As Odeon prepares to open its largest cinema, June Sampson looks back at the Kingston links of its emigre founder.

It's only right that Kingston will soon have the largest Odeon cinema ever built. For when Oscar Deutsch launched his famous Odeon circuit in 1933, Kingston was foremost in his mind, and he intended it should have the first cinema in the chain.

To his chagrin, the work was delayed so much by legal problems that Weymouth Odeon opened first. The Kingston one opened in the High Street a month later, and Mr Deutsch was there for the ceremony, along with Jack Buchanan, one of the great British stars of the 1930s.

The opening film was Monte Carlo, starring Jack Buchanan and Jeanette McDonald.

The following year, Odeons opened in Worcester Park, Tolworth, Weybridge and Surbiton (the sixth, seventh, 10th and 11th in Mr Deutsch's chain). Another opened at Shannon Corner, New Malden, in 1938.

By the time he died in 1941, aged 48, Mr Deutsch had created a circuit of 258 cinemas in less than a decade, and set standards hitherto unparalleled in cinema architecture and audience viewing comfort.

It was a staggering achievement for the son of a scrap metal dealer who had come to Britain as a Jewish immigrant from Hungary.

What makes it even more remarkable is that he was so stricken by recurrent stomach cancer that he often had to have a nurse travelling with him. Indeed, it was the knowledge he would die young that drove him to account for every minute.

After his death, his empire and expansion plans were taken over by J Arthur Rank, and the name of Oscar Deutsch was forgotten by all but dedicated cinema buffs.

By the 1980s the Kingston area, which had boasted five Odeons, was left with none. Those years of deprivation will end on October 18 when a £10 million Odeon opens in the Rotunda Centre. It has 14 screens and 3,060 seats, on five storeys within the walls of the former Bentalls furniture depository a listed landmark inspired by a Spanish palace.

It's sad that no local Deutsch-built Odeons survive because they were 1930s architecture at its best, made distinctively elegant by the use of cream glazed terracotta facings and a vivid red logo, edged with gold. The name from the ancient Greek word for an amphitheatre was chosen because it was deemed short, dignified and unusual and also because its first two letters were Oscar Deutsch's initials (a later theory that it stood for Oscar Deutsch Entertains is not correct. Neither is the popular belief that the Odeon chain began in Perry Barr. A cinema of that name did open there in but it did not become part of Deutsch's Odeon circuit until 1935).

l Footnote: The Kingston Odeon closed in 1967 and re-opened as a bingo hall a month later. This closed in 1987 and was demolished in 1989. A new theatre is now rising on the site. The Worcester Park Odeon closed in 1956 and was a supermarket until its demolition in 1998. Tolworth Odeon closed in 1959 and was replaced by part of Tolworth Tower two years later. The Weybridge Odeon closed in 1960, and is now the site of a Roman Catholic church. The Surbiton Odeon closed in 1975, became a B&Q store and was demolished in 1999 for the building of Waitrose. The Shannon Corner Odeon closed in 1969 and was demolished in 1985 to make way for a car park.

September 13, 2002 11:30