Robins
Viewfield Place, East Port
Opened 1913 seating 711. Renamed Orient Express, 1982. Later tripled. Owned by CAC for a time.
Reopened as Robin's, 1992.
Closed 2000 [photo
here courtesy Graham Kelly]. B-listed .
As gallery of interior photos taken on the last night as a cinema can be found here , courtesy of Bobby Nicholson.
Pete Naples remembers:
It was tripled in the 1980s,
although screen 3 was video. This was a rather poor system, a Sony 3
gun video projector, fed by two low band U-Matic VTRs with a system
called TALIS, to change from one machine to the other as the tapes were
1 hour max. It was forever breaking down and going out of register.
When Robins took over after the CAC closure , we removed the back 2
rows of seats in screen 3, built a wall and shoehorned a Westar 35mm
projector, with tower in the space created. Access was from the
auditorium itself, or via booth 2 as a doorway had been formed in the
dividing wall. The screen was fixed at 1.66:1 IIRC which necessitated
the use of a rather old anamorphic lens, a GB Kalee Varamorph. These
have a variable compression…
Robins
Viewfield Place, East Port
Opened 1913 seating 711. Renamed Orient Express, 1982. Later tripled. Owned by CAC for a time.
Reopened as Robin's, 1992.
Closed 2000 [photo
here courtesy Graham Kelly]. B-listed .
As gallery of interior photos taken on the last night as a cinema can be found here , courtesy of Bobby Nicholson.
Pete Naples remembers:
It was tripled in the 1980s,
although screen 3 was video. This was a rather poor system, a Sony 3
gun video projector, fed by two low band U-Matic VTRs with a system
called TALIS, to change from one machine to the other as the tapes were
1 hour max. It was forever breaking down and going out of register.
When Robins took over after the CAC closure , we removed the back 2
rows of seats in screen 3, built a wall and shoehorned a Westar 35mm
projector, with tower in the space created. Access was from the
auditorium itself, or via booth 2 as a doorway had been formed in the
dividing wall. The screen was fixed at 1.66:1 IIRC which necessitated
the use of a rather old anamorphic lens, a GB Kalee Varamorph. These
have a variable compression ratio, so the picture was bodged to fit the
screen. There was a waterfall curtain in 3 which was nothing but
trouble.
Screens 1&2 had been equipped with Dolby Stereo, however CAC took
that with them, and left the place with Cinemecannica mono amplifiers,
Gaumont Kalee 19 projector in 2 and a GK21 in 1. Both were tower fed
with Peerless Magnarc xenon conversion lamphouses and T&R
rectifiers. After a few years of doing good business Robins put Dolby
Stereo back in screen 1, and replaced the worn out Kalee with a Monee
projector, a copy of the famous Westar. I recall this causing massive
headaches as the left and right screen speakers were found to be u/s
and the new Monee machine had all manner of headaches. However it all
worked out eventually.
Both screens 1 & 2 had variable side masking and rather nice tabs,
the walls were finished in what became the standard CAC folded cloth
panelling. At the time of the tripling the CAC theatre controller was
Forbes Castell (formerly manager of the CAC Regal in Dunfermline High
Street, site of the infamous fire). Forbes lived in Dunfermline and
probably pushed for the work to be done to a high standard.
The screen 1 booth was quite spacious, and had entrance doors on either
side. Often you could stick your head out and disturb the young couples
who always made a bee line for the two small balcony areas either side
of the booth. Screens 2 & 3 booths were rather more cramped. As
well as housing the projection equipment they housed our supply of
trailers, spares and the electrical switchgear for all 3 screens. An
interesting note is that the electrics were installed by Andrew
Thomson, a local electrical firm who are still in business, although
now they concentrate on supplying TV, washing machines etc.
One of my most lasting memories of the place was changing lamps in the
roof of screen one. You crawled up through a hatch in the manager’s
office, crossed a small void, climbed another ladder and squeezed
through another hatch in to the screen 1 roof void. From there you had
crawl boards and the lamps were on traps which pulled up into the void
for changing. Quite scary when you dropped a globe and watched it
slowly spiral towards the auditorium floor!
1990s photos
here and
here, courtesy of Donald Kirkbride.
As of December 2004, it was being completely gutted to be transformed
into a nightclub, which has since closed.
Photos below of the destruction work courtesy of Laura Dudley
