City building with memories that change down the years
The Gaumont opened amid the golden age of cinema in 1934, and later hosted music stars, says Nicola Rippon. It has since been a nightclub and a world buffet restaurant
TO the oldest Derbeians it will be forever known as the Gaumont, to their children as the Odeon – and to 30-somethings it will always be Zanzibar. The building on London Road that currently houses one of the city’s favourite restaurants has known many lives.
Opened in September 1934, during a golden age of cinema, the Gaumont Palace had taken more than a year to build, and with its 500 tons of steel, 5,000 tons of concrete and a million bricks it was a breath-taking addition to Derby’s townscape.
If the exterior of red brick decorated with green terracotta, and featuring two panels that showed the 17th Century theatrical characters of Clown, Pantaloon, Harlequin and Columbine, was eye-catching, the luxurious interior offered cinemagoers a plushness few could afford at home.
The foyer, declared “a fairyland of light”, was panelled with Australian walnut, and the Art Deco auditorium featured more than 500 light bulbs – which the cinema claimed made it “the most beautifully-lit theatre front of its size in the kingdom”.
There was a large Compton theatre organ and a spacious restaurant above the foyer that was later home to a dance studio.
The fascination with cinema continued well beyond the Second World War, and in the late 1940s and 1950s, queues of picturegoers snaked around the corner as far as The Spot.
However, as television became widely available, cinemas suffered a sharp decline. One by one, the old picture houses closed, and in the 1960s, to supplement its dwindling takings, the Gaumont began to stage pop concerts.
Among those appearing in Derby were Cliff Richard, Gene Pitney, Roy Orbison and The Kinks.
In 1965, the Gaumont was renamed the Odeon (after the closure of the old Odeon on St Peter’s Street) and, as cinema’s boom years drew to a close, by 1970 only the Odeon and the ABC (previously the Regal) on East Street remained in the centre of town.
In 1981 they were joined by the arthouse Metro Cinema in the old lecture theatre of the Art College in Green Lane.
In 1974, the Odeon was divided into a threescreen cinema (one in the old circle and the other two in the divided orchestra stalls). By the time of the birth of the multiplexes in the 1980s, only the Odeon and Metro remained.
The Odeon on London Road was renamed the ABC Trocadero Entertainment Centre, and changed its name one final time when it became the Cannon.
Sadly, its life in the movies was now almost at an end. Two of its screens were converted into a bingo hall.
In the late 1980s, after a ceiling collapsed in the auditorium, it was closed, initially temporarily. But it never reopened. Only the dance school remained.
At the turn of the 21st Century, the building was substantially renovated and reopened as a nightclub, Zanzibar. Somewhat controversially, the exterior was subjected to “theming” with the grand columns dressed up as palm trees and the giant head of “a sultan of Zanzibar” was placed on the roof.
The nightclub closed for business in 2010. Three years later, after a £1million makeover, the old Gaumont reopened as Cosmo, a pan-Asian and world-food restaurant.
Where Derbeians once went to the pictures, now they queue for “a slice of all you can eat food theatre”.
One by one, the old picture houses closed, and in the 1960s the Gaumont began to stage pop concerts.