The Rialto cinema in Lochee played its final reel 60 years ago after entertaining audiences for more than three decades.
The Gray’s Lane building made history in Dundee by showing the first full-length ‘talkie’ in 1929 before it was converted into a bingo hall in the 60s.
It operated as a bingo hall until the early 2000s when it was hit by a fierce blaze that signalled the end of its life before it was demolished.
It was a sad end for a survivor of cinema’s golden age.
Dundee at the movies
So let’s go back to the start of the 20th century.
Here we find Dundonians caught up in a love affair with the movies.
The Wellington cinema was one of the first built in Dundee in 1906 by Arthur Henderson which sprung up on the street of the same name.
The Wellington was so popular that it soon inspired a building frenzy across Tayside and Fife to satisfy the demand for picture houses.
As for Dundee, at the peak of film-going it boasted a total of 25 different cinemas, a significant number compared with today’s three.
Among them was the Rialto.
Built in 1926, the Lochee landmark was perhaps Dundee’s most distinctive looking cinema, with a Mexican-style exterior and Chinese-style interior.
The cinema once seated more than 1,100 people in its auditorium, which was decorated in the manner of a Chinese garden.
Red, black and gold murals were painted on the walls, and the orchestra sat on a garden bridge.
The projection box was constructed in the shape of a face with its light coming from the eyes.
First feature talkie shown at Lochee cinema
The Rialto Cinema opened in 1928.
In March 1929, owner John Pennycook introduced a ground-breaking new programme to the cinema.
The Rialto would show eight short ‘talkies’, and so would his other two cinemas, The Cinerama on South Tay Street, and The Royalty on Watson Street.
The talkies were a roaring success and at the end of that decade, the first feature talking film, Lucky Boy, starring George Jessell, was shown in the same three cinemas.
In Lochee, Camperdown Works would come out at 5.30pm and by 6pm there would be quite a queue outside the Rialto.
The workers would buy a fish supper on the way and eat them in the queue while they waited to get in.
Rialto cinema reopens as bingo club
In the late-1950’s, the Rialto was taken over by the J.B. Milne Theatres chain, but it was closed as a cinema in 1962.
Still operated by J.B. Milne, it was converted that year into an All Square Bingo Club and reopened, becoming extremely popular in Lochee over the next 30 years.
The old cinema was also the setting of Scottish lightweight boxer Ken Buchanan’s last amateur contest before he turned professional in 1965.
Buchanan would go on to become the former undisputed world lightweight champion and got in the ring during a show put on by Lochee Boys’ Club.
The distinctive décor was a worthy backdrop to his amateur swan song.
As the All Square Bingo Club, several Dundonians went on to make their fortunes on the site of the old cinema, which was eventually designated a Grade B Listed building by Historic Scotland in 1993.
A 35-year-old woman won £48,000 at the Bingo Club in February 1996, which was the first of three major wins at the site that year.
Next it was a woman from Carnoustie who took home the prize of £59,000.
But the city’s biggest prize that year went to a 37-year-old woman who won £110,000 in December.
Then in 1997, a Douglas woman won £93,939 plus the club bonus of an extra £81.
A decade later, the bingo club had closed and the vacant old cinema site was lying in wait for the days its doors would open to the public once more.
As a listed building, the Rialto couldn’t be demolished and simply had to wait to be used again.
In March 2007, however, its long life nearly came to an end.
A fierce blaze broke out in the main auditorium during the night and was quickly attended to by the city’s emergency services.
The fire broke out on the first floor around 9pm and damaged the floor of the derelict Rialto building.
Four fire crews using jet hoses and water tender ladders spent an hour damping down the blaze in the two-storey building.
A Tayside Police spokesman said the fire was not being treated as suspicious, and an inspection was soon carried out to determine if any structural damage had been caused.
The city engineer found the hall to be structurally safe but expressed some concern about the fabric of the roof.
The site of the old cinema was heavily smoke-logged during the blaze, however the actual fire damage was limited to the main auditorium.
Discussions soon began to decide the Rialto’s fate.
Its owner was determined to get the building de-listed.
It had fallen into disrepair following the 2007 fire and pigeons had since settled in, accessing the premises through a hole in the roof left by the blaze.
The infestation of the birds gave local councillors and nearby residents cause for concern as pigeon droppings soon became a common nuisance.
But soon, more serious concerns were raised over the buildings structural integrity as local young people began playing in the old cinema.
The building was finally delisted and the Rialto could finally be either demolished or renovated.
First, there were rumours that the Rialto would be converted into a play area.
However, soon the site was flagged up for housing.
Ramsay Properties submitted a planning application to turn the cinema into a block of 12 flats.
The demolition plan said that the trees along the western boundary of the site would be kept, however those to the south would be removed and replaced by at least two new trees for each old one.
The planning permission was granted and the Rialto Cinema was demolished in November 2014.
A team started work at 6am to bring the former Lochee landmark to the ground.
The flats would take on a modern appearance and also incorporate the art deco style of the former cinema.
Courier columnist Jim Crumley grew up on Gray’s Lane where the old Rialto was built and still remembers fondly his trips to the flicks when growing up.
Jim said: “Gray’s Lane was where my mother grew up with her parents and her two brothers.
“The Rialto was why they lived in Gray’s Lane, because my grandfather, Bill Illingworth, was its manager.
“My other grandfather, Bob Crumley the goalie, lived 200 yards away and so did my father and his five brothers and sisters.
“By the time I was old enough to remember anything at all, only my Illingworth grandparents were alive.
“But both my parents came gift wrapped with a love of the cinema.
“It was hardly surprising in my mother who, as a child herself, must have lived as much inside the Rialto as outside it, and once my father met my Illingworth grandfather he would have been charmed into that world, for charm and a lifelong passion for the cinema world from the inside were my grandfather’s stock-in-trade.
“So my brother and I were swept up into his irresistible allure and ‘going to the flicks’ was part of our routine throughout our childhood.
“By the time I knew my grandfather he had moved along the road to Logie Street, and by then he was managing the Astoria too, so he lived more or less halfway between his charges.
“And although my parents’ prefab was in Glamis Road, and a mile away from their Lochee heartland, we were at my grandfather’s house several days a week after school and Lochee’s lifeblood was in the veins of all of us.
“The Rialto was the magic lantern that made it all shine.”
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