In March 1932, AG Macdonald was chosen by the Elgin Picture House Ltd. to design a cinema to be constructed on gardens behind the existing City Inn on the High Street.
This explains why the cinemas frontage was low and undramatic; Macdonald had to insert an entrance into an existing building. The entrance block was a low, two-storey building, with a tiled roof.
The cinema entrance itself was on the left of this block, a wide opening announced only by a projecting canopy above, which had neon lights underneath to draw people inside.
Perhaps the modest façade allowed for a larger budget to be made available for the interior, since with two existing older cinemas already in the town (see below), the new cinema had to
impress with its luxury and experience; the auditorium could not afford to disappoint.
The building opened on Thursday November 24th 1932, after a construction period of just 15 weeks. A message from the Prime Minister wishing the venture success was read out, and the opening
bill featured ‘Jack’s the Lad’ and ‘Mickey Mouse’. Prime Minister Ramsey Macdonald visited his son’s building in December of 1932. The new cinema was clearly a success, as the Picturedrome
closed not long after the Playhouse opened, and the Picture House had gone over to bingo by 1964, leaving the Playhouse the sole survivor.
The auditorium once sat 1,522 in stalls and balcony – the largest capacity of any cinema designed by Macdonald. The ceiling consisted of a series of shallow steps, leading down towards the screen.
Set into each of the steps are a row of circular house lights, each surrounded by a series of ‘petals’. The proscenium consists of a series of two vertical pillars on each side, supporting a single, horizontal
arched band, which was originally back-lit.
The side walls featured a dark wooden dado, with horizontal banding running the full length of the stalls, up to door level. Above, a repeating pattern, mirrored on both sides, consists of conical-shell
lights set between a series of illuminated vertical columns and decoration.
The series of conical, shell-shaped lights emerge from a base of carved foliage, consisting of a series of five set vertically, each emerging from the next, reducing in size, until the sixth and final shell,
set slightly above and separate from the rest.
A series of three vertical strips, outlined with thin bands, terminate in a central concealed light, from which further carved foliage appears to be growing. This is a trick Macdonald would use again in
his later cinemas; by building up otherwise plain surfaces with a series of thin boards, the edges and joints between the boards would, when correctly lit, create a series of
shadows enhancing a 3D effect, rating the illusion of depth cheaply yet effectively.
It is interesting to compare elements of Elgin’s decorative scheme with the famous ‘Mermaid’s Palace’ interior style of the London New Victoria (Trent & Lewis, 1930, Grade II*), with its stylised
columns with graduated shell-like patterning, containing concealed lighting. Elgin’s side-wall decoration and lighting could be seen as being inspired by this; certainly Macdonald was working in
London at that time, and would have been familiar with the building.
In 1986, the Playhouse auditorium was twinned, and the entrance moved from the High Street to the side of the auditorium. The cinema now seats 330 in Screen 1 (original front stalls), and 220 in
Screen 2 in the original balcony. The balcony side-wall decoration is currently covered by curtains, though it is thought portions of the original design is hidden behind these. The twinning has created
Cinema 1 in the front stalls, retaining much original decoration. A new projection box was constructed under the balcony to service this. Screen 2 is the balcony, with a new screen erected in front of it;
this is serviced by the original projection room.
Caledonian Associated Cinemas & AB King
The only truly Scottish-controlled cinema chain, the CAC Company was formed in 1935, with a registered address of Bank Chambers, Inverness, and the telephone number ‘Inverness 1’. It grew
through merging of a number of smaller circuits and individual cinema companies, until by 1947, it controlled 51 cinemas across Scotland. One of its directors was Sir Alexander B King, who
mainly handled the booking of films for them from his offices in Glasgow.
AB King was also driving force behind his own circuit of over ninety cinemas across the whole of Scotland at that time; meaning he effectively controlled the booking for around 140 screens,
allowing him to negotiate better deals from the film distributors, and made competing against the larger, well funded London-controlled chains such as ABC and Gaumont/Odeon much easier.
In 2007, only two cinemas still show films under the CAC name: the Playhouse Perth and the Playhouse Elgin.
Architect: Alister G Macdonald
The architect for the Playhouse was Alister G. Macdonald. It is the earliest surviving purpose-built cinema by this important architect, one of only a handful of his buildings to survive throughout
the UK, and, crucially, contains his best known surviving auditorium.
Macdonald was the eldest son of Britain’s first-ever Labour Prime Minister, Ramsey Macdonald. Alister’s first cinema job was probably as Clerk of Works to Frank Verity for Paramount’s Plaza
in London’s Regent Street in 1925-6. After a spell studying skyscrapers and sound insulation design in America, he went on to become the leading architect of newsreel cinemas in Britain. The skills
he learned in the USA were to prove useful when it came to designing these small, compact news cinemas in cramped, awkward sites, such as railway stations. His most famous such designs were at
Victoria and Waterloo Stations in London, although sadly his plans for a cinema in Glasgow's Central Station were unrealised. He also built numerous conventional cinemas, most notably for the
Caledonian Associated Cinemas group (CAC) in Scotland, including the Playhouses in Peebles, Montrose [now demolished] and Elgin, the Broadway in Prestwick [due for demolition], as well as
the Empire Cinema and Peace Pavilion for the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow’s Bellahouston Park in 1938 – portions of the cinema were later moved to Lochgilphead, where they survive as a
guesthouse, although the Peace Pavilion has been completely lost.
With offices in both Edinburgh and London, Alister Macdonald was well placed to take the latest cinema architecture trends and apply them to his designs across the country. His reputation and
skills were clearly held in high regard – when the Architects Journal published a special book on Modern Cinemas in 1936, Macdonald was invited to contribute not just an exemplar of his work
on a ‘typical cinema’ (the Playhouse Montrose), but also an entire chapter on the design on the complexities of designing newsreel cinemas.