Local star Max Miller was in the main feature, Things are Looking Up, when this photograph of the Cinema-de-Luxe was taken in 1935.
Photo courtesy of Brighton & Hove Libraries' Brighton History Centre

This picture was taken on 16 December 1959.
Photo courtesy of the Regency Society James Gray Collection

The building was finally demolished in 1962, 20 years after the cinema closed.
Photo courtesy of the Regency Society James Gray Collection

150 (formerly 128) North Street, Brighton
operated 1910-1942

1909 November Plans for a cinema conversion by Melville S Ward in the former printing works of the Brighton Gazette and latterly the South-Eastern Banking Company are approved.
1910 spring Opened by Electric Theatres (1908) Ltd¹. Single-floor auditorium with 520 seats. Prices 3d, 6d; children 2d, 3d; weekly changes. The auditorium clock bears the name of the Evening Argus.
1910 October? A cinema licence is approved by Brighton Corporation Watch Committee to W H Borradaile for two months.
1929 late/1930 early Western Electric sound system installed.
1931 Three changes weekly. Prices 6d-1s 6d.
1934 July 15 Screening of the film Whither Germany causes controversy but attracts supportive comments from, among others, Alfred Duff Cooper, later Viscount Norwich, Financial Secretary at the War Office.
c1934 Acquired by T Easten Rutherford.
1942 March 25 During the morning fire breaks out in the screen area. The cinema does not re-open. The last films, shown the previous evening, are Behind the News and Petticoat Politics. The building remains derelict for the next 20 years.
1958/59 Plans by Capital & Provincial News Theatres to open a cartoon cinema never materialise.

• The building was sold by the trustees of Edwin Boxall to Brighton Corporation for road widening after negotiations that began in May 1956, and demolished in 1962. Prudential House (now Premier Inn) was built on the site.

¹Electric Theatres (1908) was formed in August 1908 by the reorganisation of an existing company, Electric Theatres Ltd, for which one of the two liquidators was William McLean Borraidale. The company was wound up in 1937.

Brighton cinema directory
< Previous | Next >

Return to previous page