Reading’s first cinema both opened and closed quickly in 1909 on Cross Street. The cinema was known as the Cross Street Hall, or, Reading Picture Palace, and was open for one month. In the short space it was open, adverts in the newspaper spread the word to the locals and the cinema played recent films of the time like, The Invisible Thief, At the Altar and, A Strange Meeting. It is unclear why the cinema closed so early, though it is likely to have been down to the three other cinemas that opened in Reading that year.
On the same street, just a few doors down from the Reading Picture Palace there was a cinematography business run by Mr Henry Dee who is advertised as offering animated pictures and ‘Dissolving Views’ (this being a type of animated lantern slide show). 1909 was a transitional time for film and animated magic lantern shows would have been closely connected in the public’s imagination to the flickering screen of the Reading Picture Palace