SOUTHAMPTON’S Ritz cinema in Bitterne was not the most prepossessing of buildings, but it was where countless youngsters whiled away their Saturday mornings all for the price of sixpence (2p).

At the height of the cinema’s popularity, up to 700 youngsters would cram into the auditorium, which stood close to the site of a presentday health club in the pedestrian precinct.

Ironically the title of the last film to be shown at the cinema, in July 1961, was a Western entitled The Last Command.

The Ritz had first opened its doors to the public just before the Second World War and was considered a well-appointed theatre.

The last manager, Mr RL Paton, told the Daily Echo just before the credits rolled for the final time: “When it opened, the Ritz probably had an expectation of a 50 to 60-year life.

“But we have tried everything to make it work. People blame the ‘telly’ for lack of business, but that wasn’t the only reason as people’s taste seemed to have changed.

“We’ve put on every type of programme, but we cannot get a whole audience.

“Each time I have gone to work it was with the knowledge that I’m not even flogging a dead horse, just picking up the bones.”

The Ritz was one of a small circuit of “halls”. The company had its headquarters in Bournemouth and was known as the Harry Mears Theatres.

At the last show a straggly audience sat on a hot summer night to watch the western. When the words “The End” went up for the last time there was a slight rush to miss the National Anthem.

According to the Daily Echo of the time, a group of youths passed the sales desk and glanced at the management taking final stock.

“Look, they’re flogging the fags,”

one said, and they passed cheerfully into the street,” said the newspaper report.

“However grey-bearded Mr LA Renyard and his wife were sad.

They had been coming to the Ritz regularly since wartime days and feel keenly the loss of this, the sixth cinema to close in the borough in six years.”

Meanwhile, down in Woolston, the Ritz’s sister cinema was apparently doing well, so much so that it was being completely redecorated inside and out, and entirely reseated.

Earlier this year it was announced that the Woolston cinema, which was first opened in 1912 and then called the Picture House, is to be converted into flats.

The Woolston cinema closed in 1973 and was turned into a bingo hall, which operated up to 2009.