THIS view of Keighley’s Ritz Cinema can be dated to a week in mid-April of 1952 when it ran the “best film of the year”, the Academy Award-winning An American in Paris, starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, with music by George and Ira Gershwin.
A special showing was put on for Easter Monday, starting at 10.40 in the morning.
Keighley’s “super-cinema” had opened early in 1938, boasting a patrons “private” car park, a 100-seater café, a three-manual Compton organ and an extra pay-box “to cope with any abnormal rush”. “Elaborate measures” safeguarded against fire in the “spacious projection room”.
A stage and dressing rooms were intended for variety shows. Indeed, the Ritz would later accommodate productions of the Keighley Amateur Operatic and Dramatic Society.
But changing trends saw the Ritz close in favour of bingo in 1974.
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