Electric Theatres
In 1911 a theatre called the Electric Cinema opened in Portobello Road as one of the first repertory cinemas in England, eventually resurrected as a luxury cinema.
The pioneering and influential Electric Theatres (1908) Ltd, which created London’s first true cinema circuit, based its whole policy on the continuous show located within London’s populous districts.9
In 1910, at least fifty per cent of the
cinemas in the Greater London area operated with a continuous show policy. The
There were a number of well-established cinema circuits in London by 1914.
Particularly prominent, with sixteen cinemas in Greater London by 1910, was
Electric Theatres (1908) Ltd. This company was in the vanguard of cinema
creation in Britain, and helped fix the name ‘electric theatre’ as a generic term for
cinema and the continuous show as the dominant form of exhibition. It was
established towards the end of 1907 with £10,000 capital, becoming a public
company on 16 September 1908 with capital of £50,000. It was founded by Joseph Jay Bamberger, a New York City stockbroker who had financed
nickelodeon construction in that city through the Electric Theatre Company,
before noticing on a London business trip that there were no such theatres in a
city of eight millions, whereas the far less populous New York City had, so he
claimed, 629 (the real figure was probably around 400). The clear intention of the
company was ‘to open and operate cinematograph theatres in populous districts’.
It instituted a policy of continuous programmes throughout the afternoon and
evening, changed twice-weekly, at a uniformly low cost of 3d for adults and 2d
for children (later raised to 6d and 3d).20
The name ‘electric theatre’ was brought over from the States by Bamberger.
Electric Theatres is the name given to
Not to be confused with a number of other companies known by this name, e.g. The Electric Theatre [1], founded in an abandoned electricity works building in Guildford, Surrey, England, in 1997 or the Electric Theatre Company[2], a non-profit, regional, Equity theatre company located in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Electric Theatres (1908) Ltd, in common with most of the London cinema circuits, did not restrict itself to the capital. By 1914, it managed three cinemas in Birmingham, and one each in Southend, Gloucester, Brighton, Norwich and Plymouth. It had established a subsidiary company, Provincial Electric Theatres, by the end of 1908, and the following year expanded overseas by initiating the establishment of permanent cinemas in South Africa through Natal Electric Theatres Ltd. 23
One of the original directors of Electric Theatres (1908) Ltd was variety theatre impresario, Frederick Mouillot, who ran a South African theatre chain. The first Electric Theatre opened in South Africa in Durban on 29 July 1909. The company had at least five cinemas in South Africa, including a Theatre de Luxe in Cape Town, and a cinema in Durban for ‘Coloured People Only’ (primarily Indians). Short-term policies including the importing of films worn out through use on the English circuit led to the company’s demise by 1911.
https://lukemckernan.com/wp-content/uploads/unequal_pleasures.pdf
https://londonist.com/2011/02/cinefile-electric-cinemas-centenary
Thelma Gutsche, 1972. The History and Social Significance of Motion Pictures in South Africa 1895-1940. Cape Town: Howard Timmins: pp. 95-97.
