Odeon, Birchfield Road, Perry Barr

History

Every Odeon in Britain traces its name back to a building on Birchfield Road, Perry Barr.

The first Odeon

The cinema opened on 4 August 1930, with a double bill of Illusion and Dark Red Roses. It seated 1,638. The architects were Stanley A. Griffiths and Horace G. Bradley, and Cinema Treasures describes the design as in a “Moorish style both externally and internally”.

Its owner was Oscar Deutsch, and this was the first of his cinemas to use the name Odeon. In 1993 the Birmingham Civic Society put up a blue plaque to Deutsch, “who opened the first of the chain of Odeon Cinemas” here.

From that start grew one of the best-known names in British cinema. The Perry Barr Odeon itself joined the Odeon circuit on 17 July 1935. That same year Kingstanding got its own Odeon, to the north.

After the films

The cinema years ended in 1969. Rank closed the Odeon on 3 May that year. The building became Top Rank Bingo until 19 February 1983, and then a bingo hall under other operators until 5 April 1997. Over those years it traded under several bingo names, including Perry Bingo. In August 2002 it reopened as the Royale Banqueting Suite, and by 2014 it was signed as the Banqueting Palace.

The same spot, then and now

1888–1913

Today

The Civic Society’s plaque to Deutsch has had an uncertain place in all this. Open Plaques notes that it appears to be inside the building, and a photographer in 2014 noted that it was not attached to the outside.

The building has changed a great deal. Histories of the Odeon chain say a post-war brick front replaced the original, which had been damaged in the war. That still needs checking against photographs from the 1930s and later.

A survivor, altered

This is not a lost building. It is still here and still in use. But it is an altered one, and it is not listed. Not far away, the Clifton on Walsall Road, designed by Ernest S. Roberts, opened on 21 February 1938. It closed as a cinema on 10 November 1979 and was a bingo hall until 2008. It survives too, and since 5 October 2000 it has been listed at Grade II, a protection the first Odeon does not have.

Why it matters

It is easy to walk past. Yet this is where a brand began that would put an Odeon on high streets across the country, including the Kingstanding Odeon of 1935, still a Kingstanding landmark. The name that went round Britain started here, on a main road out of Birmingham, in the summer of 1930.

What happened here?

Oscar Deutsch opened his first cinema to be called Odeon here on 4 August 1930. The building was a cinema until 1969, a bingo hall from 1969 to 1997 and a banqueting venue from 2002.

Why it disappeared

Commercial redevelopment

The building has not been demolished. It closed as a cinema in 1969 (Cinema Treasures) and has since been a bingo hall and a banqueting suite. Its original front is reported, by secondary sources, to have been replaced by a brick façade after war damage.