In 1919, Music Hall it seemed was no longer the popular past-time in Southend. The advent of the Moving Pictures had led to an upsurge in new picture houses and cinemas sprouting up all over the town. Even the Palace Theatre, built in 1912, also catered for moving pictures.
The beautiful Empire theatre was by the standards of the day too small and in need of re-furbishment. We don't know the exact reason why it closed, but we think it is safe to assume that cinema was the preferred entertainment, and people no longer attended the theatre, preferring the new phenomenon of moving pictures (and later talking pictures) to live performance.
So in 1919 the theatre closed, and underwent an amazing transformation into a luxurious picture house, a 'Supercinema'. The new cinema seated 1,500 quite easily, and gave each individual a perfect view of the screen, which was placed more or less on the back wall of the theatre. There were two balconies, the first one consisting of convenient family boxes. The painters were most lavish with the gold paint on the proscenium decorations, which were a marvellous piece of handiwork. Among other attractions an ordinary church organ had been installed, and there was a well-appointed café over the entrance vestibule.
Similar to the New Empire all those years before, the opening of this new building was attended by all the local dignatories, including the Mayor who is said to have congratulated those responsible for the way in which they had transformed a building which he preferred to forget, into the spacious and really handsome cinema.
Many great films were shown at the Rivoli, including silent films such as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Ben Hur. Many of the Tom Mix and Buck Jones westerns were screened, and often to add dramatic effect, electrically operated explosions were set off on the side of the stage to coincide with the blowing up of a ship or castle. In 1929 the talkies arrived, and in 1935 the cinema, which for many years had been run by Sydney Bacon, became part of the Union circuit.
In November 1961, the cinema closed again for six and a half months, the picture house being completley modernised and redecorated at a cost of £90,000. It reopened on 7th June 1962 as the ABC luxury cinema.
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