May 1937: West end debut for innovative air conditioning system

Aficionados of Britain’s cinemas will know the name of Oscar Deutsch, the son of a successful scrap metal merchant who opened his first picture house in Perry Barr, Birmingham in 1928.

Those same enthusiasts will know that Deutsch created ODEON Cinemas, which in the space of nine years had grown to 250 movie theatres.

Deutsch’s publicists are purported to have pushed ODEON as an acronym for Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation, but it is equally likely the chain took its name from the Greek word ōideion, which is ‘a building for musical performance’, an altogether more appropriate description of the old Alhambra Theatre in Leicester square, London, which Deutsch acquired in 1936 as the site of his company’s prize cinema.

The old Alhambra was demolished to make way for what is now the ODEON Luxe Leicester Square. According to ODEON Cinemas Group, art deco architecture became synonymous with Odeon, as did the latest technology and in 1937 The Engineer ran a report on air conditioning installed in Deutsch’s flagship venue in the heart of London’s West End.