Given Oxford Street is a 1¼ mile-long road firmly in London’s West End attracting millions of people each week, visitors today may be surprised there are so few places of entertainment among the myriad shops. It was not always thus, but the many venues of the twentieth century had mostly vanished by the dawn of the twenty-first. In this post I map the entertainment highs (huzzah!) and lows (boo!) of this great thoroughfare between 1900 and 1999.
To be honest, Oxford Street never really took off as a destination for pleasure-seekers. Originally a Roman road heading west from the City through countryside, in the eighteenth century the area was developed with homes, pubs and shops as London expanded. Theatre found a home mainly to the south, but Oxford Street was not completely devoid of entertainment in its formative years. The earliest notable venue was the Pantheon, which began as a posh leisure resort and later became a theatre. Sadly, it closed long before 1900; I discuss it in a post here. Only two other playhouses ever opened on the street, and both survived into the twentieth century. I begin my story with them.
Admittedly, the Princess’s at no. 152 only made it to the twentieth century by the skin of its teeth. It opened in 1828 as the Royal Bazaar, British Diorama, and Exhibition of Works of Art, built by a jeweller named Hamlet hoping for big profits. It was not to be; the venture ruined him. Converted to a theatre, the Princess’s slowly grew into its new role and was rebuilt along grander lines in 1880. It had spectacular successes, including a season by one of the great actors of the age, Charles Kean. Ellen Terry made her first stage appearance there as a child. However, it was never very profitable, and by 1900 its glory days were over; show after show failed.
← (2) Oxford Street looking east in 1890. The Princess’s on the left is swamped by retailers
It closed in 1902 for reconstruction by American Benjamin F. Keith, a former peanut seller at P.T. Barnum’s circus, who hoped to produce vaudeville there. The rebuild never happened, partly because Keith couldn’t get his hands on the basement which was let separately as wine vaults. There was also the huge cost of safety improvements needed to renew its licence. A third issue: Keith’s plans were very ambitious; they even included a free creche. Finally, the grandiose London Coliseum on St. Martin’s Lane, in the same business and due to open in 1904, would likely steal the Princess’s audience.
Others tried where Keith had failed. One plan was to reopen it as a melodrama house; this ended in litigation and Arthur Conan-Doyle lost £1,000 on the scheme. In 1908 Joe Lyons, of Lyons tea shop fame, bought the lease. Did he intend rebuilding the theatre, as he claimed? He certainly had experience of showbusiness, as co-producer of the spectacular Venice in London at Kensington Olympia. Or was he secretly planning to build a new restaurant? Neither happened. There were rumours it would be converted to a cinema. Again, nothing happened. Planning consent was given in 1913 to build a 900-room hotel on the site, but the required funds weren’t secured and the plan was dropped. It became a scenery painting business; then the auditorium became a furniture warehouse for nearby Waring & Gillow. Warings wanted to redevelop the site itself, but its finances were as shaky as the decaying theatre. Finally, the foyer became a shop, the arch above glazed for a display of its stock. The Princess’s slumbered, waiting for a prince who would never arrive.
The Oxford Music Hall at no. 14 first opened in 1861 on the site of the Boar and Castle, an old coaching inn. It was successful but prone to fire; a combination of conflagration and ambition meant 1893 saw the fourth version of the building open, with a capacity just above 1,000.
Music hall involved a series of turns: Singers, dancers, comedians, acrobats and the like, and the Oxford became one of the premier venues in London. It was targeted in 1897 by the National Vigilance Association, in a campaign to stop prostitutes using such places to seek out clients, and perhaps it was this that led the Oxford to raise its game: Films were shown in the same year, and with the dawn of a new century it moved away from music hall, switching to more respectable entertainment like revues and musicals. This saw it safely through a couple of decades and into chapter two of this post.
The location of these theatres, incidentally, is revealing. It shows a contrast between the eastern half of the street, from St. Giles Circus to Oxford Circus, and the western half from Oxford Circus to Marble Arch. The former is positioned in traditionally poor neighbourhoods: Soho, St. Giles and Fitzrovia. The latter falls among more exclusive districts like Mayfair and Marylebone. The wealthy disliked having theatres on their doorstep, so it is no surprise that both were in the eastern half.
← (3) The Oxford Music Hall at the turn of the twentieth century
As efforts to reopen the Princess’s foundered, moving pictures moved centre-stage. In fact, cinema’s history on Oxford Street predates even the first films at the Oxford: Private demonstrations of Edison’s Kinetoscope were given by his London representative at no. 70 in 1894. Newspapers reported that the future of the invention “seems big with possibilities.” No argument there. If properly managed, cinema had better prospects than theatre; new cinemas needed less space and investment and had lower running costs, and the novelty value almost guaranteed they would attract daytime passing trade. It led to a stampede of cinema openings the entire length of the street, financed by optimistic – sometimes downright naive – speculators.
The first was the most bizarre: Hale’s Tours of the World lasted from 1906 to 1910 at no. 165, opposite the Princess’s. It was a train simulator first created by American George Hale in St. Louis; British rights were reportedly purchased for an eye-watering £160,000 (around £17 million today.) Hale’s established a pattern seen in many early cinemas: Rather than creating a purpose-built structure, convert an existing, fundamentally unsuitable building instead. In this case it was the ground floors of four houses facing on to a side street while the entrance, looking vaguely like a tiny station booking office, was built through a building on Oxford Street itself.
The ‘passengers’ paid 6d, had their ticket punched by a uniformed inspector and sat in a fake Pullman train carriage, capacity somewhere between 50 and 65, with a cinema screen at the front. Some short films gave a train driver’s view of attractive locations including the Canadian north-west territories; others were typical travelogues. The carriage moved to mimic a real train, and simple sound effects matched the action on screen. The show lasted fifteen minutes with a conductor blowing a whistle and providing commentary.
Hale’s was popular, but the huge initial outlay was too big a burden; it went bust in 1908. Under new ownership it remained open for two more years, closing only when the site was redeveloped.
→ (4) An advertisement for Hale’s Tours, directed firmly at the working classes.
More typical of early cinemas was the Electric Palace at no. 532, at the western end. Opened in 1908, it was housed in a converted garage with a glass roof which had to be painted over. It was a deep but narrow space, 150ft by 30ft, including a large vestibule. It held 588 people in comfortable armchairs, and there were boxes at the back of the single-level auditorium. There was both a piano and organ to accompany films. No wonder it was advertised as “the Premier Cinematograph Theatre in the world,” the entrance “garnished with big commissionaires.” The films shown were typical of early cinema: Shorts on various subjects, often travel, and brief dramas, melodramas, and comedies, played continuously from 2pm. Decorum was maintained by keeping auditorium lights on low during films. After a shaky start, managers realised they were providing a premium product, attracting the wealthy ‘carriage trade’ and even Princess Mary from Buckingham Palace. They put up their prices; the Electric Palace now charged from 1/6 and 3/- to a high 10/6 for a box. Profits funded improvements: Ceiling fans to combat the heat, a Japanese tea room and smoking room, an 8-piece orchestra, then a new ceiling to replace the garage glass. It started opening at 11am.
However, the company expanded too rapidly, and the liquidator took control in 1914. As with Hale’s, the cinema itself remained open under new management, and survived for several more years.
← (5) The Electric Palace in its heyday.
The Casino de Paris was another conversion, a cinema inserted in 1909 into an 1894 shop, no. 291a, just west of Oxford Circus. Initially refused a licence as the main exit passed under the fire-prone projection box, it opened anyway and was lauded by police for the quality of both decor and clientele. It housed only 172 people in a long, narrow space just 16ft wide, and charged 6d or 1/- for seats. The restricted width and low capacity outweighed the benefit of its decent location, and it closed within three years. In 1914 the space re-entered the leisure industry as a shooting range. This role was more suited to its dimensions and a nation facing war. In a letter to the Sporting Life, Sydney Rose of the Oxford Street Shooting Range Ltd claimed that in the weeks after hostilities began “upwards of 4,000 men of various rank, have practised here incessantly prior to proceeding to the Front, and almost without exception expressed regret that they had not known of this wonderful facility before.” Despite this, there was no further mention of the rifle range in the press, and 291a soon reverted to retail use. It is now an EE shop.
Sooner or later, all London cinema histories lead to Montagu Pyke (1874-1935), and I must now tell the regrettable tale of his Pyke House Cinematograph Theatre at nos. 19-23. This was a purpose-built cinema with offices above, opposite the Oxford. Pyke took a lease and it opened in 1910. He had been inspired to enter the business by the crowds at Hale’s and this was his fifth cinema. It had an impressive marble frontage in a Renaissance style, and a lavishly decorated auditorium, wide and shallow with deeply raked seating providing good sightlines. Prices ranged from 6d to 2/-, higher than Pyke’s prices in his suburban picture houses. He claimed he was targeting a wealthier clientele, but if true his aim was poor. Pyke House was close to St. Giles Circus and, as he later admitted, pickle-making at the nearby Crosse & Blackwell factory created such a nauseating odour that “women nearly fainted and strong men deserted their seats.” The moderate capacity of 350 may also have been an issue, but more importantly Pyke was a scoundrel. His company, Amalgamated Cinematograph Theatres (‘ACT’), could reasonably be described as one big financial irregularity.
To give a measure of the man, on one single day he was to appear on a manslaughter charge at the Old Bailey (he was cleared), apply for a discharge at the bankruptcy court and appear in the divorce court. Some fell for his charm and confidence; others were suspicious. The Pall Mall Gazette pressed for a Board of Trade investigation into ACT as early as 1912. Pyke was dismissed as managing director in 1914, and ACT’s annual report later that year revealed the full horror story. Previous reports were unreliable; investigations showed Pyke paid himself huge sums from ACT’s coffers, including £1 million p.a. salary in today’s terms. The company had to sell assets to pay debts, and Pyke House went to a syndicate that renamed it the Phœnix Cinema. Somehow, despite constant financial woes and continuing pickle pongs, it staggered on.
→ (6) The Pyke House Cinematograph Theatre soon after opening with (inset) the man himself.
The building rush continued. Also in 1910, the Electric Theatre opened at no. 225, a new building named Cinema House just on the eastern side of Oxford Circus. The narrow entrance vestibule led to a much larger structure behind Oxford Street containing the cinema itself. It could house 600 people in a wide, sober-looking Jacobean oak-panelled auditorium with a small balcony. When planned, it was allegedly the largest cinema in the world; studios for making and producing films, and “luxurious refreshment rooms” were promised. As with Pyke House, prices were 6d and 1/- (stalls) and 2/- (balcony). Macfarlane’s Restaurant did eventually open in the basement in 1912, but two years later it was replaced by one of London’s first Chinese eateries, the Chinese Café. This, initially frequented by Chinese, Japanese, and Thai diplomats, was later known as a hangout of prostitutes. Leaving aside the catering, the Electric Theatre showed shorts and newsreels and proved a success. The opening night programme was reported as including Fra Diavolo, Precocious Cyclist, Henley Regatta 1910, Rheims Aviation, Baby’s First Tooth, Episode of 1812, Bournemouth Centenary Celebrations, and Polo at Ranelagh.
→ (7) The Electric Theatre lobby, leading from Oxford Street (far end, with commissionaire) to the auditorium
A similar concept to Hale’s, Murie Aeroplanes was licenced in mid-1911 after acquiring a patent and “invention and improvements connected therewith, an apparatus for producing the illusion of rising, travelling and descending in an aeronautical machine.” If it ever opened it was at no. 43, close to Pyke House. According to London’s West End Cinemas it was “fitted to resemble the cabin of a plane, with accommodation for 48 people, and it supposedly oscillated during screenings”. However, I can’t find a single newspaper advertisement or reference. I doubt it saw the light of day.
The Picture House at nos. 161-7, on the site of Hale’s, opened in 1913. Like Pyke House and the Electric Theatre, it was purpose-built, occupying the ground and first floors of a new office block. It was built by the same developer as Pyke’s but on a larger, more economically-viable scale with a capacity of 668. Well-designed and luxurious, with a huge electric chandelier and mahogany-panelled walls, it even had a marble staircase to the balcony. Prices ranged from 6d to 1/6. It opened with The Miracle, transferred from the Royal Opera House. This hand-coloured film was designed to be shown as part of a spectacular theatrical presentation, which could include a live orchestra, chorus, silent actors, and dancers; live sound effects, and stage sets around the screen. How much of this could be incorporated into the presentation at the Picture House, which didn’t even have a stage, is unclear but it is known the auditorium was decorated to look like a cathedral interior for the occasion. Initially a failure, the Picture House was in the hands of liquidators by 1915 but like Hale’s and the Electric Palace survived the experience.
When the Electric Palace successfully began charging premium prices at the posh end of the street, others wanted in on the act. On a site opposite, once the location of Tyburn prison, there rose at no. 531 the luxurious Marble Arch Pavilion, designed by renowned theatre architect Frank Verity. The auditorium was partially below ground level and the building, in a pleasing classical style, appeared to be very low. This arrangement was necessary due to an eight-storey apartment and hotel block planned for the corner of Oxford Street and Park Lane, also designed by Verity, with windows overlooking the Pavilion needing daylight. The cinema opened in 1914, the war-delayed corner block five years later.
The Pavilion’s capacity of 1,189 was greater than anything seen on Oxford Street before or since, as were the amenities, which included a tea lounge, private boxes at the back of the single-tiered auditorium, and a twelve-piece orchestra plus an organ for when the musicians rested. Christened the “millionaires’ picture palace” by the Express, the boxes cost the same as those in the Electric Palace, 10/6. There were no cheap seats; even a humble armchair came in at 3/-.
The opening of the Pavilion signalled the end of the cinema boom on Oxford Street. Six had opened in just eight years; only three opened in the next hundred. None have survived.
→ (8) The Pavilion’s low roof was achieved by siting much of the auditorium below street level.
Oxford Street emerged from the Great War looking much as it did in 1914, with the Oxford Music Hall and five cinemas still plying their trade.
Our first stop in this section, however, is a shop. Selfridges had opened a roof garden in 1909, but only later got adventurous with temporary rooftop attractions. A Sopwith aeroplane flown by Mssrs. Hawker and Grieve in their failed attempt to fly the Atlantic in 1919 was displayed, then in 1924 an ice rink was briefly added. Skating experts advised customers and there were ice dance exhibitions. This coincided with the grand opening of Selfridges men’s shop, and was part of the store’s plan to make shopping attractive to husbands. There was at one point a rifle range, then a swimming pool. In 1929, the magnificent Golden Arrow car, the land speed record-holder was displayed. The fun ended with bomb damage in 1940. It didn’t reopen until 2009.
With the Oxford now hosting respectable shows, producer Charles B. Cochran rebuilt it internally in 1921, taking it further away from its music hall roots. He renamed it the New Oxford Theatre, described in the press as “Mr. Cochran’s beautiful playhouse.”
Cochran once said he preferred a good juggler to a bad Hamlet, so there seemed little danger of the Oxford going more highbrow – but it did. Cochran presented French plays, lectures by Howard Carter on the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, and a season from the Old Vic theatre company. Ironically, this included a production of Hamlet that received mixed notices, and I half expected to discover it had been replaced by a quality juggling show. Cochran opted instead for more revues.
His odd choices increased his financial woes. He had huge debts from the Oxford rebuild and was declared bankrupt in 1925 owing £98,000 (£5 million today). He had to sell the Oxford to Joe Lyons, and in 1926 the ‘beautiful playhouse’ was torn down. It was replaced by a Lyons Corner House, with three restaurants on three levels, plus bands and dancing. We’ll meet this again later.
Nearby, the derelict Princess’s finally came down in 1931, after being purchased by developers. A branch of F.W. Woolworth replaced it. With that, the curtain fell on Oxford Street theatre.
→ (9) The site of the Princess’s today. The Woolworth’s building is now occupied by Sports Direct.
The identity of the first cinema to close post-WW1 is no surprise. The only shock is that the Phœnix, the pickle-plagued financial basket case opposite the Oxford, staggered on until 1925. Converted to retail use, the building survived until 2018. Incidentally its bête noire, the Crosse & Blackwell factory on Charing Cross Road, was converted to – ironically – the Astoria cinema in 1927, then a theatre, then a nightclub, before falling victim to the same Elizabeth Line works that doomed the Phœnix building.
The Electric Palace, at the opposite end of the street, was the next to fall. It was enlarged in 1921, but suffered a blow seven years later with the opening of the huge Regal at the corner of Marble Arch and Edgware Road, barely 100 metres away. The Regal, holding 2,000+, had what is called an ‘atmospheric’ interior, designed to look like a Roman temple and complete with glades of trees and garlands of creepers. The Regal was built during the cinema boom years of the late 1920s and 1930s, which strangely passed Oxford Street by. Compared to such super-cinemas of the period, the Palace’s narrow auditorium belonged to a bygone era. It survived into the age of talkies, but finally made way in 1933 for the Mount Royal, a huge multi-use structure taking up the entire block. This was, coincidentally, the last home of Montagu Pyke. After he died there in 1935, his estate was valued at just £1.
The other cinemas fared better. The Picture House became the Academy in 1928. The owner was faced with the cost of conversion to talkies, and considered conversion to retail instead, but took the plunge in 1931. A change of policy worked so well the Academy swiftly became the country’s most famous arthouse cinema. Initially advertising itself as the “Home of Real French Talkies”, it soon edged further east: The French-German mining drama Kameradschaft and German lesbian drama Mädchen in Uniform, both well-received in 1932, cemented its reputation. “It is more than a cinema: it is a policy, a promise, a guarantee” wrote a journalist the next year. The Academy suffered serious bomb damage during the Blitz; it was closed from October 1940 until March 1944, thereby being unaffected by the lack of new European films in this period.
The Electric Theatre soon jumped on the arthouse bandwagon. Then, in 1936, new owners ousted the basement restaurant – now the prostitute-free and politically left-leaning Avesta Café – and the Electric reopened as Studio 1 & 2. Studio 1, the original cinema, continued showing European films. With the shortage of new European material during the war it had to be creative, and hit pay dirt by reviving Disney’s Fantasia. In the basement and sub-basement, a conversion requiring engineering ingenuity created Studio 2, although discerning filmgoers probably wished they hadn’t bothered: It had a capacity of 370 in a long, narrow modernist-style auditorium which suffered poor views from almost everywhere except the balcony. It focused on newsreels, then later cartoons.
→ (10) Studio 1 went over to European films in 1933.
The Pavilion soon focused on exclusive first runs of major films; the classic Metropolis was a huge hit. This cinema’s elevated reputation was aided by hosting the first official visit of King George V and Queen Mary to a picture house in 1924: They saw a British naval ‘dramatised documentary’, Zeebrugge, from a specially-built royal box at the back of the auditorium. Not long after, the Pavilion was bought by the Gaumont organisation. Like the Electric Palace opposite, it had to deal with the nearby Regal and a wave of other luxurious super-cinemas opening in and around ‘theatreland’ to the south. That it survived probably owes much to its reputation, the programming power of Gaumont, and the building’s decent capacity.
The only new cinema to open between the two wars was next to the Pavilion, but this was a very different operation. The Monseigneur was created in a sub-basement of no. 523, part of the huge 1930 Hereford House, which was built as a short-lived branch of Gamages department store. The Monseigneur organisation had begun as a grill and dance hall on Jermyn Street, famous for its in-house band. Following the successful addition of a basement cinema in 1934, the company transformed itself into a small chain of moderately-sized newsreel cinemas targeted at weary passers-by eager for a few minutes’ rest. Each had a café, but the Oxford Street branch also had reading rooms and a processing laboratory. It opened in February 1939 with a capacity of 350. At the last moment, the Scophony rediffusion system was fitted so live television broadcasts could be screened.
Just a day after opening, that late addition provoked a riot. Both the Monseigneur and Pavilion showed a boxing match broadcast by the BBC: The world’s first pay-per-view sporting event. Around 3,000 turned up to watch, far beyond the capacity of the two neighbours. Roads were blocked, and about a hundred ticketless people stormed the Monseigneur. Police forcibly cleared the auditorium and restored something like calm before allowing ticketholders to enter. These were a mixed bunch, with evening dress, ermine furs, cloth caps and macintoshes all on show according to the Express. They saw a classic lightweight bout, Eric Boon defeating Arthur Danahar by technical k.o. in the 14th round. The Express decided the Pavilion’s Baird system was inferior to Scophony. The Kinematograph Weekly saw little difference, but concluded that sporting events meant big money. How right it was.
The Monseigneur continued to show broadcasts for a few months, until the BBC suspended its television operation. It was soon requisitioned by the Government, allegedly for BBC band practice.
← (11) Eric Boon (left) and Arthur Danahar. Boon later acted in several early ‘Carry on’ Films.
The arthouse Cinephone at no. 421, opposite Selfridges, was built within the nearly-new Keysign House. The outbreak of war delayed its opening so its first feature, Pièges starring Maurice Chevalier, was shown in January 1940. It had a capacity of 458, and like some of the early cinemas the seats were squeezed into narrow stalls and an awkwardly-distant balcony in a former shop. Lacking much positive to say about the auditorium, newspapers focused on minor modernist flourishes like the use of fluorescent paint and UV light to highlight the Cinephone sign above the paybox.
Its management did its best in difficult circumstances, showing obscure British films and in August the Czechoslovak Fall of a Tyrant, filmed before German annexation and smuggled out later. But as with the Mitteleuropa crisis, this was an unequal struggle; the Cinephone didn’t have Fantasia the fall back on as Studio 1 did, and after ten months it closed. The Government used it as a stationery store.
Fortunately, the basement of Century House at no. 100 was about to bring some wartime cheer. From 1927 it had been a restaurant, but by 1942 it was better known as a music venue, Feldman’s Swing Club. The non-stop dancing from 7pm to 11pm every night attracted American GIs, who showed the natives just how the jitterbug – banned in most clubs – was done. Even Glen Miller visited.
No doubt taking inspiration from such trendy music and challenging cinema, those cool cats at the Ministry of Information (‘MOI’) proved in 1943 they had their finger on the pulse of popular culture by putting on an exhibition of 23,500 separate items of an army division’s equipment, imaginatively titled The Equipment of a Division, to show workers “the vital nature of their task in making army supplies.” It was located at a new MOI Exhibition site at no. 300, the bombed John Lewis store. Remarkably, it was a great success. Thus the MOI and its successor, the Central Office of Information (COI), loitered in the area for several years putting on more worthy displays.
Entertainment options in 1945 were limited. The Pavilion, Academy, and Studio 1 & 2 were functioning but both the Cinephone and Monseigneur remained in Government hands. For those who found cinema too exciting, there were the MOI’s exhibitions, and there was always music. Feldman’s entered the postwar era in rude health. It even hosted – I feel sorry for the neighbours – a drummers’ convention in 1949. In the same year it became known as the Jazz Club. With Humphrey Lyttleton as host, it was soon the epicentre of the boom in traditional jazz. There was no alcohol; it was all about the music and vibe. John Mortimer, barrister and playwright, once wrote that “Jazz clubs were the temples of New Orleans and warm sex and cold coffee.” Quite.
In 1964 it was bought by the Horton family, and booze became available at the renamed 100 Club. A varied music policy saw the Kinks and Rolling Stones appear within a year; clubbers and the Hortons even heard the Who. Almost every genre has since featured, most notably punk in the 1970s.
It is the world’s oldest independent music venue, and the Survey of London admits it is “much celebrated.” It is also one of just two Oxford Street venues functioning in 1999 that are still operating now. The second, as all the best clickbait sites state, will surprise you.
← (12) Century House. The club is behind the black door
→ (13) A trumpet player is still the club’s symbol. The July 2025 listing includes a comedian and one of its famous northern soul all-nighters
It is not the Monseigneur, which reopened in 1947 mixing newsreels with live broadcasts. Its most exciting postwar moment came in 1957. An attempted robbery of the day’s takings was thwarted when staff noticed several men acting suspiciously. Police officers incognito were positioned within the cinema, but the operation was almost ruined when a member of the public accidentally fell down some stairs and the police sprang into action thinking the robbery had begun. If that weren’t exciting enough, the Jacey company then bought the Monseigneur and added an espresso bar. By the time the name formally changed to Jacey, the programming policy showed all the signs of cinematic multiple personality disorder, akin to Cochran’s final seasons at the Oxford. It included children’s films, family favourites, Hollywood blockbusters, arthouse-type foreign features, X-rated adult films, and exhibitions of young artists’ work. Full marks for flexibility, but who’d have predicted the last throw of the dice: When it closed permanently in 1967, Jacey reopened it as an antiques and jewellery arcade. It’s now a Pizza Hut.
Plans for an amusement park on a bombsite at 72-88 were thwarted by nearby shopkeepers, and in 1945 the MOI moved its exhibitions there instead. The first, ‘Victory over Japan,’ opened after VJ-day and replicated the sights, smells, smoke, and heat of the Burma campaign. In mid-1946 ‘Germany under Control’, focusing on the British zone, proved popular. The last, ‘And So To Work’ in early-1947, encouraged the disabled to seek employment. After that, the COI opened a very different venue.
This was the COI Exhibition Hall, occupying part of the ground floor and basement of the 1934 Mount Royal, “a slice of northern European brick-faced Modernism amid the Portland stone” of western Oxford Street. Part hotel, part serviced apartment block, part retail, part multi-storey car park, the Mount Royal was a strange beast. With the arrival of the COI, it would become stranger still: Part coal mine.
‘The Miner Comes to Town’ in 1947 (6d entry) tried to show city folk the importance of the nationalised coal industry. Guided tours of the ‘Marble Arch Colliery’ cost 1/-. Later exhibitions were free: ‘Health of the People,’ which Princess Elizabeth opened in 1948, starred an 8ft tall mechanical man. Godfrey’s digestive processes could be seen as he described them. ‘Spare time for Britain’ later the same year tried to increase part-time military recruitment. Visitors could test their skill as a gunner in a Cromwell tank, and demolish a model bridge courtesy the Royal Engineers. This exhibition was a failure, put down to the hall itself, described as an “appalling space” in the House of Commons.
← (14) A poster for the 1947 coal exhibition
More problematic was ‘Focus on Colonial Progress’ in the summer of 1949, part of a campaign to increase knowledge of the colonies. This slice of Imperial idealism had some practical issues. Firstly, the hall was too small for an exhibition with such lofty ambitions, but efforts to find a more suitable venue failed. Secondly, there was a lack of funds to spend on exhibits. As a result, cheap supporting events were held in other London locations, including the Royal Albert Hall, and Oxford Street shops were encouraged to create themed window displays.
For the hall itself, the COI borrowed ideas from the VJ exhibition: The Express warned visitors to expect “the humid heat of the West African jungle”, complete with jungle noises, as they entered. The King and Queen visited, and the entrance guards were unmounted members of the Gold Coast mounted police. The exhibition included raw materials from the colonies used in Britain showing, according to a government newsreel, that “Britain and the colonies need each other today more than they have ever done before.” It was a surprise success. There were half a million visitors in total, its closure was delayed, and a 1950 nationwide tour took in eight cities. However, it was the last event at the Mount Royal, as the COI switched to providing displays for commercial exhibitions.
← (15) The Mount Royal building in 2025. The nearest corner housed the Colonial Exhibition entrance.
Opposite, Gaumont’s Pavilion did well with first runs, but the nearby Regal became an Odeon in 1945. The two operators were part of the same company and in 1952 Gaumont sold the Pavilion’s lease to Archway, a specialist in dubbed European films which wouldn’t steal the Odeon’s audience. The new policy proved popular, but the freehold was sold the same year to Burton, ominously a retailer known for building its own shops. In a strange volte-face, Burton sold the freehold two years later but the shopping gods wouldn’t be denied, and the Pavilion came down in 1956. The current shop façade is reminiscent of the Pavilion and of similar low dimensions. It has to be, as the corner apartment block still stands.
After the success of Fantasia, no wonder Studio 1 & 2 switched to family films. To increase visibility from Oxford Circus a neon display covered the whole frontage from 1952, and the combination of sign and films certainly pulled in customers. Later it was bought by Star, which in 1977 mutilated the fine Studio 1 to triple it: Studios 1 & 2 in the old stalls area both had a capacity of 200, while Studio 3 in the old balcony seated 88. Ironically, the abysmal former Studio 2 was left pretty much untouched, save for a name change to Studio 4. All screens focused on big Hollywood releases and did well, but the complex covered a large plot of land behind the narrow frontage, and the potential gains from replacing even a popular cinema with office and retail space must have been enticing. The cost of maintaining the neon was certainly a problem; it was turned off years before the end came in 1984. The auditorium was quickly demolished and replaced by offices. The front building was converted to retail, then in 2023 redeveloped.
← (16) The Studio is probably best remembered for its neon display covering the narrow building frontage.
The Academy kept the arthouse flame burning and tried new things. In 1947 its basement, which had occasionally been hired out as a ballroom, became the Academy Exhibition Hall, hosting an Institute of Contemporary Arts exhibition in 1948 and not much else. In 1952, the site closed for a lavish refit designed by photographer Angus McBean. The most memorable new feature was hand-blocked festoon curtain wallpaper on the auditorium walls. On the first floor, a members-only club opened for unlicenced films. Below, the refurbished exhibition hall was renamed the Marquee Ballroom, due to the ceiling’s new marquee-like appearance.
The ballroom was a failure, scratching a living from wedding receptions and facing closure in 1958 when the National Jazz Federation stepped in. Its fortunes improved dramatically: The Marquee Club hosted the biggest modern jazz nights in London, contrasting with the trad offering at the 100 Club a short walk up the road. The free-form style of Joe Harriott was an early attraction; Johnny Dankworth appeared before defecting to the opposition. The Marquee had similar hours to the 100 and an in-house coffee bar serving soft drinks. Queen magazine described it thus in 1962: “Amid the steamed-up mirrors and shadowy striped awnings … six hundred people were crammed like jazz-loving sardines. … The torrid atmosphere is generated by the handsomely dressed on no more than a few cokes.”
There were music variations: For example, in late 1958 Sundays were briefly given over to cha-cha. Later, R&B bands appeared; the Rolling Stones had their first London gig there, supporting Cyril Davies. They were sacked. Oxford Street really did have its moments.
The Academy owners had always wanted to convert the basement into a second screen, but lacked the space for a wide enough access staircase. I can’t fathom why the existing staircase was fine for a packed club but inadequate for cinema. Anyhow, space was finally found, the jazz lovers ejected as their lease expired in 1964, and Screen 2 created. The cinema club upstairs became Screen 3.
All seemed set fair for more decades of cutting-edge cinema, but these were the last big investments. As the 1980s dawned, the Academy’s offering was looking tired and dated. It faced sharper rivals, had lost two key film distributors – Artificial Eye and Gala – and its surroundings on eastern Oxford Street were “rundown and dead at night” according to Allan Eyles. The last arthouse cinema on the street closed without a whimper in 1986 and the building was demolished the following year.
← (17) The Academy Cinema in its last days
As for the Cinephone, when the Government departed Jacey took a lease, and it reopened in 1953 as the London News Theatre. It was soon the Cinephone again, and as with the former Monseigneur further west under the same management, a bizarre programming policy led to a mix of quality foreign and obscure British films, some rather more sensational stuff, some more pornographic; sometimes quality drama was even paired with a nudist film. John Cohen, the founder’s grandson, claims Jacey was embarrassed by the success of nudist films, tried to kill off demand by offering more screenings at lower prices, and were disappointed when takings went up. I’m not buying it.
The Cinephone had legitimate hits, such as the Beach, a French-Italian comedy-drama, but those awkward dimensions – the Daily News suggested its “narrow interior resembles that of a plush-upholstered tram descending a very steep hill” – demanded improvements that probably weren’t economically viable. It relied ever more on nudist films and soft porn until it closed in 1973. Keysign House still stands but as the UK flagship store of Adidas, with remodelled ground and first floors.
← (18) The Cinephone under Government control; the entrance is on the corner.
Tiles nightclub, ‘the underground city for the new generation’, existed only briefly. Its home was the basement of nos. 79-89, an ex-department store. It opened in early 1966 and uniquely for a nightclub had a shopping arcade of boutiques and record shops next to the dancefloor. Kenny Everett was an early DJ. Another, Jeff Dexter, made clear it wasn’t a venue for the ‘beautiful people’ seen in the pages of Tatler: “Tiles was raided regularly on its all-night sessions. Hundreds of police would come, because it was supposed to be a drug den … the audience was mainly tight-arse, pill-chewing Mod kids.” Some quality bands played there, Manfred Mann and Pink Floyd for example, with the Animals on the opening night. DJ John Peel played the first of a planned series of his ‘perfumed garden’ sets in September 1967, but Peel and Tiles were like oil and water. He hated the experience, although his description comes across as music snobbery: “Many friends were threatened by a howling mob of destructors … it is so easy to forget the intolerance and envy of the vast majority of the population.” Fortunately for him it was the club’s last night, creditors pulling the plug two days later. The building has since been demolished.
← (19) Tight-arse, pill chewing Mod kids leaving Tiles. Manfred Mann is the advertised band.
At the Corner House, Lyons had relied on large quantities of cheap labour for its rapid and efficient table service. This was difficult to obtain in postwar London, and Lyons gave up in the late 1960s. Its replacement was a venue far removed from anything seen on the street before or since, opened by leisure company Mecca in the Lyons building in late 1968. This was the Sportsman, a “prestige shop-window for British sport … a luxury club devoted entirely to lovers of sport,” reported the Evening News. It had a posh restaurant serving international cuisine, bars, VIP room, banqueting suite, dance floor with resident band, cocktail lounge, members’ lounge, newsroom with teleprinter service, casino, and ‘racing room’ providing horse racing coverage. A who’s who of the sporting establishment were given honorary membership, some persuaded to sit on a committee organising gala charity events. The interior featured huge 3D mosaics of sporting scenes. For the hoi polloi, the ground floor facing on to Oxford Street became an amusement arcade.
The casino was the money spinner and came to dominate. The other elements fell away quickly although to be honest, the main activity seems to have been theft by employees, going by how many appeared in court. Many offences were petty, some weren’t. £25,000 was stolen over several months by casino staff in 1971, and the theft in 1974 of £58,000 (£550,000 today) was believed to have had inside help; a secretary was forced to reveal safe combinations and held hostage for sixteen hours. In 1980, a croupier was caught stealing casino chips worth £685 when a policeman noticed his bulging pockets as he stood at a bus-stop outside the club at 4am. In 1986, a robber grabbed £20,000 in a cash bag from a guard but was tripped by a doorman and dropped it. Between 1990 and 1993 casino staff stole thousands in a scheme with a confederate posing as a member of the public. Police must have cheered when the club finally moved. It settling in the Mount Royal, at the corner of Bryanston Street and Old Quebec Street – so not on Oxford Street itself – and is there today.
→ (20) The Classic with a fifth screen added in 1979, the same year Virgin replaced the amusement arcade
The Sportsman was still in its first home when, in 1977, the Classic chain moved into the basement.
Classic created four screens of luxurious mediocrity described in advertisements as “London’s Greatest Luxury Cinema Complex” and with a combined capacity of around 1,000. No doubt Classic had seen how the Studio screens near Oxford Circus were trading successfully and thought a larger, more modern, comfortable multiplex showing similar mainstream fare would do even better, even at the rundown eastern end.
So it turned out. Classic did good business, with any smash hit shown on multiple screens; Capricorn One took up three. It must have taken business from its rival, perhaps contributing to Studio’s 1984 demise, and it was the last cinema on the street when the Academy closed two years later. Classic was bought by Cannon in 1985, which merged with MGM in 1990 and rebranded its cinemas under that name. Thus it was the roaring lion that witnessed the end of cinema on Oxford Street in 1994. Virgin Megastores, having opened in the former amusement arcade and expanded into the former club upstairs, wanted the basement as well, and no doubt made an offer too good for MGM to refuse.
← (21) The site today. The words ‘Corner House’ once sat in the frame below the cornice. Compare with (3) above
Something very different, and not in a good way, opened in 1971 at no. 65, close to the former Tiles. This was the London Dolphinarium. Such shows were popular in the 1960s and early 1970s, but what the Pleasurama company was thinking when it built this monstrosity in a tiny space squeezed between Oxford Street and Soho Square is anyone’s guess. I seriously doubt the claimed capacity of 500, and the pool itself was just 60ft by 20ft, with a 10ft depth. The shows featured bottle-nose dolphins trained in Beirut. How many is unclear; the Dolphinarium claimed four but a former employee, radio presenter Tommy Boyd, suggested they had only two and gave them different names in the second half of the show. There was also a sealion, Humboldt penguins and women dubbed ‘aquamaids’; these were saved from unwanted delphine advances by drugging the male dolphins. Entry was 50p for adults, 30p children, under-3s free and shows lasted forty minutes. Initially the complex, including amusements and refreshment bar, opened 10am-10pm every day, but business was bad from the start, and hours were reduced to 11am-7pm.
I suspect Pleasurama management were on drugs as much as the dolphins, because the struggling venue then staged the first dolphin Christmas panto ‘Robinson Crusoe on Dolphin Island.’ It featured more penguins and more humans, including Kathy Troutt who trained dolphins and was later the nude body-double for Brooke Shields in The Blue Lagoon. This was the closest Oxford Street had got to a real panto since ‘Babes in the Wood’ at the Oxford fifty years earlier, but it wasn’t a success.
The place lasted just nineteen months; no one was surprised at its demise. The building came down in 2013.
← (22) The Dolphinarium entrance was more glamourous than the reality within.
So, what is the second surviving venue? It’s rather more conventional than panto dolphins: The Salvation Army’s Regent Hall at no. 275. This was once the Oxford Circus Skating Rink which opened in 1876 at the height of a roller-skating craze. It was “gaudier than any other rink” (Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News) looking like “an exquisite ballroom” (The Era). Aimed at the middle and upper classes, there were high membership fees of three guineas, with a quality restaurant and French pâtissier on site. Unfortunately, the craze ended soon after the rink opened. It staggered on until it was reduced to hosting a billiards competition. Various non-sporting uses followed until in 1882 the Sally Army moved in. The building is still known as ‘the rink’, although in 1959 the entrance building fronting on to Oxford Street was rebuilt and the hall itself was radically altered in a style I’ll call late ’50s insipid, with none of that gaudy Victorian decoration surviving.
Regent Hall qualifies as a place of entertainment because it has hosted free lunchtime concerts since at least the 1990s, often by students of the Royal College of Music, and charity concerts by various musicians. Also, in the 1960s, an amateur youth theatre group, the ‘Rink Youth Players,’ performed there, and the resident musicians are “one of the crack Salvation Army bands.”
The 100 Club and Regent Hall have been joined in recent years by a couple of very twenty-first century entertainments and one quite old-fashioned one. The Twist Museum (“where art, science and sensory play come together”) opened at no. 248 in 2022 and may be seen (if you squint) as a modern-day successor to Hale’s Tours of the World. And as with Hale’s, its life may be curtailed by redevelopment; the block it calls home is soon to be partially rebuilt. The Boom battle bar at no. 70 offers food, games, and competitive augmented reality activities on the site of the 1894 kinetoscope demonstration. Selfridges roof garden reopened in 2009 and has had some fun stuff; in 2011 it even had a boating lake installed for the summer. But as for a theatre or cinema, nothing. In 1991, Judy Rumbold, writing in the Guardian, claimed the chaotic and shabby street was the longest identity crises in Europe. I disagree. Oxford Street is retail, and retail is Oxford Street. No identity crisis there.
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