Tivoli

The Tivoli cinema opened on the site of a former music hall of the same name in 1923. The music hall itself was open from 1890 until 1914, when it was demolished as part of a scheme to widen the Strand. A smaller cinema, the 170-seat Theatre de Luxe, was also pulled down.¹ Both the road-widening scheme and plans to redevelop the area on the Strand were halted during World War I, when the Tivoli site played host to an army recruitment station and the Canadian YMCA building, known as the Beaver Hut. This remained on the site until 1922, when construction work on the Tivoli finally began.² The cinema opened on 6 September 1923, with performances from music hall stars, including the comedian Little Tich, in commemoration of the site’s former use.³ The interior, designed by the architect Bertie Crewe, was also said to have preserved the theatre’s earlier function as a ‘social rendezvous’, incorporating an auditorium that seated more than 2,000 people, waiting halls, lounges and (in subsequent years) restaurants and cocktail bars.⁴

Like other large entertainment venues in the West End during the 1920s, there was some competition for control of the Tivoli. The American company Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount) was connected with early plans to construct the cinema.⁵ However, when it opened, the Tivoli was affiliated with another American firm, Metro (later MGM), and the company’s British distributor, William Jury. (Paramount would open its own West End cinema, the Plaza on Lower Regent Street, the following year.) The souvenir opening programme explained that Metro films, beginning with Rex Ingram’s production of Where the Pavement Ends, would be ‘shown exclusively at the Tivoli some considerable time in advance of their release to the ordinary picture theatres’.⁶ To promote these preview releases, films at the Tivoli were often kept on for long runs, sometimes lasting for months, with special music, live performances and lighting effects arranged by the general manager Vivian Van Damm, who had overseen the exhibition of Metro’s film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at the Palace Theatre, Cambridge Circus, the previous year.⁷

The practice of giving films advance runs at the Tivoli continued when the new amalgamated company Jury-Metro-Goldwyn took direct control of the cinema in 1925.⁸ In the process, the Tivoli was turned into a major London tourist destination, allowing cinemagoers living in or visiting the city access to the latest Metro-Goldwyn films. The Tivoli’s run of the war film The Big Parade lasted an impressive 24 weeks.⁹ Its successor, the biblical epic Ben-Hur, was shown at the cinema for a total of 49 weeks, from November 1926 to October 1927, during which time it was watched by an estimated 1.25 million people.¹⁰ Long runs such as these were accompanied by considerable advertising campaigns, including press notices, souvenir postcards and publicity gimmicks. Mrs Dorothy Mobbs made the front page of the Daily Mirror in August 1927, when the Tivoli’s management named her as Ben-Hur’s millionth viewer.¹¹

In 1928, Jury-Metro-Goldwyn opened their new flagship London cinema, the Empire Theatre in Leicester Square. No longer required by the company, the Tivoli was sold to the British cinema circuit Provincial Cinematograph Theatres (PCT), which was quickly absorbed into a new and larger chain, the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, who also controlled the Astoria Theatre, Charing Cross Road.¹² The Tivoli continued to operate as a cinema under various managements until 1956. It was demolished the following year, and in 2015 the site is occupied by shops and offices.¹³

Image: Souvenir programme for the Tivoli, 1927, showing Ramon Navarro in Ben-Hur.

Further reading:

• Allen Eyles with Keith Skone, London’s West End Cinemas, third edition (Swindon: English Heritage, 2014).
• Raymond Mander and Joe Mitchinson, Lost Theatres of London (London: Hart-Davis, 1968).
• Cathy Ross, Twenties London: A City in the Jazz Age (London: Museum of London/Wilson, 2003).
• Vivian Van Damm, Tonight and Every Night (London: Paul, 1952).