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Fremantle Stuff > Early Days: Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society

The golden age of cinema in Perth

J.H.M. Honniball

Honniball , J.H.M. 1982, 'The golden age of cinema in Perth', Volume 8, Part 6: 39-53.

Soon after the birth of cinematography and the first film screenings in Europe in 1895 this new medium of art and communication came readily to far-flung comers of the world like Perth, because of its convenient format and easy mobility. Here, as elsewhere, films developed within a few years from a novelty to a widespread form of popular entertainment, at first edging into place alongside melodrama and vaudeville and eventually largely supplanting them. The commodious theatres at which the films came to share the programmes, were only just beginning to make their appearance in Perth in the late 1890s and their advent was in response to the rapid increase in population which the gold rush brought the city as well as the backblocks. Since 1870 Perth had had its little Town Hall and since 1879 its St. George’s Hall (and still has them), but next it was to acquire the sort of venues which the neighbouring colonies had enjoyed for decades. First came the open-air Cremorne Gardens in Murray Street, and the name survives there today in the rather seedy Cremorne Arcade which runs through to Hay Street. Here at the Cremorne, and also at the Town Hall that has graced Fremantle since 1887, the new moving pictures were exhibited for the first time in December 1896.

The Cremorne was soon followed by two more imposing structures, both in Hay Street, which were among the many enterprises of T.G.A. Molloy (business partner of Alexander Forrest and, like him, mayor of Perth for a time.) Given the same resplendent names as their earlier counterparts in the eastern capitals, and sharing ornate facades with adjoining hotels, they were the Theatre Royal of 1897 and His Majesty’s Theatre of 1904. The latter claimed to be the first of concrete construction, and to possess the largest stage in Australia. In 1899, there arose another spacious auditorium, along with new shops and offices, when the Methodist Church redeveloped the valuable property it owned in William Street between Wesley Church and Murray Street; known for nearly thirty years as Queen’s Hall, this was intended primarily for meetings and concerts.

Early in the new century these three venues were offering film shows from time to time, along with the Town Hall and humbler establishments such as the sloping Esplanade Gardens at the foot of William Street, where boxing exhibitions otherwise held sway. For the first few years the celluloid presentations were

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generally organised by visiting agents ot well-known showmen based in the eastern states: J.C. Williamson, J. and N. Tait, and C.C. Spencer. Then in 1906 a prominent British exhibitor, T.J. West, arrived on the scene and quickly formed a cinema chain or circuit throughout Australia and New Zealand, mainly by taking leases of existing theatres. As well as at Perth, he was soon proclaiming West’s Pictures at Fremantle, Midland, Kalgoorlie, Bunbury and Albany. In late Edwardian years Spencer’s Pictures dominated the playing-time at the Royal and the Esplanade, while West’s held sway first at the Melrose Theatre in Murray Street and then around the corner at the Queen's Hall. After some intense rivalry in both the production and exhibition fields, Spencer’s and West’s merged in 1912, and were next absorbed by Union Theatres, though the name West’s Theatre was retained by a cinema in Subiaco until the 1930s.

As many as a dozen or fifteen short films, each of one or two reels, made up the usual cinema programme in the years just before World War I. Most were of British or Continental origin, but occasionally there was an item that had been specially shot locally by a visiting cinematographer. Thus it comes about that the earliest productions preserved today in the State Film Archives are a short farce set in suburban Perth, a news item of a foot-racing event at Boulder (both of them filmed in 1907), and newsfilm of the Royal Show at Claremont in 1909; ail were the work of Leonard Corrick, member of a family theatrical troupe from New Zealand. The fourth-oldest item is ‘A Trip to Rottnest’, a travelogue made in 1912 by a cameraman of Spencer’s for a State government eager to promote a new holiday resort.

Among resident exhibitors, a position of pre-eminence was soon achieved by L Thomas Melrose Coombe, who had come from South Australia and established a thriving business in vaudeville and films at his unpretentious Melrose Theatre in association with West’s in central Murray Street, a few doors from William Street. His chief local rival for a few years was Victor Jubilee Newton, born in Victoria in 1887, who had come to Perth and quickly learned the trade in the employ of the Cremorne and West’s; in 1912 he began operating Vic’s Pictures on behalf of a local syndicate which took a lengthy lease of Queen’s Hall. Other early city venues were the Shaftesbury Gardens, the Star and the Olympia.

Further developments in the cinema business came about during World War II. Several picture houses opened in roomy premises that were formerly shops, and offered films at continuous sessions day and evening with admission at 3d and 6d (2.5 and 5 cents). Thus emerged Union Theatres’ Palladium and Pavilion and the short-lived Britannia, all in central Hay Street. They were followed in 1916 by the first cinemas especially built as such: the Grand, with twin turrets and chimneys giving a quaint and homely profile in Murray Street (and with

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secondary entrance from Barrack Street) was the investment of Coombe; while J.C. Williamson Films commissioned the Majestic, whose upper facade presented to central Hay Street the large arched window which was so characteristic of early picture theatres the world over. The fare they offered was steadily improving in content and increasing in length. However, the war’s main effect on the industry world-wide was to bring about the eclipse of British and Continental film production by the long-neutral Americans whose fast-developing centre of operations was Hollywood. [Incidentally, a number of Australians began making their way to Hollywood, and among those who became a ‘star’ of some note in silent films was Enid Bennett, born at York and daughter of the first headmaster of Guildford Grammar School.]

By the end of the war, Newton’s European sources of supply had largely dried up, and Vic’s Pictures therefore ceased to occupy the Queen’s Hall. Coombe, however, was prospering, and in 1918 joined forces with Union Theatres, a fast-developing interstate chain which had secured a large share of Hollywood's output; this brought together under his managerial oversight the Grand, Palladium, Pavilion and Melrose Theatres. His only real rival in Perth now was J.C. Williamson’s Majestic, which played films produced by the up-and-coming Fox company. In the late war years then, the basis was laid of a general pattern of film supply and exhibition in Perth which was to undergo significant modifications only at long intervals. At this time too, local entrepreneurs were busy bringing the moving pictures to the suburbs; in some instances they hired existing halls, and amongst the open-air venues which proffered regular screenings in the summer months were the football ovals at Loton Park and Leederville. At war’s end there were three cinemas in Fremantle.

As feature films steadily emerged, the session times had to be well-defined and patrons became rather choosy about what they saw and where they sat. The film industry’s American leaders also applied pressure to ensure that attractive cinemas of high standard were provided for the increasingly sophisticated audiences. And so in 1922 Coombe transformed his simple Melrose into the large and stylish Prince of Wales Theatre which reigned as Perth’s leading house for the next five years. In support to its film fare, it offered a good orchestra and one or two vaudeville items on every programme.

The leading Perth cinemas generally changed their programmes weekly, and the lesser lights twice weekly. The Palladium had achieved several seasons of a fortnight, and the Prince of Wales went on to record the longest runs — of three weeks — for two productions from Cecil B. de Mille — The Ten Commandments and King of Kings. The second Biblical opus was enhanced nightly in June 1928 by the voices of Subiaco Choral Society.

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The next major development in the city furnished evidence of a nation-wide surge by Hoyts Theatres, a firm which had begun humbly in Melbourne before the war and lately merged with J.C. Williamson Films and other smaller concerns. Hoyts now began challenging the supremacy of the Sydney-based chain of Union Theatres, and in 1926 began building the four large and sumptuous Regent Theatres which opened in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane in 1928 and 1929; in the two bigger cities they added a smaller Plaza Theatre of striking Spanish motif befitting the name. In Perth, Hoyts set their sights a little lower in securing a lease of an existing structure, the Queen's Hall, which accordingly underwent extensive transformation into a reasonably handsome Regent and was the first of the five so-named to open in 1927.

Two even more opulent picture palaces arose in the next two years, and reflected respectively the two distinctive styles of architecture lately adopted for leading cinemas the world over. The first to open, in September 1928, was the Ambassadors, which filled an excellent site in central Hay Street owned by the lately-knighted Sir Thomas Coombe. It was in the ‘atmospheric’ style, with internal decor in imitation of a Florentine garden, and a domed azure celing studded with twinkling stars and wafting clouds; its external design was in the California-Spanish style so enthusiastically patronised by Hollywood. Seating 2,000 people, it boasted an orchestra, a corps-de-ballet, vaudeville acts, a Wurlitzer organist on a moving platform, and the stage’s safety curtain in rich velvet embossed with a peacock. It was a rather smaller version of the Capitol Theatre which Union Theatres had erected near Sydney’s central station the year before, and it preceded Union’s grandest atmospheric house, the Melbourne State, which opened in 1929 and was Australia’s biggest cinema of all. In these large theatres the Union management changed their film programmes weekly and offered supporting vaudeville artists a month or two’s engagement to appear in the three cities in turn.

On 4th May 1929, seven months after the Ambassadors, the slightly larger Capitol Theatre made its debut and likewise offered Perth audiences attractive films supported by an orchestra of twenty and a ballet line of eight. It followed the alternative architectural style of neo-Gothic splendour which had already been employed less ambitiously in the Regent; it was the dignified style generally favoured by Hoyts Theatres, though best exemplified in Union’s State in Sydney which opened a few months later. The bold investment of a local syndicate headed by Dr A.J. Wright, the Capitol adjoined the Embassy Ballroom and both comprised the Temple Court Buildings which replaced the Esplanade Gardens at the foot of Wiliam Street. Like the Regent at the top of the street, it was graced by a fine chandelier and other impressive lighting effects both inside and out. A striking ornament of its commodious lounge foyer upstairs was a sculpted bust of the lately deceased and much lamented film actor Rudolph Valentino. Each side of

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an upper stairway two 'cosy corners' were embellished by panels of stained glass respectively depicting Perth in 1870 and 1928; the leadlight scenes bore witness to the state’s remarkable progress of late and were a happy gesture to its enthusiastically celebrated centenary year. Australia's cities had at least eight cinemas that were larger, but the Capitol boasted length rather than width in its dimensions and accordingly claimed to have the longest throw of image from projectors to screen.

The year 1929 was significant for Perth’s cinema industry in more ways than one. Barely a month before the Capitol opened, two of its competitors introduced the eagerly-awaited talking pictures. First exhibited in New York in August 1926 and in Sydney in December 1928, they came to Perth on 6th April 1929, when Union Theatres offered The Jazz Singer at the Prince of Wales and Hoyts simultaneously presented The Red Dance around the corner at their Regent. The rival chains also employed the rival techniques; while Union’s film required synchronised sound from huge gramophone discs, the Hoyts programme reproduced sound from impulses recorded on a track running alongside the image on the reel of film. In due course it was the latter system which triumphed.

Not surprisingly, the ‘talkies’ were an immediate success with the public of Perth, and The Jazz Singer easily took the long-run record by playing for five weeks. One by one the other cinemas engaged technicians to wire them for sound, and within six months there were five talkie houses in Perth and one in Fremantle. In October the suburbs began following suit — the Rosemount in North Perth, the Premier in East Perth, the New Oxford at Leederville, West's at Subiaco, and the Midland Town Hall.

The second reason why 1929 was a noteworthy year was a gloomier one. Unemployment and general economic conditions were already causing concern when the Perth correspondent of the national trade paper Film Weekly reported in early October that business in all the theatres was ‘far from what everyone would wish'. Already after just five months, the Capitol had dispensed with its orchestra and ballet. Although the annual Royal Show and major events of the centenary year brought crowds to the city cinemas just then, there was an ominous ring about the fact that the local film industry was the real organiser of a Lord Mayor's Unemployment Ball that was held at the Temple Court ballroom on 24th October. Just a few days later came the stock-market crash in New York which really signalled the world-wide economic depression.

In Perth, as elsewhere, the talkies and the depression combined to deal a fierce blow to the dozens of musicians and stage artists whose talents had supplemented the silent film programmes. Picture-goers became very watchful of their purses, and soon forsook the theatres which were slow to embrace sound. Having, in 1927, relinquished their Palladium (to become Walsh’s, men’s clothiers), Union

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Theatres similarly allowed their aged Pavilion to revert to the retail trade in 1 January 1930 rather than convert it for sound. In May they reduced the orchestra at their great Ambassadors from fourteen players to nine; but even with new talkies week after week, this brightest star in the western firmament finished the year’s trading at a loss. The rival Capitol fared even worse, and its owners faced bankruptcy. Although they had obtained a steady supply of good product from the new RKO Radio film studios, the theatre had soon fulfilled the forebodings of its earliest critics and proved ill-sited in respect of day-time trade and inclement weather, removed as it was from the city’s main shops, brightest lights and sheltered footpaths. However, the mortgagees succeeded in negotiating a business deal with Hoyts Theatres, who took on a ten-year lease from November 1930 with option for another ten.

Not only in Perth, but on a national scale, the deepening depression hit the Union chain badly and forced it into liquidation in the second half of 1931. However, out of the ashes the phoenix arose in the bolder guise of Greater Union Theatres, a parent company operating with local and specialised subsidiaries. Thus in Perth in November 1931 the new Greater Union Theatres (W.A.) succeeded to the control of the Ambassadors, the Prince of Wales and the Grand, and Coombe re-emerged, after three years in semi-retirement, as managing director.

The Ambassadors continued as the local flagship, maintaining a policy of weekly change and fed with the best of the product the company secured. Then, following precedent in the East, Greater Union instituted a policy of all-British films for one of their theatres, firstly the Grand for a short while, and then the Prince of Wales. Coombe was a sturdy champion of films produced in the British Empire, and as early as 1924 had strongly urged on British and local politicians the potential of sunny Western Australia as a second Hollywood. From their Sydney base. Union Theatres had long maintained a distribution arm for British and Australian films; known earlier as Greater Australasian Films, the distributing agency became British Empire Films in the early 1930s. Fifteen percent of all product released in Australia came from Britain in 1932 and it held strong appeal for Antipodean audiences.

In the early years of the talkies, the local advertisements for British film programmes vigorously emphasised the country of origin, pointing out how much pleasanter it was to hear the cultured voices and accents that were so familiar in this country instead of those American tones that grated on Australian ears.

As exhibitors in the silent era, Union Theatres had captured an overwhelming share of the total product available. However the relative strength of the Hoyts chain improved tremendously as a result of the contracts they secured for early sound films, and this was the major reason for their greater success in weathering the depression. They already had long-standing corporate ties with one particular distributor, Fox Films, and were now winning over some of the other tough and

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powerful American suppliers who had formerly released through the Union chain. Key roles were also played by the two distributors, Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who were keen to establish exclusive outlets for their product. (By 1930 the Paramount banner waved from three of the nation’s most prestigious (houses — Sydney’s Prince Edward, Melbourne’s Capitol and Brisbane’s Wintergarden. MGM followed suit early in 1934 when it obtained leases of three other theatres in the same capital cities.

Meanwhile, Greater Union in Perth had failed to make the Grand a paying proposition again, and in August 1932 Coombe therefore sold it to a group of Perth investors headed by James Stiles, a successful real estate agent whose family had conducted the Gaiety Theatre in South Perth for some years. The new Grand Theatre Company achieved rapid success from the contracts it secured at the outset with the two suppliers, Paramount and Universal, and it was soon emboldened to negotiate for the hand of MGM also. The new venture required the acquisition of a second city house, and therefore in August 1934 the local syndicate took on a lease of Molloy’s shabby old Theatre Royal, which had long been considered a white elephant and had plodded on for many years under different managements who offered whatever they could obtain for their stage or screen. After renovating it, Stiles and company found they had a bonanza in the Royal in the mid-1930s, thanks to the succession of ‘hits’ which MGM rolled out, such as San Francisco, Mutiny on the Bounty, Boom Town and Rose Marie. With the nine week season achieved by Naughty Marietta at Christmas 1935, they claimed not only a new Perth record, but also, for this particular film, a world record!

Finally, as a result of the various events and manoeuvres of 1931-2, Hoyts and Greater Union found it expedient to enter into a pooling arrangement throughout Australia, which took effect in January 1933 and was to run five years. In Perth this was expressed by the formation of Westralian Cinemas Ltd, which in effect gave Hoyts the actual management of five Perth theatres - the Capitol, Ambassadors, Regent, Prine of Wales and Majestic — and two in Fremantle. Two years later Coombe’s one-time pride and joy, the Prince of Wales, was closed and made into shops and offices, and in 1937 the former ‘picture king of Perth’ retired to South Australia.

For nearly seven years Hoyts fed the mighty Capitol with all their best product, such as the Shirley Temple films from Fox and the Astaire/Rogers musicals from RKO, many of them running a second week. The voracious Ambassadors continued its weekly changes, and kept its double-feature bills augmented by the Wurlitzer organ and a vaudeville item. After the Prince of Wales' demise, the Regent continued the all-British policy for another three years, while the ageing Majestic subsisted on second runs.

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The lingering depression also buffeted the gradually-spreading suburban cinemas. Though generally well-served by the tramlines too, there was a cinema within walking distance of practically every home, and for many people they provided a regular outing and a convenient source of cheap and reasonably wholesome entertainment. In the summer months nearly all of them screened in open-air gardens, a phenomenon scarcely known in the Eastern States’ capitals. Usually presenting three different programmes a week, with the best films at the weekends, they all offered one or two ‘family nights’ mid-week, when they showed a pair of old or third-rate films with admission at 6d (5 cents). Though the distributors disliked them, and made few concessions as to rentals, the family nights saved many a struggling cinema from disaster.

Better times returned in the later 1930s, bringing another little burst of cinema construction in both city and suburbs, this time in the ‘art deco’ style of architecture. After a twenty-year lifespan, the Majestic was demolished in 1936 to make way for a new shopping facility built by the Perth Arcade Company, which, probably at Hoyts’ behest, was given the name Plaza Arcade. On this very valuable central site, which was to become Perth’s busiest pedestrian thoroughfare, the new complex gave Perth its first auditorium entirely above street level, though still with two floors sharing its 1,313 seats. It was on much plainer lines than its precedessors of a decade earlier, with a stage reduced to just a platform, but with fully carpeted foyers, concealed lighting and some simple bas-reliefs. Opening in September 1937, this Plaza Theatre also bore little resemblance to its namesakes in Sydney and Melbourne, other than a hint of Spanish influence about its ground-level booking office and tiled forecourt (which initially faced Hay Street. It is now called the Paris Theatre, with a lobby in the arcade proper.)

Hoyts’ new tenancy of the Plaza was merely the first step in a full re-appraisal of the western links in their own cinema chain, and 1938 was largely the year of the axe. As a second move, their Majestic at Fremantle was sentenced to conversion into a shop, though it was replaced by a brand new cinema, further east in High Street, which was to be known simply as Hoyts Theatre. Early in 1938 they let their Regent go to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and the Wesleyan trustees endorsed a second major transformation of their old Queen's Hall, which made of it a particularly cosy Metro Theatre of 1,454 seats. Then, closing the Ambassadors briefly, they gave it a face-lift which replaced the florid facade by a plain one and stripped it internally of its stars and clouds. Finally, just before Christmas, they threw in their lease of the difficult Capitol, two years before it was due to expire. There was no new taker for the Capitol's screen, and for the next four years the theatre remained dark except for occasional concerts and public gatherings.

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Meanwhile, the Grand Theatre Company had continued to prosper and expand. As their next venture, they relieved Westralian Cinemas of the Princess at Fremantle in 1935 and then, early in 1938, took on a lease of a third Perth cinema — the new Piccadilly in central Hay Street. Built by the mining magnate, Claude de Bernales, close on the heels of his famous London Court arcade, the Piccadilly straddled another shopping arcade in the same way as the Plaza; rather more compact, its two floors embraced just 1,000 seats. The Piccadilly at once became the Grand Theatre Company’s leading showcase, and extended seasons were to be the usual thing. The loss of MGM product from the Royal to the new Metro the same year was a sad blow, but it was some consolation to Stiles and his associates when they secured a vital contract just then with British Empire Films, whose Pygmalion was to prove its worth with a run of seven weeks at the Piccadilly in 1939- The Grand Theatre itself was now relegated to third place, and had to subsist on weekly changes of programme drawn largely from horror films, westerns (including the singing-cowboy sub-genre), the cheaper action and adventure films, revivals and ‘moveovers’. The Grand Theatre Company also remained closely linked with South Perth Theatres, which numbered three with the opening in 1938 of the Como Theatre (now known as the Cygnet Cinema).

For summer-time audiences, an attractive feature of the three new city cinemas of 1937-8 was the modern system of air conditioning they installed per medium of electric motors and compressors. It was a decided advance on the sliding roofs which opened the Royal and His Majesty’s to the night sky and on the system of punkahs which cooled the seamy little vaudeville theatre in Beaufort Street then known as the Luxor.

The pattern of film distribution and exhibition established in Perth at the end of 1938 was to remain basically the same for thirty years, except for a remarkable distortion that was caused by another world cataclysm even more abysmal than the depression. For three years Perth had the six cinemas operating under three banners — the Piccadilly, Royal and Grand, the Plaza and Ambassadors, and the Metro. Through nation-wide contracts, Hoyts were now the general outlet for four of the nine big film distributors — 20th Century-Fox, RKO Radio, United Artists and Warner Brothers. The Grand Co. held on to Paramount, Universal and British Empire Films, and managed to secure some of Columbia’s films, while Hoyts took others. The Metro fed exclusively on MGM films. In the other five capitals, Greater Union returned to the fore again and were largely the counterpart there of the Grand Theatre Company, but they were to be another thirty years in attaining a new foothold in Perth.

The next world cataclysm was World War II. For a while there was little effect on the film industry apart from the loss of key personnel to the armed forces. But after a year or two, the cinemas began to experience a new wave of prosperity.

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With massive expenditure by the government, and women swelling the well-paid work force, most people had ample money to spend on entertainment, and yet there were fewer alternative amusements, and few so cheap, convenient and truly escapist. In fact, government and nation had much for which to thank the film industry; film exhibition required relatively little manpower or raw materials and indeed brought a good harvest in entertainment tax on admissions; many of the films shown were of the morale-building, propaganda type; and the film industry itself took a prominent part in the war effort by sponsoring charity screenings on Sundays and other fund-raising activities.

The legitimate theatre, however, was badly affected indeed, and many theatres were dark by 1941, while at the biggest cinemas the few remaining organists and live acts became fewer still. But now, continuing a trend set in Edwardian times and accelerated when talkies were new, some of the stricken stage theatres made the best of the new conditions by converting to the screen. The entrepreneur chiefly involved was Sir Benjamin Fuller, who conducted one or two stage theatres in all the Australian capitals and who had established a leading film circuit in New Zealand as early as 1907. Fuller had long been the lessee of His Majesty's in Perth, and indeed had equipped it for films in course of major renovations in 1930. He had managed to keep it a live house since that year, but late in 1941, the projectors were put into operation and began showing a succession of attractive revivals. Shortly afterwards Fuller secured valuable contracts with Warners and Columbia, who were apparently dissatisfied with the share of screen time they were being allotted by the two major chains. He obtained a lease of the long-forsaken Capitol in November 1942 and, as at His Majesty’s, wisely offered only two sessions — afternoon and evening — in contrast with his better-situated competitors who presented three or four sessions daily.

Despite the modified general blackout (known as a brownout), imposed by the authorities, business at Perth’s cinemas really boomed during 1943- In June a trade correspondent reported: ‘It is impossible to get seats in the city any Saturday night, even for revival films, unless booked in advance. Theatres that have been white elephants for years have packed out with revivals’.

The re-deployment of the Warner and Columbia product was basically due to the fact that many films were holding the screens for longer seasons than they would have done in peace-time. With several runs of five and six weeks, the proud Metro also found itself with a small surplus of new MGM films to give away to its rivals. Even the big Ambassadors kept on several strong programmes for a second week, and the Grand did better than ever with the horror and action fans. An odd and unexpected fillip to business came its way in July 1944 when it introduced a feature film based on wishful thinking entitled The Strange Death of Adolph Hitler on the very same day that press and radio announced the abortive

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attempt to assassinate the Fuehrer in East Prussia! The Piccadilly notched up a seven-week run for The Fleet’s In in 1943 and for Arabian Nights in 1944, and the Plaza progressed as far as six-week seasons. Even the huge Capitol had its share, with six weeks for Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1943 and King’s Row in 1944 and seven weeks the following Christmas for This is the Army.

It probably mattered little that advertising was severely curtailed by the general scarcity of paper and that publicity stunts could no longer be as elaborate as they were pre-war. Only a few of the largest posters, known as 24-sheeters, continued to be pasted at critical points along the city’s arteries, such as above the Horseshoe Bridge and abutting the subways. However, the thriving Metro kept up its displays of 3-sheeter posters on each platform of every suburban railway station, and considerable art work still went into lobby or front-of-house displays.

It was a pity that during the hectic war years Perth had no so-called newsreel theatrette which could have shared the popularity enjoyed by such houses in the other capitals. These institutions presented continuous sessions of an hour’s duration which comprised newsreels, animated cartoons, and other ‘shorts’. Because of restrictions on the building industry, it was early 1947 before one was established — the Mayfair—in the basement of Levinson’s buildings in central Hay Street, where there had previously been a restaurant. Yet it was not the first of its kind in Perth, for the Times Theatrette had existed for a few weeks in 1933 in the basement of Molloy’s big building which housed the Theatre Royal and Metropole Hotel. The Times must have been a little ahead of the times for Perth, or perhaps it found difficulty in securing suitable product. Certainly the manager of the Mayfair experienced a problem at the outset in obtaining Australian newsreels, for the rival exhibitors were able to confirm their exclusive access to the weekly output of the Cinesound and Movietone production units. He therefore set up a local company which produced weekly issues of Westralian News, but there were few other takers for it and the operation ceased after seven months. A full run of this series is another of the State Film Archives’ prized possessions today. Apart from this venture, the Mayfair proved to be a gold mine. (It is now known as the Capri.)

With war’s end, conditions gradually returned to normal both for the community as a whole and for the film industry specifically. Slowly the audiences declined at the cinemas as other sources of entertainment re-established themselves. At the leading cinemas the average length of season gradually contracted, though further runs of seven weeks were recorded by Going My Way at the Royal in 1945, A Song to Remember at the Piccadilly in 1946, and the Australian epic The Overlanders at the Royal in 1947.

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A change of destiny was only to be expected for Fuller’s two theatres. Early in 1947 the Capitol found its supply of new releases drying up, and had thenceforth to rely heavily on revivals. Moreover, the screen was rolled up at regular intervals when the Capitol accepted a contract to house the Australian Broadcating Commission’s subscription concerts; and it continued to be the city’s part-time concert hall for twenty years. The film industry’s trade paper summed up the general situation in January 1948: ‘Business available in this city has now got back to the pre-war level, and there are far too many seats in the city proper to do the business that the wartime boom gave us.’ At this point, after months of poor business, Fuller set aside the projectors at His Majesty’s, and a few weeks later the legitimate theatre was in full command there again.

The next event of note was the re-institition of an all-British policy for one particular theatre. After much-needed renovation in 1949, the Grand proclaimed itself ‘The Voice of Britain’ on the arched fascia of its cantilever verandah, and kept up its specialised role for the next sixteen years. Among other good things, it enjoyed the heyday of Ealing Studios’ output and was therefore responsible for facilitating a large proportion of all the laughter generated within the city in the 1950s. However, it was thanks to a contrasting subject, in The Bridge on the River Kwai that it briefly held Perth’s record for length of run early in 1958. With thirteen weeks to its credit, the wartime drama outdistanced the eleven weeks achieved by The Greatest Show on Earth, the circus film which was the Royal’s Christmas attraction for 1952. Later in 1958 the Piccadilly took the record with nineteen weeks for de Mille’s new version of The Ten Commandments.

Another new cinema came into being in 1954, when the Liberty was constructed on first-floor level amidst a warren of old shops in central Barrack Street. With a capacity of only 450 seats, it set out to be an ‘art house’ specialising in Continental films, but after a year or so found greater reward from fare in the usual variants of the English language, a moderate proportion being revivals. The Liberty (nowadays the Kimberley) was the venture of a new company, International Film Distributors, and was personified locally by Lionel Hart, who had been conductor of the Prince of Wales’ orchestra in the 1920s and who had meanwhile been in the film industry in Sydney. In 1956 Hart and his associates opened a second little theatre, the Savoy, this time in a basement below the Hay street hotel of the same name. In this, for its first few years, Perth had a second newsreel theatrette.

Throughout the 1950s Australia’s film men dreaded the inevitable advent of television, and gloomily followed its disastrous effects on cinemas overseas. The looming spectre meant, however, that Australia was early to adopt some of the industry’s new developments which were optimistically hailed as counter measures. 'When the Hollywood producers began issuing films in wider

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dimensional ratios and with greater illusion of depth, Australia’s exhibitors were soon obliged to instal the equipment to play them. And so, in December 1953, Hoyts introduced the Cinemascope lens and screen at their largest theatres, the four Regents and the Perth Ambassadors. Beginning in 1958, they also employed the more spectacular Cinerama projection for over ten years at their Sydney and Melbourne Plazas, but the expensive equipment never came to Perth or the other cities, probably because there were no Hoyts theatres of ideal dimensions available. In the late 1950s Hoyts found themselves with a steady supply of strong product, from Fox and United Artists especially, and this was all the more vital in view of the astonishing demise at this time of RKO Radio studios.

Meanwhile, the steadily increasing rate of car ownership, assisted by a kindly climate, led to the early introduction of drive-in cinemas. In Perth the first to open was the Highway at Bentley in 1955- With accommodation for 642 cars; this was the first enterprise of Ace Theatres, who were destined to grow into Perth’s largest chain of alfresco and conventional cinemas. When television transmissions began in Perth in September 1959, there existed ten city cinemas, seven drive-ins, and some seventy suburban picture theatres. The golden age of cinema was now at an end.

In subsequent years Perth’s film exhibition industry underwent many and [ remarkable changes, though again the pattern generally conformed with experience elsewhere. The large and glamorous cinemas of yesteryear were demolished in turn — the Capitol in 1967, the Ambassadors in 1972 and the Metro in 1973; I while the Royal and Grand were turned over to shops and pizza parlour respectively in 1978 and 1980. Now, in 1982, there are as many as eighteen conventional cinema screens in the city, but under only eleven different roofs. L At a little over 10,000, the total seating capacity is just as it was thirty years ago when there were seven film theatres and one theatrette. The Paris is now well and truly the largest cinema, and even the modest Piccadilly is soon to reduce its seating by half and contract to a single floor. Rather curiously, the Theatre Royal is to add another chapter to its long and chequered history when it follows the trend, albeit indirectly, in 1983; with its original dress-circle as basis of a new guise, it will furnish Hoyts Theatres with a fourth screen in Perth and will be directly linked with the twin cinemas next door which have replaced the Ambassadors.

There are now two small cinemas operating in Fremantle again, though much smaller than their predecessors. In the suburbs, eighteen drive-in cinemas experience fluctuating fortunes, and just half a dozen regular cinemas continue rather precariously. Fortunately, one survivor remains of the open-air venues which were once so ubiquitous — the tree-lined Somerville Auditorium within

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the grounds of the University of Western Australia. Under the auspices of the Festival of Perth, it has for the past thirty years presented a succession of specialised and foreign-language films for a few weeks each summer. Both for its own special charm and as last survivor of its species, it is a part of the whole city’s heritage which well deserves preservation.

SOURCES

‘West’s Pictures’, in Jubilee Theatre Album [ca 1910] (a clipping held in the National Film Archive, Canberra).

J.G. Wilson, ed.; Western Australia’s Centenary 1829-1929, (Perth, 1929), pp. 302-3 (for information on V.J. Newton).

B. King, ‘Westralian News’, in Cinema Papers, no. 13, July 1977, pp. 38-9.

Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 8 (Melb., 1981), (for Sir B. Fuller).

Mr G. Norton, Premier Theatre, East Perth (interview).

The major sources of information were the cinema advertisements in Perth newspapers over the years and the now defunct Film Weekly (Sydney).

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 2 March, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/earlydays/8/honniball2.html (it was last updated on 3 March, 2022). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.