Kettering Savoy

The Kettering Savoy was originally known as the Coliseum Theatre. It opened in 1910 in a building which had been built seven years earlier, but a fire gutted it in 1937. The theatre was rebuilt and reopened on 21 May 1938 with a screening of the Hollywood film Big City (1937), starring Spencer Tracy and Luise Rainer, and a variety show on stage. Over the years, numerous stage productions were held in the theatre, and several prestigious actors appeared on stage here in their earlier careers. It was annexed by the Clifton Cinemas circuit on 25 August 1944, and the Northampton Repertory Company were based there between 1949 and 1951; it was described as the Northampton Repertory Theatre's…

The Kettering Savoy had 1150 seats. The stage measured 43 x in width and depth; its height was 60 feet. Grecian murals decorated the interior, with "concealed lighting and elaborated ventilation grills down the sides and above the rectangular proscenium." There were seven dressing rooms and a band room. In 1968, it was split, with a small cinema of 485 seats, known as The Studio, and the stage becoming a bingo hall. Five years later, in 1973, the screen was split into two, dividing the cinema into Studio 1 and 2, with 160 and 140 seats respectively.