Hyde Park picture house facts

The cinema has featured in many TV shows and films over the years including recent BBC drama The Great Train Robbery, and the Vanessa Redgrave film Wetherby.

In the late 1980s, the cinema was used as a location for TV series First of the Summer Wine. As a result, we’re regularly visited by die-hard fans of the show. This summer, Linda brought her brother Alf to the cinema all the way from Newcastle as a treat for his 75th birthday. Whilst looking around we surprised them by playing a couple episodes on screen for them to watch.

It was recently discovered that the panel which hangs on the back wall of the auditorium (long thought to be authentic) was actually brought in as a prop for First of the Summer Wine, and left up after filming was finished. The discovery was made when the panel was removed for cleaning, and staff noticed ‘property of BBC props department’ written on the back. Who knows what else in the cinema is actually a fake…

Over the years the cinema has accumulated a fair few items from other cinemas that are sadly no longer open. The iconic art deco clock in the auditorium used to be in the Gaumont Cinema in the city centre (now the O2 Academy) before moving to Hyde Park in the 1960s.

Also, our two 35mm projectors were originally from the Odeon in Grimsby, but moved to the Lounge Cinema in Headingley, before finding a home with us after the lounge closed in 2005. All of our red seats were from the Lounge too.

We were way ahead of the game when it came to guerrilla marketing strategies. In 1959, a large elephant visited the cinema to promote the showing of the film The Big Hunt. The elephant was in town as part of Billy Smart’s Circus held on nearby Woodhouse Moore