It’s now 1965 and the writing is on the wall, the Essoldo Stretford is to become a bingo hall. Who is protesting the closure? The teenagers of course!
I have read many letters condemning teenagers on the streets but are where we expected to go? I live in Old Trafford. We have two local cinemas but they are now bingo halls. Now it has come to my attention that we are to lose our third, the Essoldo, Stretford, to this bingo craze. I would like to know of what interest bingo is to teenagers! Our nearest cinema is sale or Manchester, bowling every night is too expensive, to go to iceskating we have to travel to Altrincham or Cheatham Hill, so we are left with the worst past time of all, drinking! I was in the Essoldo cinema the other Saturday and it was full, which proves people still like to see good films, so why must we all suffer with “Kelly’s eye.”
Miss Jean Richardson. Old Trafford, Manchester.
Manchester Evening News 11th October 1965
Barbara , 16, fights to save cinema.
Twice a week moviegoer Barbara Hughes, age 16, has launched a campaign to keep Stretfords only cinema. Already more than 700 people have signed a petition organised by Barbara and four friends. Barbara, a cost clerk, got to work when she heard that the owners of the 30-year-old has sold a cinema at Stretford had applied to the town Council for planning permission to change it to a bingo hall. We want at least 1000 names before we hand the petition to the cinema owners,“ said Barbara, who lives in Derbyshire Avenue, Stretford .“I go to the pictures twice a week and I am sure lots of other people enjoy it as well. We don’t want bingo in its place. There are enough bingo halls already, and there is not much entertainment for teenagers.“ Essoldo manager, Mr Robert Moss, said the cinema owners were looking into the possibility of switching to bingo.
Manchester evening news 12th of May 1965.
(Photo of teenagers at the Essoldo Stretford in the 1960s courtesy of the daughter of the Robert Moss as mentioned in the letter above!)
Longford and Essoldo Cinema Stretford 
We so loved those double seats up at the back, my wife to be and I, sometimes watching little of the film.