The Triangle Cinema and the Italian Connection

The Triangle Cinema, 1957

For Heathan Mr. J. Pomphrett time spent in the Triangle or Alhambra Cinema was time well spent! And afterwards there was always the lure of an Italian...

The old ‘uns used to tell me it was called Pringles Picture Palace till about 1919 and it was above the drapers’ shop in Gooch Street. Lions Estates bought it about 1919/ 1920 and it was the Triangle Cinema from then on until it was pulled down. I loved the Triangle, I loved the penny crush! The Alhambra was better, we used to go there with Mother and Father on a Saturday afternoon or sometimes in the week. It was a better cinema as you could see better class but the Triangle was the local cinema for the kids. Outside in the 1940s and 50s there was Lucy Menzona, she lived in William Edwards Street, she done baked taters in the winter with a baked tater cart and was there till about nine or ten o’clock. In the summer she made Italian, they were Italian, ice-cream out of an old fashioned cart. Of course come the mid 1950’s she couldn’t compete with Midland Counties and the rest of them so she packed the ice cream business in. You would often see her with her husband and the cart, they lived on the corner of William Edwards Street.
J. Pomphrett
The Triangle was opened in 1915, at the junction of Conybere and Gooch Street, as Pringles Picture Palace. Owner, Ralph Pringle, had three picture houses - all showing more low-borw sensational films than the Alhambra. The cinema was sold and duly re-opened, in 1924, as The Triangle.
The Alhambra, on Moseley Road, opened in 1928, and was a far more luxurious cinema evoking the style of the Alhambra Palace in Granada, Spain. It closed in 1968.