What a treat to watch Gladiator II at the beautifully restored, grade II listed, Royal cinema, in the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield. This important Art Deco cinema opened as an Odeon cinema in 1936. It was designed by the architect Cecil Clavering for Oscar Deutsch and the Odeon group of companies.
Odeon is an Ancient Greek name used to describe a small Greek or Roman theatre. “Oscar Deutsch Entertains Our Nation” is another interpretation of the Odeon name!
The design for the Royal in Sutton Coldfield was based upon the Titania Palast in Berlin (1928), by Shloenbach and Jacobi, and Cecil Clavering first adopted this style at the Beacon cinema in Kingstanding, Birmingham.
In the listing description for the Royal, Sutton Coldfield, Historic England state that this cinema is historically, perhaps the most important single cinema in the development of the Odeon house style.
There was quite a battle save this cinema from demolition and it was empty for many years. One of the verses repeated in Gladiator II is by Virgil, the Roman poet, which seems apt:
“The gates of hell are open night and day; Smooth the descent, and easy is the way: But to return, and view the cheerful skies, In this the task and mighty labor lies.”
(From the Aeneid, written by Virgil, between 29 and 19 BC).
