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Wicker Picture House Cinema


Sheffield History

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Hi.

I found these images on a website devoted to Sheffield cinemas.

I worked in Pitsmoor in the mid-70's and travelled back to 'the Lake District' on the 75/76 bus. The banners/posters for Studio 7 were very explicit, 'Virgins doing this that or the other!' or somebody 'Confessing to this that or the other!'.

Wazzie Worrall

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It looks like the picture with 5,6,7 has it shut down. With some kind of sale notice on it.

There's now a road passing through the site. So they now only show "road movies".

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Under a slightly new name Lysander is back after an absence of a year or more!

I visited the Wicker Cinema back in the late 1950s to see "Dunkirk" along with a French exchange student. A rather unfortunate choice of film for Pierre especially when the emphasis seemed to be how the French had let us down!

 

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I never crossed the threshold but a classmate at High Storrs was the son of the then manager (mid to late Fifties) a Mrs Stokes. It was talked about by teenage lads with the same bike shed mentality as a certain rubber product. Up till that point in my life a dirty mac was a soiled raincoat. The Wicker cinema gave it a whole new meaning. 

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Rarely went there as for most of its life it showed X films and other dubious products. Oddly enough ,the first visit I actually remember was in 1956 when a re-release of "The Wizard of Oz" played there in a double bill with "The Glass Slipper" (Leslie Caron as Cinderella). I was 8 years old and it scared the hell out of me.

I returned, periodically in later years when it started booking more salubrious fare. Primarily because "The Sound of Music" besieged the Odeon for nearly 18 months and later, when ABC fell out (briefly) with Paramount. The first I remember is Disney's "The Jungle Book" in a double bill with "The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin". A long running HIT !  Zeferelli's "Romeo & Juliet" and 'The Taming of the Shrew". Another high water mark was a very long run of "Paint Your Wagon" ( in 70MM), 

Sadly, my last visit was to see what all the fuss was about "Caligula". .....It was as bad as they said it was...... DIRE !

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On 16/03/2020 at 10:56, southside said:

There's some information about the Wicker Picture House on this cinemaTreasures website.

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/25490

That site says: Following a serious fire, the cinema was closed for five months.

It doesn't mention when this fire was.

It also adds The cinema re-opened with The D'Oyly Carte Opera’s film of “The Mikado”. 

Wikipedia says of that film The British première was at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, on 17 July 1967. So the re-opening must have been after July 1967.  This picture must have been taken after the re-opening or to tell people it was re-opened.

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Any details on the fire and when it was?

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I am confused by the two accounts.  Though the Cinema Treasures story doesn't fit together.  It states that it wasn't till 1974 when the three studios cinema came together.  It's re-opening in 1968 and to start showing a film that would have started being shown nationally in at least August 1967 seems at odd to me.  And there's a dated photo of 1966 (On Picture Sheffield) showing that it was Studio 7 that year and it looks the same as Mikado picture above.  A fire in December 1967 and then re-opening as Studio 5,6,7 in 1968 would make more sense. But to start again with the same front and show a movie that by the time it was rebuilt was nearly a year old, sounds nuts to me. 

The only way to confirm when it showed that film, would be to check the Star newspaper listings for the summer of 1967 and summer of 1968. Or when it re-opened.

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I think the commentary in Cinema Treasures is just poorly written.  There are two statements which are unconnected:

1. Following a serious fire, the cinema was closed for five months     (no date given, but we think December 1967)

2. Further modernisation came in 1967 when a new ‘Vistarama’ floating screen was installed along with 70mm and the walls were covered in orange pleated drapes. The cinema re-opened with The D'Oyly Carte Opera’s film of “The Mikado”  (again, no date given)

Statement 1. should be after statement 2. the re-opening with the Mikado is after the modernisation, not after the fire.

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