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6. THE ROYAL ADVENTURES OF DOT by Denzil Howson
(Conclusion - Castlemaine Theatre Royal)

Who will be Dot? We'll discover the answer to that question later.

With the advent ofthe moving pictures, the old Theatre Royal in Castlemaine was transformed from a live theatre
to a cinema. So the "bio-box" was an afterthought. It was on stalls level, and very small. The ports were about
5ft 6 inches to 6 feet from the floor, which meant that any tall latecomers to the stalls very often found themselves
taking part in the show- as a meandering silhouette on the screen just as James A. Fitzpatrick was reluctantly
saying farewell to yet another beautiful "somewhere or other" and as the sun was again sinking slowly in the West.

In the '30's I remember the "box" was pretty tightly packed with two Simplex projectors, and a slide projector of
doubtful vintage which had a tendency to drift out offocus. This really didn't matter, as most ofthe audience knew
the slides by heart anyway.

Also, an additional after-thought was the rewinding room. With inflammable nitrate film the law demanded that
rewinding be done in an area isolated from the bio-box. The Castlemaine Theatre Royal rewinding room was
definitely isolated. It was in a tin shed around the back of the building- somewhat of a disadvantage if a spool
of film had to be hurriedly rewound "on the run" so to speak.

I remember the night they were screening "The Mortal Storm" with Robert Young, James Stewart and Margaret
Sullavan, and the final reel came up "tail" first and back to front. They had forgotten to rewind it. It took fully
five minutes to unthread the projector, sprint down the lane from the bio-box to the winding room, rewind the reel.
sprint all the way back again, rethread the projector and get the show on the road. There was a lot of "foot-
stamping" in the stalls that night.
So that was Castlemaine's Theatre Royal in the thirties. Hardly a propitious location for the headquarters of a
film venture which could have made the midlands of Victoria the Hollywood of the Southern Hemisphere, for it
was in the mid-thirties that an enterprising gentleman arrived in Castle maine with plans to produce a soul stirring
block buster.

This canny showman heralded his arrival with cryptic headlines in several issues of the "Castlemaine Mail" of
"WHO WILL BE DOT?" The question was answered for the puzzled locals when it was revealed that the title of
the forthcoming celluloid epic was "THE ADVENTURES OF DOT' and the entire cast would be from
Castlemaine. So- who was Dot?

Well, "Dot" was a local school teacher from the North Castlemaine State School. Not sure of her real name-
and at this distance in time, minor facts are a little difficult to corroborate - but let's call her Maude.

The Producer, who as well as being Producer was also Cameraman, set up his Production Office in the Theatre
Royal. The Production Team consisted of a lady (whom I assume was his wife). This multi-talented lady was
"production assistant" "make-up department" and "continuity girl". If the term "gaffer" had been in vogue then,
no doubt, she would have been that as well. The equipment was a geriatric 35 mm hand-cranked camera,
complete with tripod. There was also a script- a melodramatic "eternal triangle" plot loaded with action and
romance.
Thus equipped, the producer set about the difficult task of casting the key roles. As mentioned he selected Maude
from the local State School as the heroine. Maude was an extremely good choice, not because of her acting
ability, but because she was a teacher, the producer was able to take lots of footage of her surrounded by all the
school kids. Didn't have much to do with the plot, but it did ensure that every Mum, Dad, Aunt, Uncle, Grandma,
Grandpa and the Lady Next Door would rush along to the Theatre Royal for the "premiere" to see little Billy or
Bonnie in the "fillums". The hero was a local grocers assistant who we'll call Fred, and the villain an out-of-work
motor mechanic who we'll call George. Those were their real life vocations. The main attribute for a role in the
film was "availability".

The Producer, who was his own Publicity Agent, revealed "off the record" to the "Castlemaine Mail" that there
was every possibility that a well known Hollywood talent scout would be visiting Castlemaine during the
"shooting", or failing that would almost certainly attend the "premiere". Naturally, it didn't take long forth is secret
to spread like wildfire throughout the town. On the basis of the impending visit, an eager but ingenuous reporter
confronted the three "stars" with the question "Would you accept an offer from overseas? "Privately, they all
admitted, with some reticence, that they would consider it.