Page 13 - CinemaRecord #10R.pdf

But what was the building's role as a cinema? In 1908, the year Nellie Melba opened the re-furbished building,
there was a demonstration of a "Biograph Moving Picture Machine". This demonstration must have been
successful as by 1910, two years later, West's Pictures were screening at the Mechanics every Wednesday
night.

The Wodonga Scene

In the then tiny township of Wodonga on the southern bank of the Murrray, Shire Offices were built in 1890 on
the corner of High Street and Elgin Street (the Hume Highway). A few months later, a hall was added and the
building became known as The Melba Hall. (So Nellie got her way, if not in Albury, at least in Wodonga.)

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Wodonga's "Melba HaU" began life on the Melba Cinema in the Silent era and films were still being shown there
almost up to the time of the building's demolition. The last exhibiter was a Mr. Bounader. A member of the
Bounader family, Mr. Wally Bounader, unearthed for me from the family records the fact that Mr. Bounader Snr.
purchased the Melba Theatre from Mrs Muriel Scott, widow of Mr. John Scott, the former exhibiter. The sale
was made on 1st October, 1948. Of course, the building could not be sold. It belonged to the Wodonga Shire.
But Mr. Bounader was able to purchase the screen, the screen tabs, the theatre seating and the projectors,
slide projector, amplifier etc. for the princely sum of £500 ($1 000). Even way back in 1948, that sounds like a
bargain.

Mr. Bounader continued to use the hall as a cinema right up to 1968, when the Cinema closed as a prelude to
the demolition of the building. As a Picture Palace, it was somewhat primitive, a country hall with a standard
format, screen at one end, and a bio-box at the other and which was obviously an afterthought.
It was demolished in 1971 , to make way for a giant supermarket and regrettably the "Sound of Music" was
superseded by the sound of Cash Registers.

Albury's Theatre Royal

A second theatre- as apart from the Mechanics Institute (alias the Plaza, alias the Civic Theatre) was built in
Albury in 1914 in Kiewa Street. It was called the Theatre Royal, and was built by a Mr. Blacklock. Blacklock's
later established a Ford dealership adjacent to the Theatre Royal. From its' inception in 1914, the theatre was
leased to a Mr. Phil Howard who used it as a cinema, showing silent films, as this was nineteen years before the
sound era. According to one newspaper report. we are told he employed a 12 piece orchestra to accompany
thefilms. This seems a little difficult to take at face value as thirteen years later when our silent cinema pianist
Adeline Mims was playing piano at what was then Hoyt's Regent Theatre in Dean Street, all Hoyts could afford
was a six piece orchestra.

In 1920, either part or the whole of the area (available reports are unclear) was developed as an open air
cinema, modestly advertised as the most comfortable and convenient outdoor theatre in Australia. Apparently
the block-buster shown at the Theatre Royal in the Silent era was the 1923 production of "The Ten Command-
ments", the Cecil B. De Mille epic with Richard Dix and Rod La Rocque.