Liverpool’s Forgotten Odeon Cinema on London Road
As a city, Liverpool will always be associated with culture. From The Beatles to the Philharmonic Orchestra via the city’s two football clubs and the amazing theatres, Liverpool knows how to be cultural when it wants to.
When cinema was at its height, the city boasted some of the finest cinemas in the country, with the likes of the Forum Cinema on Lime Street, the Cameo Cinema on Webster Street and the Futurist Cinema, also on Lime Street, all being up there.
Yet the Odeon on London Road might well have been the cream of the crop.
Liverpool’s Largest Cinema
Liverpool is a city filled with people who love to experience things. It might be a night out having a few drinks with friends, or it might be a trip to the theatre. Sometimes people want to do something a little bit more ‘popcorn’ with their time, which is why there were once a wealth of different cinemas on offer on the city centre.
On the 15th of October 1934 a new one opened on London Road, quickly becoming the home of nights out with friends, nervous first dates and simply a place for people to go and enjoy a good film on the big screen.
The Odeon Cinema, London Road, Liverpool 1979
📷 Historic England pic.twitter.com/HgxvgGNQVp— Angies Liverpool (@angiesliverpool) December 6, 2024
Known as the Paramount at the time on account of the fact that it was one of the cinemas owned by the Paramount chain, it boasted a seating capacity of 2,670. That made it the largest cinema in Liverpool city centre at the time, making it a popular place for people to head along to in order to capture the latest ‘flick’.
In 1942, the Odeon Circuit of the Rank Organisation decided to buy it thanks to its immense popularity, continuing its usage as a single-screen cinema for the years that followed and only deciding to split it up in 1968.
The Future of the Cinema
When the Widescreen Era was brought in to cinema, the first venue in Liverpool to install a CinemaScope was the Odeon on London Road. That was in 1954 for the release of the 20th Century Fox release The Robe.
Four years later a Todd-AO was installed, opening on Boxing Day for the release of South Pacific. As the leading cinema in the city at the time, it soon became the home of all of the future ‘Road Show’ presentations that were put forward by the Rank Organisation, being something of a sense of what the future of cinema might look like.
That was furthered in 1968 when a decision was taken to make manger changes to the Odeon. Having previously maintained its status as a single auditorium, the company decided that it made sense to make it into split auditoria. The Odeon One was the prestige cinema upstairs, boasting the likes of Philips DP70 projectors.
Meanwhile, downstairs was the more modest Odeon Two, which had Cinemeccanica Victoria 8 on offer. The same building having two 70mm screens was not particularly usual at the time, putting Liverpool at the vanguard of the cinema-going experience.
#Liverpool OTD – 1957: Bill Hayley & His Comets at the Odeon, London Road
— liverpool1207.bsky.social (@liverpool1207.bsky.social) 20 February 2025 at 08:37
In the end, of course, progress catches up with all of us. For the Odeon the London Road, that came in the form of the once-great cinema being all but smashed apart in order to make room for five screens in the 1970s.
It didn’t take long before even that wasn’t enough, both for the financial viability of the cinema and for the demand of the audience. As a result, it was then split up further into ten screens. The only thing that cinephiles were grateful for was the fact that it avoided the indignity of being turned into a Digima when that was all the rage.
The Beatles
Are you even a venue in Liverpool that existed in the 1960s if you don’t have some sort of claim to fame with The Beatles? That was certainly the case for the Odeon on London Road, which welcomed the Fab Four on the seventh of December 1963. It was the 29th date of the group’s 1963 Autumn Tour, with the group playing the Odeon Cinema in Lewisham the following day.
They played two shows with a ten-song setlist, with the following songs doubtless being sung along to by the audience:
- I Saw Her Standing There
- From Me to You
- All My Loving
- You Really Got a Hold on Me
- Roll Over Beethoven
- Boys
- ‘Till There Was You
- She Loves You
- Money (That’s What I Want)
- Twist and Shout
A year later and Beatlemania was back at the Odeon on London Road, with the cinema playing host to the Northern premiere of the band’s first film, A Hard Day’s Night.
The Closing of the Odeon
From The Beatles through to the residents of Liverpool who simply remember going along to the London Road Odeon on a date night, the cinema was an exceptionally popular one. Even years later, people would remember going there on a special occasion or to see a particular film.
It certainly helped that London Road itself was almost seen as the place to be for a time, boasting a TJ Hughes and other such stores that felt to some like the ‘Scouse version of Harrods’. Not that it was perfect for films, with some being disrupted by the sound of trains arriving into Lime Street Station.
@joebubble_ The decline of London Road #liverpool #liverpoolhistory #liverpoolpubs #liverpoolfcfans #liverpoolfc ♬ Sad History – Lil D
Ultimately, though, progress will always be more important to some than holding on to the great things of the past. For 74 years the site had been the place to go, but not even the splitting up of the cinema into different screens could save it from the much larger multiplexes that were springing up elsewhere.
The opening of the purpose-built Odeon multiplex in the Liverpool ONE meant that there was no longer a need for something that was seen as a relic of the past, so it closed its doors for the final time on the 30th of September 2008.
