The Tyneside Cinema was opened as a news cinema, the Bijou News-Reel Cinema on 1 February 1937, and was commonly known as the News Theatre [REF].
In 1937, the cinema became the home of the Tyneside Film Society, the origin of the Tyneside Cinema itself which, by the late 1950s, had grown into the largest film society in the UK outside London [REF].