Cardiff’s Capitol: From Dream Palace to Digital Decline
From silent movies and a wartime bomb shelter through the Beatles and Bob Dylan to signing events at Virgin Megastore, Emmet Moore researches the illustrious history of the building in which he works
When the Capitol Super Cinema was officially inaugurated in December 1921, H.V. Davies, secretary of the Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Association, delivered a speech, predicting that ‘when the cinema is complete, it will be a centre of many phases of the life of the Cardiff community’. By this he meant only that it would admit patrons from all social classes, but he inadvertently anticipated the site’s enduring significance to the city a century on.
Working at the Tesco which now stands there, I certainly see ‘many phases of the life of the Cardiff community’, and have often wondered whether any of my older customers remember seeing films there as children, or attending rock concerts as teenagers. Discovering most of my colleagues entirely unaware of the site’s glamorous past, I felt that researching our place in the history of such a storied site might help give a sense of identity to a job otherwise fairly devoid of unique connection to the community it serves.
What I have found points to a larger and much more complex picture than I expected, illustrating how changing post-war leisure culture has affected sites like this both nationally and regionally, and how the Capitol has continuously adapted to meet the needs of Cardiff. That it still bears the august name Capitol – and that its many changes of use have reflected so many phases in Cardiff’s social history – is testament to the centrality of leisure and entertainment to the community’s evolving identity.
Despite H.V. Davies’ suggestion, the Capitol Cinema was fitted to cater for a growing middle class which had plenty of money to spend in the post-war boom. It featured upholstered silk seats, grand balconies in the auditorium, a ballroom, a dance hall and a cafe which charged 6d for tea and coffee when a tram ticket cost only a penny. Its gravity-defying balconies were modelled on America’s huge purpose-built ‘dream palaces’, while its baroque decor included replicas of plasterwork from London’s variety theatres, emphasising the building’s dual heritage in both Hollywood cinema and British music hall. The Capitol’s theatre organ was installed by S.F. Dalladay, who otherwise constructed only church organs, reflecting the increasing centrality of cinema-going in public life less than twenty years after the Welsh Revival had swept the country.
Even in the small music hall which existed from 1911 to 1919, before the Tilney family bought the site and constructed the famous ‘super’ cinema, compromise was found between live acts and silent film screenings. Until well into the 1950s, programmes at the Capitol took on the cine-variety format, often including orchestral and jazz recitals, musical variety acts, sketch comedy, dancing, acrobatics, ventriloquism and newsreels, as well as feature films. In other words, entertainment in its broadest sense was still expected by patrons. This commercial adaptability continued when Paramount leased the building from the Tilneys in 1927, quietly putting the Capitol at the forefront of the transition from silent film in the city by installing Vitaphone and screening The Jazz Singer – the first film with lip-synchronous recorded speech (albeit only one line). But the advent of ‘talkies’ eliminated the need for a full resident orchestra, so that by 1932, Lionel Falkman, who had conducted the orchestra since its opening, had moved on to regular radio broadcasting in Manchester and London, and the number of players gradually fell.
When war was declared in September 1939, all cinemas in Cardiff closed doors immediately, fearing they would be targets for air raids. This closure only lasted one evening at the Capitol, but the war did have an effect on the appearance, with carpets removed on the staircase and in the foyer for easier cleaning by thinned staff, the pipe organ scrapped for the war effort and replaced with an electric Hammond, and the neon frontage removed for the blackout, meaning it was often mistaken for Queen Street Railway Station.
Nevertheless, cinema attendances actually continued to grow during this time, reaching their zenith at 1.6 billion recorded admissions nationwide in 1946, so that once the Rank Group took over from Paramount in 1941, they saw fit to create a bomb shelter in the basement, holding 1,000 people. When air raid sirens sounded during showings, films would be interrupted only a few seconds to display an on-screen announcement before continuing to play with a portion of the audience remaining seated while down below, the resident jazz ensemble provided entertainment for those sheltering. In 1940 resident organist Frank Davidson was called up to the RAF, leaving the position open for Fela Sowande, who would go on to become one of Nigeria’s foremost concert composers. Sowande’s Yoruba-inflected jazz style not only enriched the Capitol’s musical offerings but represent the contributions of the city’s diasporic communities to its diverse cultural history, even during wartime.
Seeking to distinguish the silver screen from growing competition in the form of television broadcasting, Rank installed widescreen Cinemascope and stereophonic speakers in 1953, and a new state-of-the-art DP70 70mm projector in 1958, so that by the 1960s it had become known as Cardiff’s home for epic dramas such as Spartacus, El Cid and Lawrence of Arabia. Attendances continued to plummet, however, pointing to a general shift towards more domestic leisure patterns. But the Capitol Theatre kept itself afloat in the late 1960s and through the economic depression of the 1970s as Cardiff’s primary concert venue, hosting a long list of music legends, including Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Queen, Led Zeppelin, Elton John and T-Rex. It also screened Mohammed Ali’s fights, which, beamed over satellite, typically occurred in the early hours on this side of the Atlantic but nonetheless drew full audiences – testament to the historical popularity of boxing in the city.
Perhaps most legendary of all, when the Beatles made their final UK tour as a group in December 1965 they came to the Capitol for their final show. Having filled stadiums and arenas on their US tour earlier in the year – setting records for both attendance and revenue at Shea Stadium in New York – they found British cities lagged behind, offering only cinemas and theatres as venues, which were simply not on the scale of Beatlemania. The Capitol, for instance, could accommodate only 5,000 of the fairly moderate 25,000 who had applied for tickets. Interestingly, the Beatles played only 30-minute sets on this tour, sharing the stage with five other acts and a compere to introduce them, this package-tour format reflecting the enduring appeal of old-fashioned variety entertainment in the UK. The fact that, of the nine venues on that tour, all except Cardiff’s Capitol and Sheffield’s Gaumont are listed buildings still standing and functioning as either cinemas or concert venues, demonstrates that even modest funding directed towards preserving the heritage of cinematic history in these beautiful art deco buildings can render them commercially viable for more or less their original purposes.
Like many similarly large cinemas of its era, and despite these attempts at diversification, the Capitol was struggling by the mid-1970s, its attendances rarely more than a third of its capacity, and its interior and heating system crumbling after more than fifty years of continuous use. Firstly Rank proposed ‘twinning’ the auditorium, meaning splitting it into two screens, as had been successful in other cinemas on the Odeon circuit. They then suggested converting this draughty remnant of a bygone era into a bingo hall, a tactic they had taken in cinemas across the UK since the Betting and Gaming Act 1960 legalised large cash prizes. An ambitious proposal, estimated to cost £4–5 million, to transform the Capitol into a multi-use concert venue which could have simultaneously hosted films, opera and ballet, was also detailed in a report commissioned by the Welsh National Opera, including designs for expanded seating and enhanced facilities, illustrating a feasible future where the Capitol could continue serving the community in a multifaceted capacity.
Despite the compelling nature of these proposals and the evident community support, financial constraints and lack of backing from central government and local authorities led to their demise, and ultimately the Capitol’s fate was sealed by the shifting priorities and short-sighted decisions of city planners and developers. Instead of renovating its existing entertainment facilities, the Conservative-led City Council opted for the difficult and expensive construction of St David’s Hall, now itself a listed building, at a cost of £12 million.
After it was sold in 1978, the Capitol was boarded up and left to rot for four years until eventually the building was demolished, alongside several neighbouring shops on the north end of Queen Street, leaving many in the community lamenting the loss of a key cultural landmark which had once been central to Cardiff’s social and entertainment life.
In 1990, the Capitol Exchange, later renamed the Capitol Centre, was built on the site, its architecture reflecting the spirit of early-’90s consumerist ambition. The addition of a five-screen Odeon in 1991 briefly re-established cinema on the site, but competition with other multiplexes and home video forced it to close its doors in 2001. With Virgin Megastore as its anchor tenant, the Capitol was therefore at the centre of the transition from live entertainment to home consumption formats, while its popular autograph signings, honoured local culture and the site’s entertainment heritage, if only modestly. These included icons of the Cool Cymru movement, such as Stereophonics, Manic Street Preachers, Super Furry Animals and Cerys Matthews. However, foreseeing that CDs and DVDs would soon be replaced by streaming services, Richard Branson pulled out and sold the UK operation in 2008, and the Capitol has continued in steady decline ever since, with many of its surviving tenants operating primarily online rather than relying on footfall and the Tesco Express the only reason most shoppers have to enter the building.
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Since the sudden closing of Premier Cinema on the building’s north facade, hastened to its demise by the Covid-19 pandemic, only two cinemas remain in the city centre. One of these is Cineworld, whose ‘Unlimited’ Card has given me a casual relationship with cinema that mirrors the cultural habit that was cinemagoing in the mid twentieth century: I drop in on matinees after morning shifts and busier evening showings on my days off. However I feel no sense of grandeur as I climb broken escalators up to its 200-seat multiplex screens; there is no glamour in the grimy glass front of that imposing owl-shaped building.
That screenings are cancelled in winter because it is too cold, that the bar is closed permanently, seats torn and creaking, shows the extent of strains on the industry, and the widespread diminution of disposable income as the cost of living rises. Yet, there are moments when Cineworld recaptures some of the novel magic of cinema’s golden age, particularly during National Theatre Live screenings.
Watching Nye in May, I was handed an extract from Neil Kinnock’s programme essay ‘From Tredegar to Westminster,’ and there was a sense in the room that the vision of socialism which Bevan took to London had returned via this unique form of theatre. These events, a happy hybrid between home streaming and event entertainment, bring high-quality theatre productions to the big screen, drawing diverse audiences and creating a communal viewing experience which has strong appeal in an increasingly isolated digital world.
After plans last year to redevelop the Capitol Centre into a food court centred around the reopening of the Dock Feeder Canal fell through, owners NewRiver have recently proposed that ‘experiential’ leisure company Gravity develop the northeast side into an entertainment complex to replace the Red Dragon Centre, which is slated for demolition to make way for a new arena. All these developments signal a shift away from the city centre as a hub for cultural entertainment, and with St David’s Hall closed until at least July 2025 due to safety concerns about its ceiling, Cardiff city centre is a shadow of its former self, with neglect and decay now prevalent in many areas.
While the Capitol’s story is a tribute to Cardiff’s resilience and adaptability in navigating wartime and changing leisure trends, its ultimate demise set a precedent which leaves little hope that proposed developments will respect Cardiff’s cultural heritage, or that Cardiff residents will have access to high quality and affordable cultural entertainment experiences in the centre of the capital any time soon.
Emmet Moore is a writer from Cardiff. He works in a supermarket and studies English Literature at Harris Manchester College, Oxford. The main source for researching this article was the book Capitol Days: The Story of Cardiff’s best-loved cinema by Gary Wharton.