Dara Cinema, Naas
At a meeting of Naas Urban District Council on the night of Tuesday, 17 January 1939, plans for a new cinema for Naas were discussed. The Leinster Leader on Saturday of the same week reported the praise of Mr. Cunningham at the UDC meeting, who stated that ‘the plans look very impressive’. The Leader also featured the above rendering of the proposed cinema.
The mooted building would prove a welcome source of employment, and diversion, during ‘The Emergency’. The plans were quickly approved and the Coliseum Cinema was opened on Friday, 9 February, 1940. By any standards, that is a quick turnaround.
In Nás na Ríogh – From Poorhouse Road to the Fairy Flax, it is shown that this was not the town’s first taste of the big screen: ‘For almost forty years Naas cinemagoers found their entertainment in the Town Hall which was rented by a succession of cinema entrepreneurs’. This was indeed a period of cinema entrepreneurs, and the amount of ad hoc and ‘pop-up’ cinema ventures around Ireland at the time bears testament to this. What the Coliseum offered was a purpose-built venue, with a new Mirrophonic Sound System. This promised to provide ‘beauty of sound with astounding clarity and wonderful illusion of reality…it seems as if the stars are present in person, talking, singing and acting on the stage’. (The Leinster Leader, 20 January, 1940)
The symmetrical, open-mouthed façade protruded confidently onto North Main Street. The architects were obviously mindful of their surrounds, because the façade echoes the 1904 ‘Eacret Addition’ to the nearby Town Hall, albeit on a smaller scale. The Nás na Ríogh book describes its architecture as ‘neo-Egyptian’ and reproduced here (from the same book) is an image of the Coliseum shortly after it opened.
Such was the popularity of the Coliseum during the war years that “full house” had to be displayed on many occasions, according to the Nás na Ríogh book. Additionally, ‘The Coliseum was also used as a venue for travelling shows…The famous boxer Jack Doyle and his film star wife Movita also appeared’. You may remember Jack Doyle from Jimmy McCarthy’s song ‘The Contender’, which was covered by Christy Moore.
The cinema changed ownership in 1972 and was rebranded as the Dara Cinema. In the 1980s it was extensively remodelled and became part of a larger shopping complex. This is the version of the building that most readers of a certain age will remember.
This picture is from 1987 when ‘Dirty Dancing’ was on show. The merits of the new versus the old façade are debatable, but the building remained a source of entertainment and inspiration for many years.
Local author and film historian Wayne Byrne described his first time in the Dara: ‘The Dara Cinema was my film school. One of the most important moments of my life was when I experienced seeing a film on the big screen for the first time, and that occurred in 1988 when I saw Masters of the Universe at the Dara Cinema. I clearly recall the heavy red curtains parting … For the next two hours I was in thrall of this marriage of light and sound’.
By Kevin Dowling, Kildare County Archives and Local Studies.
