DMA444

Re the La Scala, it was opened as Kelso's La Scala Cinema later owned by CAC and did have a restaurant/tearoom (see front of cinema pic attached) the restaurant was on the Strothers Lane Side and when sitting in the cinema if you looked up to the right, you could see two boxes which were part of the restaurant. As stated the Empire Theatre closed in 1970 and I was privileged to be there on stage on the last night, and took several photographs, which you can find at the following link: http://www.scottishcinemas.org.uk/scotland/inverness_empire/index.html I did some work there over time, when Willie Aird was the stage manager. On the final evening, at the very end as you can see from the photos , all the stage tabs and cyclorama were 'flown' into the fly tower out of site for ever at the request of John Worth. There were two performances on the final evening (both sold out) where was everybody when they were needed. Greedy CAC sold the site to BT...where is CAC now? About four years ago I went inside the Palace Cinema and took some photos during its last days as Bingo, I'm very glad I did You will also see photos of the Playhouse not very good quality as they were taken from a movie called 'Movieman' made by an Aberdeen amateur cinematographer called Ron Miller who sadly died. The master copy of the film is held in the archives of the IAC (www.theiac.org.uk) and has probably been digitised recently. I gave a copy to the Museum several years ago when I was up home. The movie is about the life of James S Nairn (Playhouse manager and NE area supervisor of CAC. Derek Mathieson