Academy 1-2-3 (cinema)
The Academy was a cinema located at 165 Oxford Street, Westminster, at the junction of Poland Street. Films were shown at the address from at least 1906, and it opened in January 1913 as the Picture House to show The Miracle, with the intention of becoming "the home of the world's most realistic films". The Picture House continued to show films throughout the 1920s.
It re-opened in 1931 as the Academy, becoming London's pre-eminent art house cinema, and for over 50 years introduced British audiences to major films, beginning with auteurs such as Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné; in later years, the Academy largely established the reputations of Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda, Satyajit Ray, Jean-Luc Godard, Miklós Jancsó and others in Britain. The Academy's high standards were maintained by a succession of three managers: Elsie Cohen, George Hoellering and Ivo Jarosy. The cinema was damaged during a bombing raid in 1940 and re-opened in 1944.
The basement housed a ballroom from the early 1950s where the Marquee Club held jazz sessions from 1958 to 1964 with musicians such as Johnny Dankworth, Chris Barber, Alexis Korner and Tubby Hayes. The Rolling Stones played their first gig there in 1962. The New Academy cinema expanded to two and then three screens in the 1960s to become the Academy 1-2-3, and closed in 1986 after operating almost continuously for 80 years.
Cinema history
Previous occupiers
, varnish and colour manufacturers of Wolverhampton until 1998, had a warehouse at 165 Oxford Street in 1884. In December 1901 a partnership between Henry Clarke of 165 Oxford Street, and three Mander brothers was dissolved when Clarke retired.Hale's Tours
From at least 1906 the building housed a Hale's Tours of the World, one of London's first dedicated cinemas. This was an early virtual reality attraction, in which a projected film played during a simulated ride in a railway carriage. The owner may have been the American film producer and director Charles Urban, who had a franchise for Hale's Tours with main offices selling films and equipment a few hundred yards away on Wardour Street. The business seems to have been in liquidation by 1906, when the franchise for Hale's Tours was acquired by J. Henry Iles, and a company named Hales Tours of the World Ltd. was set up in December of that year to take over the running of 165 Oxford Street.J. Henry Iles and Joseph Menchen
Iles was a director of an Anglo-American syndicate, European Amusement Parks Ltd., which brought Luna Parks to Britain and Europe from around 1907. His business partners were Frank C. Bostock, a circus owner; H. C. McGarvie, an experienced showman "who probably had more experience in international expositions than any other living human being"; and McGarvie's business partner Joseph Menchen, who had been in the seaside and trolley park entertainment business since 1899. He had constructed cycloramas based on the Johnstown Flood of 1889, and furnished the complex electrical lighting effects for the 'Trip to the Moon' and other cycloramas at Coney Island.The Picture House
The premises were remodelled/rebuilt by the architects Gilbert & ConstandurosThe Picture House opened on Friday 24 January 1913 as a semi-permanent home for the world's first full-colour feature film, The Miracle, produced as a personal project by Joseph Menchen.
On Friday last the Picture House, Oxford Street, opened its doors for the reproduction of that extremely successful play, "The Miracle", as performed at Olympia. As most of our readers may be aware, the Picture House is in Oxford Street, at the junction of Poland Street, and exactly opposite to that long neglected playhouse, the Princess's Theatre. One steps from the street down a mosaic pavement straight into the stalls, which are fitted with tip-ups, upholstered in canary silk. Here and there the walls, in cream and gold, are relieved with exquisitely panelled paintings of seventeenth century figures, while the lower part of the walls are of solid mahogany. Lights branching from old-world vases are dotted about, and high overhead is a huge electrolier, beyond the crystal beads of which gleam and glow 500 lamps, bathing the hall in a soft, warm light.
The circle — there is only one — is reached by a broad stairway of white and green marble, and there is never a pillar to obstruct the view. But even beyond an outward display science plays its part at the picture house, in that the heating and ventilating arrangements are on the most approved system, and fire is certainly considered to be next to impossible.
The aim is to make this theatre the home of the world's most realistic films, and the start made on Friday with those wonderful pictures of "The Miracle" straight from Covent Garden Theatre has undoubtedly given the place a good send off. As at Covent Garden, "The Miracle" at the Picture House is portrayed to the accompaniment of Professor Humperdinck's beautiful music, which is rendered by an orchestra and a choir both under the guidance of Mr. Sydney Freedom, who was the leader of the orchestra when Professor Rheinhardt produced the play at Olympia.
A special setting has been given to the picture by the erection of the convent and cathedral gates in uralite stone, extending across the entire circle. With its doors, steps, towers, and windows, this grey entrance, 60 feet wide and 45 feet high, looks as though it had been taken bodily from some mediaeval German city. That the popularity of this picture is by no means on the wane has been proved by the vast audiences which have thronged the Picture House since its opening with "The Miracle".
A company named 'The Picture House Limited' was due to be wound up on 17 October 1915. Menchen returned to the USA in 1917.
The Picture House continued to show films through the 1920s: the programme for October 1926 included Lady Windermere's Fan with Ronald Colman; The Sea Beast with John Barrymore; Ralph Ince and the alluring Olive Borden in Yellow Fingers; and The Sea Urchin with Betty Balfour.
The Academy cinema
Eric Hakim
By 1929 the cinema at 165 Oxford Street had been bought or leased by Eric Hakim. His forebears were Armenian, and he came to England from France with 'a wealthy relative'. In 1913, Hakim played at a gathering in Nice at the home of Claire Virenque, founder of the :fr:Prix de littérature spiritualiste: "The virtuoso Eric Hakim played a fugue by Bach, and other old tunes; admirably accompanied by his mother, Mme Hakim, this young artist obtained the stunning success to which he is accustomed."He came to England, and played as an orchestral violinist in cinemas run by the Davis brothers. Hakim may have modernised the Academy, which he owned by 1929, when he bemoaned the lot of the cinema owner during the transition from silent to sound films: "At the moment the renter is in the fortunate position of being able to hold the pistol at the head of the exhibitor because, not only is there a shortage of silent films, but also the exhibitor, having spent large sums of money in talking equipment, is forced to show talking films, which leaves the renter in the position of being able to dictate terms."
In 1931, Hakim directed the dubbing in English of the original German version of M which had played in US theatres with subtitles with little success. The dubbing was made in England, where Peter Lorre was one of the few original cast to be re-recorded in English. He went on to produce several films, the first two with his Eric Hakim Productions. The Outsider did well in the US, being shown by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the US in its premier first-release circuit. Backed by the Rothschilds and with a 70% guarantee from MGM, he produced two more films both directed by Fred Niblo and starring Adolphe Menjou. With the first, Two White Arms, Hakim brought Margaret Bannerman into the talking era, and in 1932 he produced Diamond Cut Diamond. In 1932 he also produced The Temperance Fête, and The Crooked Lady, distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with photography by Basil Emmott.
Hakim had hoped to secure the services of Fritz Kreisler to star in Passion Hunger, a story of a famous violinist and his amorous intrigues; but the deal fell through. He married Nina Vanna in September 1933, but was bankrupt by 1934 with declared liabilities of $195,000 and assets of $230. He remained legally bankrupt for at least 11 years with seven further petitions against him, and divorced Vanna after an affair with Norma Irene Zoe Plumby-Matthews in late 1945.
'Unusual films'
The Davis brothers owned a chain of 'Pavilion' cinemas in London. In April 1927 they sold them to the Gaumont British Theatres Ltd. circuit, with a contract which allowed them to show their own choice of films. Stuart Davis dedicated the 750-seat Avenue Pavilion at 101 Shaftesbury Avenue to 'continental' films and started the 'Unusual Film' movement, showing first German and Russian classics, then French avant-garde works by such as Man Ray. A number of showings were organised by The Film Society, whose supporters included H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw.In 1929 Davies's contract with Gaumont expired and, at Davis' suggestion, Gaumont turned the remodelled Avenue Pavilion into London's first newsreel cinema. This left the Film Society without a permanent venue.
The highbrow literary film journal Close Up, published by the Pool Group from 1927 to 1933, played a significant part in promoting European and art-house films.
Elsie Cohen
The Netherlands-born Elsie Cohen, who had worked on Dutch and German film productions, took over the Windmill Theatre for six months in 1929 and successfully put on a highbrow season of recent Russian and German films. Stuart Davis had already approached Eric Hakim, the owner of the Picture House, but Hakim wanted too big a rent. However, Elsie Cohen persuaded Hakim to let her manage the cinema, and it opened as The Academy in 1931 with Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth, one of the last silent films before the 'talkies' took over.In order to encourage students and other film aficionados, a number of seats in the stalls were available at reduced prices.