Predecessor: The Cosmo GFT's predecessor, the Cosmo, was Scotland's first arts cinema and only the second purpose-built arthouse in Britain, after the Curzon Mayfair in London. Opened on 18 May 1939, it was also the last cinema to be built in Glasgow before the outbreak of
WW2. The Cosmo arrived at the close of an important decade for British film culture. With the advent of sound in film, language became a barrier and popular films from the continent quickly disappeared from British screens. In Glasgow, audiences for world cinema were served by the Film Society of Glasgow. Founded in 1929, this was the first cultural film group in Scotland, and its growing membership demonstrated a real appetite for foreign-language film in the city. In fact, Glaswegians in this period had a healthy appetite for film in general: in 1939, they went to the cinema an average 51 times a year, compared to 35 times for the rest of Scotland, and 21 times in England. In 1939 Glasgow had 114 cinemas, with a total seating capacity of more than 175,000. whose cinemas included elegant art deco buildings designed for him by James McKissack. He now headed one of Glasgow's illustrious cinema chain families, and would become a co-founder of the Glasgow
Citizen's Theatre alongside
James Bridie and
Tom Honeyman. The name chosen of Cosmo was attractively brief for signage and advertising, and stemmed from cosmopolitan. Singleton appointed his usual architects
James McKissack and WJ Anderson II to work on the new cinema. Their design for the Cosmo's geometric, windowless façade was influenced by the work of
Willem Marinus Dudok, a leading Dutch modernist architect. The international theme was continued outside in the choice of cladding materials – a mix of Ayrshire brick finished with faience cornices, set on a base of black Swedish granite – and inside, where a globe was installed over the stalls entrance. In its original layout, there was just a single auditorium, seating 850. The opening screening was
Julien Duvivier's Un Carnet de Bal (1937). The opening also saw the first appearance of Mr Cosmo, a dapper and bowler-hatted cartoon figure based on George Singleton, designed by Charles Oakley, Chair of the Film Society and the Scottish Film Council . Mr Cosmo figured on posters and adverts for the cinema, and popped up on-screen ahead of the main feature in a pose – comic or tragic – appropriate to each release. Over the years, he would become a familiar figure to generations of Glasgow cinema-goers and can be glimpsed around the GFT building to this day. Quality European cinema was central to the Cosmo's programming from the start, with pre-reading of film catalogues being undertaken by Charles Oakley to assist the selections by George Singleton. Programmes in the summer of 1939 included
La Grande Illusion (1937) and
La Kermesse Heroique (1935). Though supplies dried up during WW2 and the cinema fell back on more mainstream English-language fare, screenings were enthusiastically resumed shortly thereafter. In February 1946, the Cosmo became the first cinema in the UK to screen a French film made under the Occupation, and Cosmo audiences also saw wartime German features, including – in breathtaking Agfacolour –
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1943). Big hits at the cinema included
Hamlet (which ran for eleven weeks in 1948),
Les Enfants du Paradis (1945), ''
Jazz on a Summer's Day'' (1959) and Disney's
Fantasia (1941), a long-running Cosmo Christmas favourite. A ‘Cosmo Club’, offering films ‘unblessed by the Censor's certificate’, opened in 1960.
As the Glasgow Film Theatre The Cosmo ran for three decades until economic circumstances dictated that it could not survive in its original form. On 21 April 1973 it was sold to the Scottish Film Council, re-opening the following year as the Glasgow Film Theatre with the former auditorium subdivided into a 404-seat cinema (now Screen 1) in the former balcony and a conference/exhibition space in the stalls. Mr Cosmo bowed out at a gala screening of
Fantasia, announcing he would ‘watch with pride an affection this new development of the old tradition.’ both of which reference the ‘cosmos’ in their design. In 1988 the building was B-listed by
Historic Scotland.
Notable guests Over the years GFT has played host to guests including
Richard Attenborough,
Danny Boyle,
Robert Carlyle,
Robbie Coltrane,
Sean Connery,
Willem Dafoe,
Carl Davis,
Bill Forsyth,
Stephen Fry,
Peter Greenaway,
David Hayman,
Jane Horrocks,
Eddie Izzard,
Richard Linklater,
Felicity Kendal,
Janet Leigh,
Mike Leigh,
Ken Loach,
Baz Luhrmann,
David Lynch,
Ewan McGregor,
Hayley Mills,
David Puttnam,
Jean-Paul Rappeneau,
Christopher Reeve,
Nicolas Roeg,
Mickey Rooney,
Paul Schrader,
Martin Scorsese,
Tilda Swinton,
Quentin Tarantino,
Giuseppe Tornatore and
Max von Sydow and
Hannah Head-Rapson and
Ewan Stewart. ==Films==