargement or a major facelift. The coming of sound in 1930 gave a boost, but it was short-lived. Then in 1953 the cinema was inundated by seawater due to the East-Coast flood of that year, which forced it to close. Although it was dried-out, repaired and reopened, the floods had affected more than just the cinema, nearby housing had also been affected reducing further the local population. This proved to be the 'last nail in the coffin', and the Palace closed after 45 years of operation, following a final showing of the Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns
Glynis Johns is a South African-born Welsh stage and film actress, dancer, pianist and singer . With a career spanning seven decades, Johns is often cited as the "complete actress", who happens to be a trained pianist and singer...
comedy: "Mad about Men", on 3 November 1956.
1972 – 2011
For the next 16 years the building lay abandoned and largely forgotten until in 1972 it was "discovered" by Gordon Miller of Kingston PolytechnicKingston University
Kingston University is a public research university located in Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, United Kingdom. It was originally founded in 1899 as Kingston Technical Institute, a polytechnic, and became a university in 1992....
, who was leading a group of students on a survey of Harwich. He was amazed to find this virtually unaltered relic of the early period of cinema architecture lying forgotten in a Harwich side-street. He was also disturbed to discover that the town council was intending to demolish the entire block of which the cinema was a part to provide additional parking space for lorries.
With the aid of the Harwich Society he obtained a listing for the cinema as being "a building of sociological interest" in September of that year.
This action infuriated the council, and split opinion in the town. The local newspaper carried letters variously describing the building as "a derelict flea-pit of no interest", or as "a potential asset to the town". An unknown wit wrote:
They came from Kingston to survey the town,
and stopped us from pulling the old Palace down.
If they like it so much,
this tumbledown shack,
to Kingston-on-Thames may they carry it back.
For a couple of years the arguments flew, it even made the national newspapers. Meanwhile Gordon Miller researched the history of the building from the council archives, contemporary newspaper reports and interviews with surviving members of the Electric Palace staff.
In April 1975 the Electric Palace Trust was formed with the avowed aim of restoring the building so that it could, again, be used as a fully operational cinema. The council granted a "repairing lease" to the Trust in May of that year and restoration started, initially using mostly volunteer labour. Later the council was to sell the freehold to the Trust.
The cinema, having reverted to its original name of Electric Palace, re-opened in 1981. The Grand re-opening on 29 November 1981, the 70th anniversary of the original opening , was filmed by the BBC for their children's programme "Blue Peter
Blue Peter
Blue Peter is the world's longest-running children's television show, having first aired in 1958. It is shown on CBBC, both in its BBC One programming block and on the CBBC channel. During its history there have been many presenters, often consisting of two women and two men at a time...
".
The Electric Palace now runs as a community cinema showing films every weekend.
Patrons of the Electric Palace
Poet Laureate, Sir John BetjemanJohn Betjeman
Sir John Betjeman, CBE was an English poet, writer and broadcaster who described himself in Who's Who as a "poet and hack".He was a founding member of the Victorian Society and a passionate defender of Victorian architecture...
was Patron from 1975 until his death in 1984 whilst film historian, and lecturer on the art of cinema, John Huntley was Patron from 1985–2003. The current Patron Clive Owen
Clive Owen
Clive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
made his first official visit to the Electric Palace on 10 November 2006 when he helped launch the Electric Palace Appeal.
Entertainment at the Palace
In its heyday between 1912 and the 1920s the Electric Palace was the centre of entertainment in HarwichHarwich
Harwich is a town in Essex, England and one of the Haven ports, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the northeast, Ipswich to the northwest, Colchester to the southwest and Clacton-on-Sea to the south...
. From the beginning the programmes were full of variety and often the major part of the bill would be taken up with vaudeville rather than films. The venue was regularly played by a wide spectrum of entertainers including acrobats, burlesques, conjurors, hypnotists, impersonators, singers, patterers, knockabouts mimics, dancers and comedians. Notable among this latter group was the young Scottish comedian Will Fyffe
Will Fyffe
Will Fyffe was a major star of the 1930s and 1940s, a star of stage, screen and shellac.Fyffe made his debut in his father's stock company at the age of six...
who was stationed at Felixstowe
Felixstowe
Felixstowe is a seaside town on the North Sea coast of Suffolk, England. The town gives its name to the nearby Port of Felixstowe, which is the largest container port in the United Kingdom and is owned by Hutchinson Ports UK...
during the First World War. Billy Good, who was later the resident pianist, remembered well Will Fyffe's appearances at the Palace and it seems that they were an exception since most of the variety acts between 1915 and 1918 were either juveniles or those too old for active service in the World War
World war
A world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span multiple countries on multiple continents, with battles fought in multiple theaters....
.
In the golden age of the Electric Palace society was still fairly rigidly stratified into classes and this reflected in the seating arrangements. Entry to the better seats was through the front entrance foyer, the prices being sixpence for good seats and one shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
for the very best.
The cheaper seats were simply wooden benches and entry to these was past another paybox down an alley at the side. This entrance was known as the 'tuppenny rush.' One doorman remembered the rush being so great that he ended up flat on his back with the children stampeding over him as in a Mack Sennett comedy – and most of them getting in for nothing!
The programme advertisements in the local paper, the Harwich
Harwich
Harwich is a town in Essex, England and one of the Haven ports, located on the coast with the North Sea to the east. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the northeast, Ipswich to the northwest, Colchester to the southwest and Clacton-on-Sea to the south...
and Dovercourt
Dovercourt
For the neighbourhood in Toronto see Dovercourt-Wallace Emerson-JunctionDovercourt is a small seaside town in Essex, England. It is older than its smaller but better-known neighbour, the port of Harwich, and appears in the Domesday Book of 1086...
Standard, of 1912 and 1913 are full of fun and exclamation marks. Great play is made of the superb ventilation, the regular disinfection of the auditorium
Auditorium
An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theaters, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens.- Etymology :...
, the sedate and orderly composure of the clientele, and the exclusiveness of the films.
From the outset the films and vaudeville acts were accompanied at the piano. Billy Good, the pianist from 1920–1922 recalled the very long hours worked by all the staff and particularly himself arduously craning up at the screen from the rather dingy pit recessed into the floor in front of the stage. However, the 'pit neck ache' didn't matter since he was 100% engrossed in the music and loved every minute of it playing two houses every night except Sunday for £1-15s–0d. a week. Billy's career changed course in 1922 when one day a potato chip machine took slices from his fingers rather than the potato. He carried on playing 'with left thumb and little finger 'hors-de-combat' but it didn't take 'old Gilbert', the manager, long to notice the difference. He poked his head over the pit rail and said "You young rascal, you've got a bloody cheek" which under the circumstances was rather appropriate, and possibly literally true. So Billy went off to sea to harden up his injured fingers and when the cinema reopened in 1981 Billy Good, by then in his eighties, returned to the cinema to provide musical accompaniment once again to the occasional silent film.
Community
Since reopening in 1981, the cinema has been managed by a Limited Company which is a subsidiary of the Harwich Electric Palace Trust that owns the building. Almost all the staff of the Limited Company work as volunteers, this includes the directors, projectionists, managers and sales people. The Limited Company usually makes a small profit which is then paid over to the charitable Trust and thereby used for the maintenance and upgrading of the building. The cinema runs on a club basis and most of the Club Membership income is used to pay for insurance – one of its chief expenses.The cinema has no subsidies except for very special events when a grant makes it was possible to present gala screening, for example – of a silent classic with live orchestral accompaniment. The motivation for the project has been the saving and restoration of a very special building and the renaissance of cinema in a community that had had no cinema for many years. This has been a considerable benefit to many different parts of the community. Special films can be booked for groups such as local schools of relevance to their school curriculum, societies with a specific interest, the showing of art films combined with a meal at The Pier Restaurant. Live events include regular jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
concerts and productions by amateur drama groups. The local authority is now totally in tune with the preservation and upkeep of the cinema and has been very helpful. The success of a venture such as this is fragile as it depends on inspiration, goodwill, and continued enjoyment by all the volunteers who have made it such an outstanding success.
Programming is carried out by the volunteer directors on a pragmatic basis. In general most of the selected films come from the Screen International Top Ten each month. Films are shown about two months after the films are first released. This has the advantage that the percentage rates are lower and knowledge of the track record of product is higher. This enables the cinema to make a modest profit on most films and this is transferred to the Trust for maintenance and upkeep of the building. Independence also means that other films, which may not necessarily appear in the top ten or even top twenty, can be shown.
1911
The Electric Palace opened with a single projector, probably a Kalee. Soon after a Gaumont machine was provided as a standby. In those days films were short and it was not necessary to use two machines together to allow feature-length films to be shown.1927
A second Gaumont was installed replacing the Kalee. By this time the two projectors were being used together to allow feature-length films to be screened without a break.1929
Sound-on-disc playback equipment from "Syntok Talking Films Ltd." was installed to allow VitaphoneVitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
films to be screened. The first 'talking picture' shown was Warner Brothers' "The Singing Fool
The Singing Fool
The Singing Fool is a 1928 musical drama Part-Talkie motion picture which was released by Warner Brothers. The film starred Al Jolson and was a follow-up to his previous film, The Jazz Singer...
", staring Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
, screened on 10 March 1930.
1931
The Syntok equipment had proved to be unsatisfactory, it was both unreliable and had poor sound quality. Consequently it was replaced by a new Western Electric sound-on-film sound system. This consisted of standard Western Electric soundheads together with the Western Electric 4A amplifier system. The 4A was the smallest of the Western Electric cinema amplifier systems available at the time and was intended for small cinemas. Two Western Electric 12A full-range horn loudspeakers were employed, hung from a substantial wooden structure behind the screen. The high efficiency of these speakers made the most of the limited output power (about 5 watts) of the 4A amplifier system. At the same time the two Gaumont projectors were replaced by new Kalee model 7 machines.1972
When the cinema was "discovered" in 1972 the projection room equipment was found to have been wrecked by a combination of theft, vandalism and corrosion. When the restoration began what was left of it was stripped-out and disposed of.1981
As part of the restoration of the cinema Kalee 'Dragon' projectors were installed. These came from the Admiralty Cinema, Whitehall where Churchill used to watch the rushes of the war newsreels. The lamps were Vulcan arcs from the Regent Cinema in nearby Dovercourt. The sound system was initially driven by a Kalee model 522 valve amplifier. This equipment was used at the re-opening of the cinema on 29 November 1981.1985
Kalee 20s and Peerless carbon arcs were installed replacing the Kalee Dragons. The projectors came from the Odeon Cinema in Clacton in Essex and the Peerless carbon arcs came from the Regal Cinema in Stowmarket, Suffolk. The Kalee valve amplifier was replaced by a DIY stereo sound system that consisted of two mono Dolby A cinema systems (Dolby 364 with E2 equaliser) which came from the ABC Cinema in Ipswich Suffolk, together with Quad 606 amplifiers and Celestion SR1/SR2 loudspeakers.1998
With the help of an Arts Council of England lottery grant the projection system was refurbished. Xenon arc bulbs replaced the carbon arcs and new rectifiers were fitted. A new sound system based around a Dolby CP500 processor was installed. This can play films with mono or Dolby StereoDolby Stereo
Dolby Stereo, is the trade mark that Dolby Laboratories used for the various analogue stereo cinema sound formats that they produced.Two basic systems used this name. The first was the 'Dolby SVA' system used with optical soundtracks on 35mm film...
analogue soundtracks as well as those with a 5.1 Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital is the name for audio compression technologies developed by Dolby Laboratories. It was originally called Dolby Stereo Digital until 1994. Except for Dolby TrueHD, the audio compression is lossy. The first use of Dolby Digital was to provide digital sound in cinemas from 35mm film prints...
soundtrack. The reel arms were extended to take 6000 foot reels and inverters were installed for the drive motors. New Isco wide screen and anamorphic lenses were installed. For the main shows the old twin projector system is still being used, and a Sanyo PLC-XF12B multimedia projector is provided for use with a computer or for showing DVDs or Blu-ray discs.
Palace Digital Fund
A new campaign was launched to bring the iconic cinema into the digitalDigital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
age. The cost of the new digital equipment is estimated at £55,000 and the Electric Palace Trust aims to raise the money by November 2011 when the cinema celebrates its centenary.
The cinema will retain the two 60 year old Kalee model 20 projectors
Movie projector
A movie projector is an opto-mechanical device for displaying moving pictures by projecting them on a projection screen. Most of the optical and mechanical elements, except for the illumination and sound devices, are present in movie cameras.-Physiology:...
which currently are used to show new and old 35 mm films so that in future when new releases will all be digital, it will still be possible to screen pre-digital-age films such as those from the National Archive of the British Film Institute
British Film Institute
The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
. Over the years the Electric Palace has built up a very good working relationship with the BFI because it can project these historic films on the class of machines on which they were projected at first release.
Famous visitors to the cinema
Famous visitors to the cinema include:- HRH Queen Elizabeth II and HRH Prince Philip, Duke of EdinburghPrince Philip, Duke of EdinburghPrince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh is the husband of Elizabeth II. He is the United Kingdom's longest-serving consort and the oldest serving spouse of a reigning British monarch....
(25 November 2004) - British film director Terence Davies (14 December 2009)
- British film director Mike HodgesMike HodgesMike Hodges is an English screenwriter, film director, playwright and novelist. His films as writer/director include Get Carter, Pulp, The Terminal Man and Black Rainbow; as director his films include Flash Gordon, Croupier and I'll Sleep When I'm Dead...
- Graham McPherson (lead singer of British Ska band MadnessMadness (band)In 1979, the band recorded the Lee Thompson composition "The Prince". The song, like the band's name, paid homage to their idol, Prince Buster. The song was released through 2 Tone Records, the label of The Specials founder Jerry Dammers. The song was a surprise hit, peaking in the UK music charts...
) - Scottish comedian Will FyffeWill FyffeWill Fyffe was a major star of the 1930s and 1940s, a star of stage, screen and shellac.Fyffe made his debut in his father's stock company at the age of six...
- Spanish theatre actress Anna Campoy Bartes
- Guy "Napoleon Bedlam" Singleton (star of An Evening Without Jake ThackrayJake ThackrayJohn Philip "Jake" Thackray , was an English singer-songwriter, poet and journalist. Best known in the late 1960s and early 1970s for his topical comedy songs performed on British television, his work ranged from satirical to bawdy to sentimental to pastoral, with a strong emphasis on storytelling,...
and former lead singer of 90's band Along Came Us) - Founder and former president of the Cinema Theatre Association Tony Moss (2001)
- English actor Kenneth CranhamKenneth CranhamKenneth Cranham is a film, television and stage actor. He starred in the title role in the popular 1980s comedy drama Shine on Harvey Moon. He also appeared in Layer Cake, Gangster No. 1, Rome, Oliver! and many other films. He is probably best known to horror genre fans as the deranged Dr...
(2003) - The cinema's patron Clive OwenClive OwenClive Owen is an English actor, who has worked on television, stage and film. He first gained recognition in the United Kingdom for portraying the lead in the ITV series Chancer from 1990 to 1991...
(10 November 2006) and (14 July 2009)