Description

Majestic Cinema

An impressive Art Deco interior which draws in the tourists

The Majestic Cinema is the only working cinema in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, England. It opened in 1937, and has three screens, a large screen with around 330 seats and two small with around 80 seats. The upstairs screens previously made up a balcony when the cinema had only one screen. The cinema is now operated by the chain ‘Reel Cinemaas’.

Designed Michael Egan and Eugene Mollo, two highly influential talents in cinema design who made their name in the heyday of British cinema architecture.

Michael Henry Egan, architect and interior designer: born St Médard-en-Jalles, France 11 November 1907; he was brought up in Limerick and at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. In 1925, he became a student at the Architectural Association but left before completing his courses, to replace the architect working with the French decorators Marc Henri and Laverdet, then busy on theatres and cinemas.

In the 1930s, cinema work provided a golden opportunity for bold and adventurous young designers and architects. Michael Egan played a key role in devising an astonishingly high proportion of the many innovative, flamboyant but effective cinema interiors of the period. By 1931 he was collaborating with the company’s senior artist Eugene Mollo, half-Russian and slightly older. The pair got on so well that they set up in business for themselves after their bosses returned to France. As

Mollo and Egan, the partnership provided interior designs for dozens of cinemas, their work usually being attributed to the architect. In general, Mollo provided vivid murals and other sprayed paint decoration and the jazzy carpet patterns. Egan was more involved in the decorative plasterwork and in the structural aspects of their schemes.