In later years the decline of the coal industry and widening ownership of television sets was to have a heavy impact on cinema audiences gradually eroding cinema attendance in the late 1960s. Bingo sessions were introduced to try and draw back some people, but this was not enough to save the place and the cinema finally closed its doors around 1972. The last film to be screened was 'The King and I', and ironically, a record audience.

Since that last show the cinema been closed up and lay virtually untouched and unseen for over thirty years until it was rediscovered by a film director in search of a location set. subsequently an interesting and unexpected new chapter in the story of the Memo was started. That film "House" directed by Julian Kemp in 1998, sets its story of a declining bingo hall in the Memo auditorium. In 1999 another film crew used the cinema to film scenes for the Sara Sugarman film "Very Annie Mary". It was at this time that the all the downstairs seats where removed by the film crews they were never put back but remain stacked on the upper balcony.