Page 15 - The Palace @ 100

A Mixed Fare

Until 1929, The Palace offered a mixed bill of fare, but
in February of that year, it was being advertised as
Palace Super Cinema, reducing the number of live Redditch Arts Council
performances in its programming. In April 1930 a Newsletter July 1969
Western Electric Sound System was installed and 1924-26
ticket prices were raised to 6d (Pit) and 1/-(Circle), due
to the cost of installing the new Talkie apparatus. ‘Films did not entirely

oust stage performances
st
A terrible disaster in Paisley on 31 December 1929 in during this period. In the
which hundreds of children were killed and injured in a 1920s there was a
cinema fire panic, caused the authorities all over the fashion for “cine-
country to tighten up safety precautions. At the Palace, variety” - a programme
this led to the buying up and demolishing of the two consisting of a feature
houses backing on to it at Grove Street, so as to create film and a newsreel,
a stalls exit there and an operation box with an exit to supported by one or two
the open air. The solid partition between the stalls and variety turns on the
the pit was abolished, as was the separate pit pay box. stage.
Centre gangways appeared, so that the seating
capacity was reduced to 533 (199 in the circle; 334 in The Palace followed suit,
the stalls), not counting the two boxes. and I remember an
acrobat balancing a
At the end of 1937, the owning company, the Redditch roaring motor-cycle on
Palace, Ltd., leased the building to two partners who an inverted tripod on his
changed the policy from films to live shows, mostly chest..
twice-nightly variety.
Otherwise, the chief
theatrical event of the
season was the annual
production of the old
Operatic Society. The
first of these I saw, in
1927, was “Tom Jones”,
with Bert Bate, of jovial
memory, in the title role,
and Mavis Bennett, the
local soprano, who had
already begun to make a
national impression, as
Sophia Western.’

Source: Western Daily Press Tuesday 24th January 1922

1920s Page 9