| Stokesley Cinema Closes
Then in 1963 - The Lyric Cinema at Stokesley, one of the smallest cinemas operating in the country, is doomed unless business improves. For the past three years it has fought valiantly for survival while all around its contemporaries have given up the struggle and turned into bingo halls.
“I’m just hanging on by the skin of my teeth” said Mr A.C.Marett, the owner who took over the cinema two years ago. In his first year he made a small profit, and in the second year he broke even. “But this year I will be well down.”
Paradoxically, Mr Marett’s biggest customer, and headache, is the teenager.
“They are my regulars, but they create so much damage and noise, they drive the older people away.
Mr
Marett, who was born in Jersey, is a local postman, but he has been connected with the film industry since the age of 15.
On the subject of bingo, he was adamant. “It’s either the cinema or nothing for me” he said.
Now in
1998 - The Lyric finally closed in 1965 and became a sale room run by Mr Frank Taylor of Queens Drive Stokesley who specialised in antique and modern
furniture. In recent years it was taken over and renamed Yesterdays Pine a company offering traditional pine furniture, made to measure or from stock.
This article originally appeared in the August 1998
issue of Now & Then
Magazine
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