The local papers in April 1965 were full of the news that the Ambassador Cinema on Langworthy Road had been transformed into a Mecca Casino and Bingo Hall, after almost 40 years providing lush entertainment for many a Salfordian.
In yet another awful display of short-sightedness, Salford City Council approved a demolition order for the cinema in April 2004, stripping the city of yet another important marker of its cultural heritage.
Watch: Exclusive – Rare 1960s film footage from Broad Street to the Height
Before the Second World War Salford could boast of having over 20 cinemas but nearly all of them – including the much-love Eccles Crown Theatre – would convert to bingo halls or shut down completely in the early 1960s.
Watch: Fears over failing future of once-great Eccles theatre
Its time as a cinema started to decline in July 1961 with the introduction of Sunday Bingo, a craze that swept the nation and led to the closure of many cinemas throughout the country.
It was purchased by the Snape family, who were associated with Salford Rugby Club for many years.
To their credit, they completed a sympathetic restoration without destroying any of the original plasterwork features, and more importantly they didn’t alter the beautiful Art Deco frontage.
According to the developers, the Ambassador had little architectural merit despite being Grade II listed and designed in the Art Deco style by prolific architect John Knight in 1928.
It was a beautiful terracotta-fronted building that opened on 24 December that year, with Italianate towers, a 40ft-wide proscenium, six dressing rooms and an orchestra pit featuring a Jardine ‘Rex Gloria’ organ.
Watch: Peel Green’s hidden gem – the Theatre Organ Heritage Centre
Violet Carson, who would become famous as Coronation Street battleaxe Ena Sharples even played grand piano at the cinema for several years after it opened.
As a ‘Super Cinema’ it came complete with car parking, plush seating, subdued lighting and a whole host of extraordinary architectural features.
The foyer had a marble staircase with metal balustrade on fluted posts and windows with decorative colored glass, while the side walls were decorated with stepped panels under shell moulded plaster hoods inspired by the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs.
When the second world war broke out, The Ambassador was closed temporaily but was reopened to encourage people to keep off the streets in the blackout as so many were getting injured also to boost the public’s morale.
Such performers as George Formby, Norman Evans, Vera Lynn, Donald Peers, Joe Loss, Sandy Powell, Ziegler and Booth and many more entertained packed houses all eager to escape the horrors of war.
After the war the Ambassador went from strength to strength and showed such epic films as Quo Vadis and The Robe, and the Saturday morning matinee shows were a delight for young children and a handy place for mums to drop their children off while they went shopping.
For all you cinema buffs we can tell you that the last ever film shown there was in November 1964 with a showing of Marnie, an Alfred Hitchcock thriller starring Sean Connery.
The newspapers told us that the new Mecca Casino had state of the art CCTV and an electronic fraud proof bingo calling system.
At the time, the Carlton Cinema on Cross Lane was operating as a cinema/casino/bingo
club and at its grand re-opening night in 1963 had Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner of Coronation street fame) compering.
Bingo gave the Ambassador a new lease of life for the next 30 years until it closed in the early 1990s.
A preservation group attempted to raise funds to buy and renovate the building to turn it into a community media and arts center, but this sadly failed.
It came to an ignominius end and was demolished in April 2004 to make way for affordable housing.
