Daniel Graham, Secretary of the Friends of the Scala, talks about the historic cinema...

The Scala, the more popular of two cinemas in Prestatyn and the oldest, had customers running all the way up the High Street for the first showing on the coast of 'King Kong'.

Saronie (real name James Roberts) was a cinematography pioneer and he rented space in the building for exhibitions of animated, or moving, pictures by 1910 as it was originally built as the town hall in 1898.

In 1913 he took over the town hall, converting it into a cinema, and by 1914 had renamed it the Scala Cinema. As early as 1915 he was showing the first colour pictures of Prestatyn on the big screen. He also showed the first 'talkie' picture as early as March 1930. During this year the Scala was enlarged and modernised.

Saronie was seen in the auditorium at every performance, making sure that courting couples did nothing more than discreetly hold hands. With his flowing locks of white hair and his waxed, pointed, white moustache, he was well known to generations of Prestatyn's cinema goers. He ended his career in 1963, selling the Scala to the Prestatyn Urban District Council, as he had no children to carry on his exciting work in cinematography and he died in 1967 at his home in Prestatyn.

The other cinema, the Palladium, was built in 1920, closed its doors in 1979 and was later demolished.

But the Scala lived on, continuously showing films from the day it opened as a cinema, until December 2000 when it was closed due to problems with the structure.

In February 2001 there was a public meeting with more than 300 people attending to show support for their much-loved cinema. A petition was handed to Denbighshire County Council backing a rebuild of the Scala back to its former glory. The Friends of the Scala was set up a month later and continued to campaign to save the Scala [and which was reopened in 2009].