麻豆约拍

The city of Manchester was fortunate enough to have two very fine four manual Wurlitzer organs installed within a couple of hundred yards of each other, one in the Gaumont cinema and the other in the Paramount and it's that instrument which is the subject of this, the third in our special organ collection here on the website.
The Paramount, Manchester opened its doors to an amazed and fascinated public on October the 6th. 1930. It was going to be one of around 50 such Paramount theatres to be opened around the UK and they were all to be given a particular model of Wurlitzer known as a Publix No. 1.
It was a beautiful theatre seating just under three thousand and the twenty ranks of organ pipes were divided into two chambers, one on each side of the theatre just in front of the proscenium archnvelopeing the whole theatre in glorious sound. In 1968, an organisation came into being which is still going strong today, namely the Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust. A group of enthusiasts founded the LTOT with, firstly, the aim of maintaining the Wurlitzers in the Odeon and Gaumont cinemas while they were still in situ and, secondly, to be able to build up enough funds to buy and re-locate the instruments should they ever become available. They established an excellent working relationship with the general manager of Manchester's Rank cinemas at that time, Brian Bint, and the Trust started presenting regular Sunday morning concerts at both cinemas featuring the country's top theatre organists. These were very professionally presented with a dressed stage and the theatre beautiful lit and it was not uncommon for there to be audiences of five or six hundred, sometimes more.
In 1973, news came that the Odeon, Manchester was to be tripled and the Wurlitzer had to be moved. What happened next will be revealed in part two of the story in a couple of weeks' time.