The demise of Athlone's Ritz

by Gearoid O'Brien

Athlone emigrants returning home for the millennium following a sojourn abreoad will be struck by the dramatic escalation in the rate of progress and expansion in their native town: the Docksand St. Peter's Port, Golden Island, the McCormack Centre, Jphn Broderick Street...the list goes on. This year the addition of the very teasteful marina building has added a touch of class to the waterfront and that is set to continue with the welcome development of the Silverlea site, but perhaps the greatest change of all will be the absence of the Ritz Cinema building.

For sixty years the Ritz Cinema, a fine example of International style of architecture (influenced by Art Deco) and designed by Michael Scott's firm of architects, has dominated one corner of the bridge of Athlone. Initially quite an attractive building with a predominantly glass frontage, it has in recent years suffered from chronic decay and neglect, and added little to the reputation of its illustrious architect.

Its demise however will be regretted by many for reasons as various and numerous as the films which have been shown there over the years. For many the greatest feeling evoked by the knocking of the Ritz will be one of nostalgia. Many a romance started (and some I'm sure finished) in the back seats of the Ritz.

The Ritz was an institution - an intergral part of the social life of the town. Which child who grew up in Athlone the the 1940s. 50s and 60s didn't yearn to go to the Sunday matinee in the Ritz. On watching the destruction of the building, I have been struck by the number of people I have seen looking wistfully into the ghostly shell, obviously recalling times past.

The early days of the Ritz

I'm sure there are many erstwhile filmgoers in Athlone who can still vividly remember the good old days when there were three distinct cinemas in the town. In the 1940s we had the Savoy in the Father Mathew Hall, the Garden Vale Cinema in the converted Ferriers store in Garden Vale, and the brand new Ritz Cinema on the east bank of the Shannon opposite the Provincial Bank. When I think about the cinemas I think of the late Enda Sweeney (nee Gaynor) of Main Street, who told me of a time when she went to the pictures six and seven times a week - catching every change of programme in the three cinemas. The arrival of the Ritz added a touch of class to the town, being the first purpose-built cinema in Athlone.

How many people can remember the opening of the cinema? Perhaps not too many at all. The official opening was performed in 1940 by Mr. Erskine Childers, T.D. for Longford -Westmeath and a man who many years later was to become President of Ireland. The double-bill for the opening was Deanna Durbin in Three Smart Girls Grow Up and Walt Disney's Brave Little Tailor. Later that week audiences were treated to Louis Hayward and Joan Bennett in The Man in the Iron Mask, and finally after an action-packed week came Gracie Fields in Shipyard Sally. Booking was at the cinema from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. daily, or to those chosen few who had access to a telephone, seats could also be booked by dialling Athlone 68. The cost of seats was: Front Balcony 1/8, Back Balcony 1/3, Stalls 1/- and the Pit 4d. In the advertisement in the Westmeath Independent patrons were reminded that the entrance to the was from Bridge Street - indeed the curious sign for the Pit still still survives on the back wasll of the cinema - hopefully somebody will preserve it for posterity. In the publicity surrounding the opening the cinema was said to have seating accommodation for over a thousand patrons and to be equipped in the most modern fashion. It was a sister cinema to the Ritz inCarlow, and the directors of the company were Mr. V. Miley and Mr. H. Prior. The opening performance was , not surprisingly, a complete sellout, and the proceeds were given to charity. Mr. P.V.C. Murtagh, solicitor, received a cheque on hehalf of his wife - who was the seecretary of Athlone & District Bursing Association, while Mr. R.C. McKew accepted a cheque on behalf of the Irish Entertainment Traders Benevolent Fund.

The Building
The task of building a cinema to be built on this particular site was a challenge for any architect. One of the problems was the fact that it was being built on the banks of the Shannon and therefore had to be as light as possible without compromising on strength and safety. A new form of construction using vibrated reinforced concrete was decided upon , and in order to overcome the difference in levels between the actual site itself and the street level the building was constructed on piers or pilotas. This method gave a space equal to the ground floor of the cinema below the building, but unfortunately this was never devekoped. A contemporary account of the building published in the Irish Press claimed:

"The modern design is impressive. Glass panelling above the canopy overlooks the balcony and foyer, and the front as illuminated at night by horizontal neon strips curving up from the bottom of the canopy. The bos office is built on the American principle and situated 'outside'"the cinema. On entering the vestibule, patrons will immediately be struck by the exceptional type of decorative floor, designed by the architect. Another unusual feature of the entrance hall is the elimination of the balcony foyer to be found in most cinemas, thus allowing for an extremely ingenious lighting scheme, and giving an immediate sense of height and spaciousness. This foyer has a three-colour scheme consisting of pale duck-egg blus on the ceiling, the walls being beige and pale grey."

The account went on to describe the modern lighting and heating systems employed in the design. On the question of the sound quality it had this to say:

"The best and most modern sound system obtainable will provide the patrons of this cinema with a @talkie@" reproduction that would be impossible to surpass. Patrons of the Ritz Cinema can, therefore, rest assured that they will be heairing the voices of their favourite stars reproduced by the lates discoveries of the world's leading sound engineers."


 The End of an Era by Joe Moore
I strolled across the town bridge last week and viewed the ghostly white building which looked like a cross between the Empire State Building and the ill fated shp Titanic'. It suddenly dawned on me, that the Hollywood dream factory of my misspent childhood had finally gone forever. The old glass fronted building designed by Michael Scott would now be a part of the history of old Athlone. The Ritz Cinema which served the towns people faithfully for the best part of thirty years, was like the famous movie 'Gone with the Wind'.
My mind wandered back in time to the forties and fifties when it was my favorite cinema, where Randolph Scott galloped across the silver screen to the wild applause of the would be cowboys in the 'pit'. The 'pit' was a fine place to watch a movie provided you didn't mind sharing it with four hundred film fanatical fleas, the old cinema was more of an adversary to us gosons of the town, than a picture house.
We could sit there in our four penny seats and watch the works of Shakespeare, the Bronte's, Victor Hugo and Oscar Wilde unfold right in front of our innocent eyes. Those Hollywood versions of famous plays and stories prompted me to read the original works. As I read the classic novels the characters always brought to mind the actors who played those parts. Catherine Ernshaw will always be Merle Oberon, who played opposite Laurence Olivier's Heathcliff in William Wyers version of 'Wuthering Heights'. Orson Welles was and will remain forever the definitive Rochester in 'Jane Eyre'. One can't read 'David Copperfield' without conjuring up a picture of W.C. Fields as Dickens' Mr. Macawber. Although I've read Oscar Wilde's 'The Canterville Ghost' many times the only picture I have in mind of the famous ghost is of the rotund English actor Charles Laughton rattling his chains and disappearing straight through a solid stone wall.
There was no shortage of history lessons at the old 'Ritz' either, we learned about 'The charge of the light brigade' with Errol Flynn; knew about the French Revolution from 'Dickens' 'A tale of two cities', with Ronald Colman' doing a far far better thing as Sydney Carlton. 'All quiet on the Western front' directed by Lewis Milestone told us all about the first world war. While 'Mrs. Miniver' gave us a story set in England on the affects of the second world war. Mrs. Miniver was played by that lovely Irish actress 'Greer Garson' and supported by 'Walter Pidgeon' as her sympathetic husband. We saw the second world war from an American point of view with movies like 'The Sands of the Iowa Jima' and 'Batann'. If we needed some advice on love, we could watch lovers like Tyrone Power and Rita Hayworth kiss expertly for a solid thirty seconds without coming up for air and all this in glorious technicolor, with colour spelled the American way without a 'u'. Speaking of love, many a real love story was acted out in the back balcony of the old 'Ritz'. Some even say that the lovers in the back balcony were more experienced than those seen on the screen.
For us youngsters the highlight of the week was the Sunday matinee, where we got great value for our money, fourpence old money was what you paid for admission to the pit)which incidentally was almost up against the screen). Sunday showed two movies, a trailer and a serial. Batman, Captain Marvel, Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were some of those never to be forgotten serials. My favourite was a lesser known serial called Nyoka, the Jungle girl. It starred Frances Gifford and Tom Neal. It lasted for fourteen weeks and I witnessed every nailbiting chapter. The serial would start off with realistic jungle music and animal sounds which, often were mimicked by some of the old hardchaws in the pit, much to our amusement. Sometimes a stray dog would wander in and out of the cold and join in with the howl. Roy Rogers, Gene Autrey and Hoppalong Cassidy were regular visitors to the silver screen in the old 'Ritz' and we all wished we could be cowboys in our dreams. All those dreams have faded away like the Ritz itself.
The brand new Ritz cinema opened in the early forties. The story goes that Saint Colmcille, the prophet foretold that a building would collapse into the Shannon. On the opening night patrons would only sit on the left hand side of cinema as the right hand section overlooked the Shannon. It's hard to believe that the old picture house has finally met it's 'Waterloo'. It's gone to join the ghosts of the Hollywood greats like John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Ingrid Berman, Clarke Gable and Humphrey Bogart. The new state of the art building, will I suppose soon become as familiar a landmark as the Ritz; I couldn't care less or as Rhett said to Scarlet 'Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn!'