Your Nostalgia article about cinema (The Argus, August 31) missed the very first film shows in Brighton, held at the Pandora Gallery in King’s Road from March 25, 1896.
It was in the same premises, by then renamed the Victoria Hall, that Robert W Paul put on shows of his “celebrated animatographe”, which ran for about four months from June 6 (not June 1).
The first permanent cinema was, as you say, the Electric Bioscope in Western Road, although it opened on 13 January 1909 (not 1907) and was soon renamed the Queen’s Electric Theatre.
Among its later names were the Scala, the Regal, the Curzon and the Classic. It survived until September 8, 1979, and was replaced by an expanded Waitrose shop.
The Alhambra Opera House and Music Hall, pictured in your piece, showed films as early as 1897 but did not become a full-time cinema, as the Palladium, until 1912. It closed in 1956, was not demolished until 1963 and was left as an undeveloped site for more than another decade until the Brighton Centre was built.
Another of your pictures shows the Imperial Cinema in Brighton Road, Crawley, a car showroom since the 1940s. There was an Imperial in Brighton, which opened as a variety theatre in North Street in 1940.
The history of cinema-going, and of every cinema in Brighton and Hove, Southwick and Shoreham are included in my book, Cinema-by-Sea, which also includes a history of film-making in the area.
David Fisher, Withdean Avenue, Brighton
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