The Academy was a cinema located at 161–7 Oxford Street, Westminster, London, England, at the junction with Poland Street. Films (in the shape of Hale's Tours of the World) were shown at the address from at least 1906, and it opened in January 1913 as the Picture House to show The Miracle, with the intention of becoming "the home of the world's most realistic films". The Picture House continued to show films throughout the 1920s.
It reopened in 1931 as the Academy, becoming London's pre-eminent art house cinema, and for over 50 years introduced British audiences to major films, beginning with auteurs such as Jean Renoir and Marcel Carné; in later years, the Academy largely established the reputations of Ingmar Bergman, Andrzej Wajda, Satyajit Ray, Jean-Luc Godard, Miklós Jancsó and others in Britain. The Academy's high standards were maintained by a succession of three managers: Elsie Cohen, George Hoellering, and Ivo Jarosy. The cinema was damaged during a bombing raid in 1940 and reopened in 1944.
The basement housed a ballroom from the early 1950s where the Marquee Club held jazz sessions from 1958 to 1964 with musicians such as Johnny Dankworth, Chris Barber, Alexis Korner, and Tubby Hayes. The Rolling Stones played their first gig there in 1962. The New Academy cinema expanded to two and then three screens in the 1960s to become the Academy 1-2-3, and closed in 1986 after operating almost continuously for 80 years.
Cinema history Previous occupiers Mander Brothers, varnish and colour manufacturers of Wolverhampton until 1998, had a warehouse at 165 Oxford Street in 1884.International Health Exhibition, 1884 : official catalogue. London: William Clowes and Son, p. 88 In December 1901, a partnership between Henry Clarke of 165 Oxford Street, and three Mander brothers (including Sir Charles Tertius Mander) was dissolved when Clarke retired.The London Gazette, 3 January 1902 , issue 27393, p. 29.Mander, Nicholas. "A brief history of the Mander family". Owlpen Manor Estate. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
Hale's Tours
From at least 1906, the building housed a Hale's Tours of the World, one of London's first dedicated cinemas. This was an early virtual reality attraction (often found in fairgrounds etc.), in which a projected film played during a simulated ride in a railway carriage. The owner may have been the American film producer and director Charles Urban, who had a franchise for Hale's Tours with main offices selling films and equipment a few hundred yards away on Wardour Street. The business seems to have been in liquidation by 1906, when the franchise for Hale's Tours was acquired by J. Henry Iles, and a company named Hales Tours of the World Ltd. was set up in December of that year to take over the running of 165 Oxford Street.
J. Henry Iles and Joseph Menchen Iles (who later owned Dreamland Margate) was a director of an Anglo-American syndicate, European Amusement Parks Ltd., which brought Luna Parks to Britain and Europe from around 1907. His business partners were Frank C. Bostock, a circus owner; H. C. McGarvie, an experienced showman "who probably had more experience in international expositions than any other living human being";Billboard, 29 April 1922 and McGarvie's business partner Joseph Menchen, who had been in the seaside and trolley park entertainment business since 1899.New York Dramatic Mirror, 26 August 1899, p. 14. He had constructed cycloramas based on the Johnstown Flood of 1889,Ocean Grove Times, (New Jersey), 9 July 1904 p. 1e. and furnished the complex electrical lighting effects for the 'Trip to the Moon'Hence Luna Park and other cycloramas at Coney Island.
The Picture House
The premises were remodelled/rebuilt by the architects Gilbert & Constanduros"Horace Gilbert" . Dictionary of Scottish Architects (2014). Accessed 29 February 2016.
The Picture House opened on Friday, 24 January 1913, as a semi-permanent home for the world's first full-colour feature film, The Miracle, produced as a personal project by Joseph Menchen.
A company named 'The Picture House (Oxford-Street) Limited' was due to be wound up on 17 October 1915.The London Gazette 14 September 1915, p. 9125 This company's directors may have been Menchen and/or Iles, or perhaps other EAPL members. Menchen returned to the USA in 1917.
The Picture House continued to show films through the 1920s: the programme for October 1926 included Lady Windermere's Fan with Ronald Colman; The Sea Beast with John Barrymore; Ralph Ince and the alluring Olive Borden in Yellow Fingers; and The Sea Urchin with Betty Balfour."Cinema programmes 1922-26". Alamy.com. Retrieved 3 March 2016."Cinema programmes, inside pages, 1922 and 1926". Alamy.com. Retrieved 3 March 2016.
The Academy cinema
Eric Hakim
By 1929, the cinema at 165 Oxford Street had been bought or leased by Eric Hakim (1900–1967). His forebears were Armenian, and he came to England from France with 'a wealthy relative' (possibly his mother). In 1913, Hakim (aged 13) played at a gathering in Nice at the home of Claire Virenque, founder of the :fr:Prix de littérature spiritualiste: "The virtuoso Eric Hakim played a fugue by Bach, and other old tunes; admirably accompanied by his mother, Mme Hakim, this young artist obtained the stunning success to which he is accustomed."
He came to England and played as an orchestral violinist in cinemas run by the Davis brothers. Hakim may have modernised the Academy, which he owned by 1929, when he bemoaned the lot of the cinema owner (or exhibitor) during the transition from silent to sound films: "At the moment the renter is in the fortunate position of being able to hold the pistol at the head of the exhibitor because, not only is there a shortage of silent films, but also the exhibitor, having spent large sums of money in talking equipment, is forced to show talking films, which leaves the renter in the position of being able to dictate terms."Kine Weekly, 22 August 1929, cited in
In 1931, Hakim directed the dubbing in English of the original German version of M which had played in US theatres with subtitles with little success. The dubbing was made in England, where Peter Lorre was one of the few original cast to be re-recorded in English. He went on to produce several films, the first two with his Eric Hakim Productions. The Outsider did well in the US, being shown by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in the US in its premier first-release circuit. Backed by the Rothschilds and with a 70% guarantee from MGM, he produced two more films both directed by Fred Niblo and starring Adolphe Menjou. With the first, Two White Arms, Hakim brought Margaret Bannerman into the talking era,The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, 2 December 1931, p. 13c . and in 1932 he produced Diamond Cut Diamond (US:Blame the Woman)."Eric Hakim" . BFI. Accessed 27 February 2016. In 1932 he also produced The Temperance Fête,The world film encyclopedia, 1933 , p. 18. and The Crooked Lady, distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with photography by Basil Emmott.Motion Picture Herald, 2 April 1932, p. 10
Hakim had hoped to secure the services of Fritz Kreisler to star in Passion Hunger, a story of a famous violinist and his amorous intrigues; but the deal fell through."Hakim's Kreisler Deal Off". The Bioscope, 6 April 1932, p. 10. He married Nina Vanna in September 1933, but was bankrupt by 1934Edinburgh Gazette, 11 September 1934, p. 774a . with declared liabilities of $195,000 and assets of $230. He remained legally bankrupt (although he had plenty of money) for at least 11 years with seven further petitions against him, and divorced Vanna after an affair with Norma Irene Zoe Plumby-Matthews ('Norma Dawn') in late 1945.
'Unusual films' The Davis brothers owned a chain of 'Pavilion' cinemas in London. In April 1927, they sold them to the Gaumont British Theatres Ltd. circuit, with a contract which allowed them to show their own choice of films. Stuart Davis dedicated the 750-seat Avenue Pavilion at 101 Shaftesbury Avenue to 'continental' films and started the 'Unusual Film' movement, showing first German and Russian classics, then French avant-garde works by such as Man Ray. A number of showings were organised by The Film Society, whose supporters included H. G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw."Film Society, The (1925-39)" . BFI Screenonline. Accessed 29 February 2016.
In 1929, Davies's contract with Gaumont expired and, at Davis' suggestion, Gaumont turned the remodelled Avenue Pavilion into London's first newsreel cinema. This left the Film Society without a permanent venue.
The highbrow literary film journal Close Up, published by the Pool Group from 1927 to 1933, played a significant part in promoting European and arthouse films."Along these lines, the collection reprints an admiring essay on Elsie Cohen's ambitious Academy Cinema, as well as polemics about worker's films, art films, and so forth." .
Elsie Cohen The Netherlands-born Elsie Cohen, who had worked on Dutch and German film productions, took over the Windmill Theatre for six months in 1929 and successfully put on a highbrow season of recent Russian and German films. Stuart Davis had already approached Eric Hakim, the owner of the Picture House, but Hakim wanted too big a rent. However, Elsie Cohen persuaded Hakim to let her manage the cinema, and it opened as The Academy in 1931 with Alexander Dovzhenko's Earth ('Zemlya'), one of the last silent films before the 'talkies' took over.
In order to encourage students and other film aficionados, a number of seats in the stalls were available at reduced prices.
Art-house cinema A typical press advertisement in April 1932 announced G. W. Pabst’s "great epic of the mines" Kameradschaft; Mädchen in Uniform, Mutter Krausen, Road to Life, and Alone by Trauberg and Kozintsev.
The BFI was founded in 1933, and the moderne-style Curzon Cinema in Mayfair was built as a rival in 1934.Eyles, Allen. "Cinemas & Cinemagoing: Art House & Repertory" . BFI screenonline. Accessed 29 February 2016.
George Hoellering George Hoellering was the director and producer of Hortobágy, a film about rural life in a Hungarian village of the same name. He arrived in Britain with the film (his main possession), his baby, and his wife in 1936. He had previously worked as production manager (with Robert Scharfenberg) for Kuhle Wampe, which had been shown by The Film Society at the Academy in 1933.Ciné Magazine, Vol. 13 No. 1, January 1933, p. 55b (in French). In the same news item: Hakim had bought the rights to René Clair's , and L'Atlantide (1932 film) by Pabst was showing at the Academy. Hortobágy was shown at the New Gallery Cinema by The Film Club; Cohen liked it, and he joined her as director of the Academy cinema in 1937. During World War II, a bomb badly damaged the Academy in 1940, and in the same year, Hoellering was interned as an enemy alien. The Academy reopened in 1944 with Hoellering as director, a position he held until his death in 1980. His right-hand man was his stepson Ivo Jarosy, who started as the Academy's publicist in 1938 and wrote carefully researched press releases. He worked closely with Peter Strausfeld (also interned with Hoellering on the Isle of Man) who created original linocut images for the Academy's distinctive posters since the cinema had a policy of not using any existing publicity material.
Apart from European features and avant-garde or experimental films, the Academy programmed a range of documentary films such as The Way We Live by Jill Craigie, and Children On Trial by Jack Lee (shown with Zéro de Conduite by Jean Vigo), and Herbert von Karajan conducting the St. Matthew Passion by J. S. Bach (1949). A film which showed at The Academy after the war could obtain up to 1,000 bookings across the country, although the British commercial film industry had been slow to embrace documentaries.