The Paramount Theatre on Oxford Street, Manchester, opened on 6 October 1930, showing "The Love Parade", and featuring a variety show on stage. The theatre was built for the Paramount Film Company of America, and was designed by Frank Verity and S. Beverley (now known as Verity & Beverley), who had also built the Plaza Theatre in London. It was one of 50 proposed Paramount Theatres; others included Paramount Leeds, Paramount Newcastle upon Tyne, Paramount Glasgow, Paramount Liverpool, Paramount Birmingham and Paramount, Tottenham Court Road, London. It was capable of seating 2,920 people on two levels (the Stalls and the Balcony), and the building also contained a fully equipped stage, a fly tower, dressing rooms, an orchestra pit, an organ and a cafe. The cinema was designed to operate in the cine-variety era; it was mostly used to show films (such as those featuring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald) but it also put on live stage shows (including those by Francis A Mangan, which were accompanied by a full orchestra). It was purchased in November 1939 by Oscar Deutsch as part of the Odeon Theatres Ltd, and was renamed as the Odeon in 1940. It became a Rank cinema in 1941. Its piano lounge subsequently hosted Bruce Forsyth among others.
The building featured a stone-faced façe with four bays, and a full-width canopy, both facing Oxford Street. The cinema has three levels, one of which is a mezzanine. The foyers and auditorium were decorated in a Baroque style; the building also had a large rounded proscenium and an illustration of the sky on the ceiling.
The theatre was divided in 1973 to become a twin screen cinema, at which time the organ was removed. It gained a third screen in 1979, and four more screens were added in 1992 using the basement and stage areas; it opened as a seven-screen cinema on 8 May 1992. The cinema had a private car park with a small number of parking spaces to the rear. In 1992 it hosted the premiere of A Few Good Men.
The theatre originally had a Wurlitzer Publix One theatre organ with 4 manuals and 20 ranks of pipes, specified by Jesse Crawford. It was planned to install one of these in each of the 50 Paramount theatres, however this was the only one to be installed, and the only one of that model to leave the United States. When the theatre was divided, the organ was acquired by the Lancastrian Theatre Organ Trust, loaned to the City of Manchester and relocated to the Free Trade Hall (a process taking four years); and was first used there in September 1977. When the Free Trade Hall closed, it was subsequently moved to the Stockport Town Hall's Great Hall.
The cinema closed in September 2004 after 74 years in use, due to competition from the AMC Great Northern. After its closure, it was occasionally used as a church.
