Gaumont Finchley
Tally Ho! Corner,
London,
N12 9PT
Tally Ho! Corner,
London,
N12 9PT
4 people
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Showing 15 comments
The stone reliefs survive and are built into a wall of an architectural salvage yard, near Borehamwood, as seen on Salvage Hunters season 15 ep4
I was Assistant Manager in 79-80 under GM Derrik Lumley one of the Best Rank Managers I ever worked with. Went on to New Victoria & Metropole MU in Victoria and finally Odeon Marble Arch
hi my granddad Charlie foster used to work at the gaumont Finchley and sadly he has passed away but we have come across old photos of equipment and off staff and a souvenir brochure dated Monday july 19th 1937, if anyone is interested and collects this sort off thing, also would be nice to learn any information about my granddads life thankyou
Hello Olivia, I’m going to be working on the Arts Depot project about the Gaumont Cinema. It would be great if we could get in touch . My email is Thanks Jacky
Sounds interesting Olivia – how do we get in touch?
Hello everyone-
I’m a researcher/archivist on a project about the Gaumont Finchley and keen to speak to people who would like to share their memories about the cinema. Is anyone based in London that would like to meet for an informal interview? We are organising this in Finchley at 2pm on Thur July 10th but there will also be later opportunities.
Pls get in touch if you’d like more info
Thank you!
I was back Finchley way today for a school reunion at Bishop Douglass in East Finchley and it got me all nostalgic for the locale I grew up including the Gaumont Odeon in North Finchley. My time was after Shamus’s as above as my family first came to the area in 1972 but I can remember so vividly the films we saw there.
First thing to note was that it was ENORMOUS, seating over 2,000 and the screen size was huge. I mean, even at the back of the cinema it almost filled your whole field of vision, but then there were also these huge big lobby spaces. By my time, the likes of the restaurant were no longer open, but what must it have been like to have been in that auditorim when films were supported by shows with dancers and orchestras. My goodness, at that time you really did enjoy a gala night at the movies.
I’m 50 now but every now and then I will dream that I’m back there and I rerun the films I saw then. My memory is faded perhaps but I know they included Bryan Forbes ‘The Slipper and the Rose’, ‘The Great Gatsby’ (possibly one of the last films shown with an intermission) ‘The Four Musketeers’.
It’s simply astonishing to me that no one had the wit to reinvent that cathedral of the motion picture. Maybe its a wonder that we’ve just about clung to the Muswell Hill Odeon, but special as it is, The Gaumont Odeon in Finchley was a palace. Even as a kid with so many of its areas closed off, you could see that; and as for Rank’s sneaky restrictive covenant? How shabby was that?
I better quite now before I burst an atery but before I leave let me link you to two pictures I’ve not seen before. One is a great view of the interior at its hey-day while the other is an excellent floor plan for the original building.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5053/5419245129_327eed0421_z.jpg
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/BWXqmeqdE2Fnkv—TfdP_slna8HoJTuqwdce-cjbEH8?feat=directlink
Thanks for the auditorium photo Ken, it was beautiful and shows how wide it was as mentioned by my mum. To my regret, I never went inside this cinema, going to the nearby Barnet Odeon instead. I witnessed part of the demolition of the Gaumont as captured by ‘Dushanka’s sad flickr photo set. What a loss.
A vintage photograph of the Gaumont Finchley auditorium, possibly dating from its opening in July 1937:
View link
sheer wanton vandalism of the type that has occured right throughout Noprth London.I have photos of it being bulldozed.Never been to the Artsdepot and never want to.
Oh how the memories come flooding back! A marvellous building, its giant screen was a real treat for cinema-goers. I fondly remember the trips to Saturday Morning Pictures when I was a lad. And the time that our class from Friern Barnet County School were ushered in to listen to Muir Matheson and the London Sinfonia play live. And the films… well Norman Wisdom was guaranteed to put a lot of bums on seats! I remember my mum taking me to see Separate Tables and although young then, I still recall Niven’s wonderful performance. Then there was Psycho, when the doors were locked 5 minutes before the performance was due to start. Who really needed the west end cinemas when you could see West Side Story, Der Rosenkavalier, South Pacific and The Guns Of Navarone on this huge screen boasting a great sound system?
And it’s all been replaced with one of the most hideous buildings in north London – a huge structure that, not content with being overbearing and completely out of place in its surroundings, is visible for miles around, as if to send out the message to all and sundry, “look how ugly I am”. I can’t imagine anyone lamenting its demise in years to come…. but maybe I’m wrong…. perhaps brutal architecture and buildings are here to stay.
This was one of my “locals” and i was present at its last performance.I believe that it was the last working cinema in the UK to bear the name “Gaumont”.It was never rebranded as an Odeon.
Has anyone got any photos of Finchley Gaumont’s auditorium?
Three photos taken after closure:–
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stagedoor/137509651/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stagedoor/137509650/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stagedoor/2691627721/
A set of historic vintage photographs of the Gaumont;
View link
Photographed playing the Gaumont release in November 1949:
http://www.mawgrim.co.uk/cavalcade/finchleyg2.jpg
Photographed playing the Rank release in the Summer of 1970:
http://www.mawgrim.co.uk/cavalcade/finchleyg.jpg