麻豆社

A poster advertsising the Hippodrome

After a huge amount of research, much of which involved scouring old copies of the Selby Times for cinema-related adverts, reviews and reports, Bill published a book on the subject, The Cinemas of Selby.

In his book, Bill takes the reader through Selby鈥檚 cinema history, and in doing so covers the advent of both World Wars, the latter of which saw cinema attendance and provision at a peak, as this extract shows:

鈥淔rom March 1939 there were three houses of entertainment in Selby. Each in competition for audiences鈥� At two performances per day, six days a week a massive 26,028 seats were available per week to the cinema-goers of Selby鈥�

The cement-plastered Hippodrome

The Cinemas of Selby also reveals where exactly the area鈥檚 cinemas were before their demolition, as well as what they were before they were cinemas. In one section of the book, for example, we learn that the Central cinema, which stood on James Street, was in fact a skating rink until that particular 鈥榗raze鈥� passed, at which point it was converted to an entertainment hall.

Of course, a book on the history of cinema wouldn鈥檛 be complete without an explanation of the sort of entertainment cinemas provided. Bill duly informs us that this ranged from short films and live acts by individual artists, to pantomimes and what appear to have been early soap operas:

鈥溾�hat really caught the audiences鈥� imagination in those days were the drama films designed to keep them 鈥榦n the edge of their seats鈥�. These were often shown in weekly episodes with each episode ending with the hero or heroine in mortal peril from the villains in a 鈥榗liff-hanger鈥� scene; the audience returning next week to see the next episode鈥�