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The Rex


GrinderBloke

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The Rex at Intake doesn't seem to have had a mention yet.

I remember being taken by my dad to see Zulu at The Rex, quite an experience for a 7 or 8 year old!

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I think the building is still there though not sure what it's used for ?

Probably bingo ?

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Sadly The Rex was demolished some years ago. It was a privately owned cinema - belonging to the Ward family. Miss Dorothy Ward was the last to manage it.

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The site is clear......you can still tell it was a cinema though with the sloped floor etc....the co-op is next door. I saw Return of the Jedi there not long before it shut down....Indiana Jones and the temple of doom too, I think...

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I can remember seeing James Bond there. We used to refer to it as the local 'fleapit' !!

They were the days...

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Guest jeyre60152

I remember seeing Bambi their on Bonfire Night, instead of fireworks and then seeing Grease with a bunch of mates and all coming out with our jacket collars turned up!

How sad!!!!!

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Guest carlie167

Went to the Rex lots of times, and thought it was a shame when it closed. Here is a picture we took just before it closed for good. I only lived a short bus ride away so I would go there or to the Manor pictures, anyone got a pic of that?

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Guest carlie167

Heres another one of the Rex, its the board outside advertising childrens matinees. We took this in March 82 and it closd the following December.

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The Rex Cinema, Mansfield Rd. -

The Rex Cinema on the Mansfield Road junction with Hollybank Road, was opened in July of 1939. The exterior was finished in rustic bricks with a tower faced in blue tiles which were also featured in the entrance. A full length cantilever canopy, above which were windows, provided daylight to the balcony foyer. Two shops were also integrated into the frontage, one of which could be accessed from inside the Foyer.

Towards the end of the war, patrons were advised that they would be refused admission if wearing clogs due to the damage caused, especially by iron shod clogs, to the carpets and fittings.

Regarded as a family cinema, X rated films were only rarely booked.

CinemaScope arrived at the Rex in March of 1955 with the showing of Rose Marie. Saturday children's matinees were featured from 1958.

It was not unknown for the Rex to close for two or three days at Christmas, extended occasionally to the full Christmas week.

Destined to become the last surviving suburban cinema in Sheffield, it never featured Bingo and only opened for Sunday presentations in 1981.

A take over by a Leeds based company in that year proved unsuccessful and the Rex closed on the 23rd of December 1982.

The final programme was a showing of Chariots of Fire and Gregory's Girl.

Info: Sheffield Cinemas.

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Found this site a few weeks ago & a good one it is.

Thanks to all who share their pics here.

Recall seeing GREASE in '78, LIFE OF BRIAN in '79 & THE GREAT ROCK 'N ROLL SWINDLE in '80/'81 there. Memories.

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Went to the Rex lots of times, and thought it was a shame when it closed. Here is a picture we took just before it closed for good. I only lived a short bus ride away so I would go there or to the Manor pictures, anyone got a pic of that?

Not quite a then and now but this is the current site of the Rex, it was on the site of the Co-op and its car park.

Then as for the Manor Cinema it finally closed in 1969 and has been a variety of different supermarkets since.

It is currently a Sommerfield but I think it is soon to become a Tesco.

Originally it was the Challenge Supermarket and here is my picture of it from October 1871, taken the same day as my other picture of the Carlton cinema on Eastern Avenue.

Notice that the Challenge supermarket was so good that just like New York they had to name it twice!

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Guest tsavo

Great shot of the Projection Box, Stuart.

For anyone who is interested the Carbon Arcs appear to be Pererless Magna's (the rolls Royce of arc lamps) with Kaylee 21 projectors with Kaylee Varimorphs.*

* The varimorph was an adjustable anamorphic lens. Various 'stretches' could be achieved with this lens. Great in the late 50s when there were lots of weird aspect ratio's used to avoid paying 20th Centuary Fox a royalty for using the CinemaScope system.

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Great shot of the Projection Box, Stuart.

For anyone who is interested the Carbon Arcs appear to be Pererless Magna's (the rolls Royce of arc lamps) with Kaylee 21 projectors with Kaylee Varimorphs.*

* The varimorph was an adjustable anamorphic lens. Various 'stretches' could be achieved with this lens. Great in the late 50s when there were lots of weird aspect ratio's used to avoid paying 20th Centuary Fox a royalty for using the CinemaScope system.

Same carbon arcs as in the Gaumont then Tsavo, until as you said there, they were replaced with Xenon lamps. These pictures of the Rex appear to be fairly late (1970's to closure in early 1980's) so can we assume that they never got around to moving from carbon arcs to Xenon lamps in the Rex and used the old arc lamps until the cinema finally closed?

Does a varimorph have preset aspect ratios or is it continuously variable?

If it is continuously variable then what constitutes a "normal picture" (ie, one which is not stretched either vertically or horizontally) would be at the discretion of the projectionist, - so if the projectionists thinks the world is inhabited with short fat people ( or alternatively tall thin people) then this would be reflected to some degree in the way he showed the film.

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Guest tsavo

Same carbon arcs as in the Gaumont then Tsavo, until as you said there, they were replaced with Xenon lamps. These pictures of the Rex appear to be fairly late (1970's to closure in early 1980's) so can we assume that they never got around to moving from carbon arcs to Xenon lamps in the Rex and used the old arc lamps until the cinema finally closed?

Does a varimorph have preset aspect ratios or is it continuously variable?

If it is continuously variable then what constitutes a "normal picture" (ie, one which is not stretched either vertically or horizontally) would be at the discretion of the projectionist, - so if the projectionists thinks the world is inhabited with short fat people ( or alternatively tall thin people) then this would be reflected to some degree in the way he showed the film.

Regarding arc lamps, I think many of the independant cinemas were quite happy to keep them. A case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it!"

The varimorphs were continuously variable in the horizontal plane. In 1959 at the Star Ecclesall Rd, there were Wray non adjustables and they gave some very interesting effects. MGM broght out a series of 20 minute shorts called Edmondo Ross presents (or something similar) For those who never saw Edmondo, he could best be said to be exessively rotund. By the time the Wray had stretched him he was wider than he was tall!

The anamorphic lens was placed in front of the prime (non expanding) lens.

I used to know all the lens, screen sizes and aspect ratio's for the Gaumont, alas knowledge that has been parked in a part of my memory along "with where are my reading glasses" and the whereabouts of "that set of jeweller's screwdrivers I bought in 1968?" etc,. lol lol lol

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Regarding arc lamps, I think many of the independant cinemas were quite happy to keep them. A case of "if it ain't broke don't fix it!"

The varimorphs were continuously variable in the horizontal plane. In 1959 at the Star Ecclesall Rd, there were Wray non adjustables and they gave some very interesting effects. MGM broght out a series of 20 minute shorts called Edmondo Ross presents (or something similar) For those who never saw Edmondo, he could best be said to be exessively rotund. By the time the Wray had stretched him he was wider than he was tall!

The anamorphic lens was placed in front of the prime (non expanding) lens.

I used to know all the lens, screen sizes and aspect ratio's for the Gaumont, alas knowledge that has been parked in a part of my memory along "with where are my reading glasses" and the whereabouts of "that set of jeweller's screwdrivers I bought in 1968?" etc,. lol lol lol

Thanks Tsavo, probably explains some of that distortion I frequently notice when films in "funny aspect ratios" are shown on TV.

In fact with TV now being a mixture of mainly 4:3 and 16:9 ratios with a few others thrown in for good measure, I am never really sure how much the picture is being distorted and how much is being "chopped off" and no longer visible!

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Guest tsavo

TCM on satellite are the best as far as maintaining the original aspect ratio's are concerned. I often find myself looking for car wheels or round clocks to see if our 16:9 set is on the right setting.

There's a site somewhere with all the different 'odd' aspect ratio's listed. Must look it up.

The film industry has always come up with some scheme or other to get around someone's patent. Perhaps the simplist one was to trim 1mm of the film 35mm film width to avoid paying Eastman (I think) a royalty!

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What a great site this is. So many happy memories of childrens matinees on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the summer holidays. Usually a disney flick such as `Blackbeards ghost', `Herbie rides again' etc. Buying a packet of revels to keep me going and throwing the peanuts ones at the people on the front row!

Shaped my film watching memories for the rest of my life, so many happy times!

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Guest tsavo

Thank's for the complement, Biggles, the site is what the contributer's make it! Welcome to SH.

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When I heard that Rex Cinema was being demolished I took my pocket instamatic camera and got there just in time!

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When I heard that Rex Cinema was being demolished I took my pocket instamatic camera and got there just in time!

Some good pictures there history dude of the last days of Sheffield's last suburban cinema ;-)

I think the year was 1982.

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