Page 16 - CINEMARECORD-100

by Frank Van Straten AM

ut for an odd twist of theatrical history, the preliminary designs were approved in March Doyle’s next ‘atmospheric’ was the
Bgreat State Theatre in Flinders Street 1927, they gave no idea of the opulence that he Ambassadors in Perth. It was similar to the
would have been built as a home for musical and Doyle had in mind. Capitol, but on a somewhat smaller scale.
comedy. Probably because Henry White was busily
The two men spent three months criss-crossing working on designs for Sydney’s State
In February 1927, Rufe Naylor, an extremely the United States, where they came under the Theatre, the Ambassadors’ architect was
‘colourful’ racing identity, launched the vast spell of the dazzling ‘atmospheric’ movie Charles Bohringer of the Melbourne firm
Empire Theatre in Quay Street, Sydney. Its palaces that had revolutionised the American Bohringer, Taylor and Johnson, again working
opening attraction, the Jerome Kern musical movie-going experience. The ‘atmospherics’ from Eberson’s original. It opened in November
Sunny, was a huge hit. On a wave of euphoria were designed to give patrons the sense of 1928.
and reluctant to share the spoils with interstate sitting in an exotic garden, while stars twinkled
managements, Naylor decided to build a similar overhead and clouds floated by – and because Melbourne was to have the next ‘atmospheric’.
theatre in Melbourne to house a transfer of ‘atmospherics’ did not need elaborately In May 1928, Doyle abandoned his plans to
Sunny and his future shows. In March 1927, he decorated ceilings, they were cheaper to build build on the Bijou site and snapped up Naylor’s
paid a reported £100,000 for a large block on than conventional theatres. Flinders–Russell street properties. We don’t
the corner of Flinders and Russell streets. It was know why Naylor sold, nor how much Doyle
diagonally opposite busy Princes Bridge station The “atmospheric” style was pioneered by one paid him, but Doyle certainly wasted no time.
and a few doors from the Majestic, a popular of America’s most notable theatre architects, In August 1928, The Argus reported that three
1912 movie theatre. In much earlier days the John Eberson. He built his first in 1923; by the teams, each of 130 men, were working three
site had housed private residences, an iron store, late 1920s he had designed around 100. One of shifts a day removing about 13,000 cubic yards
coal yards, offices and a bond store. From the grandest, the Riviera in Omaha, Nebraska, of earth and rock from the site of what was to
around the turn of the century, it had been the had opened in 1926. In it Eberson combined a be the State, the biggest and grandest theatre
home of several newspapers and magazines, striking Moorish exterior with a classical in the country.
most notably The Herald and The Morning Post. Greco-Roman interior, replete with statuary,
temples, fake doves and faux greenery. This, Again, Charles Bohringer was the architect,
Naylor soon realised that the site was too small Doyle decided, would be the model for his new though the auditorium of the State was virtually
to accommodate his extravagant dreams, so in Australian cinemas. Early in August 1927 he a mirror-image of Henry White’s Sydney
June 1927 he outlaid a further £40,000 to buy announced that the converted Sydney Capitol. Just as the Princess and the
the adjacent State Migration Office in Russell Hippodrome would be the country’s first Alexandra had raced to completion in 1886,
Street. In November he announced that his new ‘atmospheric’, followed by others in Adelaide, so the State was constructed in a neck-and-neck
building would include a 3100-seat live theatre, Perth and Melbourne, where a 4100-seater struggle with Hoyts’ Regent in Collins Street.
four shops on the Flinders Street frontage and would replace the Bijou and Gaiety theatres in The State was victorious, opening three weeks
a cabaret in the ‘concrete basement’. He said Bourke Street. ahead of its rival, and boasting more seats. Its
the theatre would open in February 1928 and 3371 capacity – 1999 in the stalls and 1372 in
that construction was about to commence. It Working from drawings of the Riviera the circle – made it the largest theatre in the
didn’t. Like so many of Naylor’s schemes, it provided by Eberson, Henry White created country.
foundered. That’s when Stuart Doyle stepped within the shell of the gutted Hippodrome
in. Australia’s first “atmospheric”, the Capitol. It The State’s Florentine garden setting featured
opened on 7 April 1928. The Florentine style reproduction classical temples and pergolas,
Doyle was the managing director of Union foyers and auditorium were typical Eberson, with Greek and Roman statues set in alcoves
Theatres Ltd. Back in 1926 he had proposed but the exterior was left largely unadorned. and on ornate balconies. Fresh flowers added
that his company should construct a chain of Nevertheless, the new theatre was rapturously to the ambience. Overhead was a vast ceiling
lavish movie palaces across Australia, starting received. Said The Sydney Morning Herald: of cerulean blue, studded with hundreds of
in Sydney. His first move was to lease the old ‘One seemed to have stepped from under the electric globes simulating twinkling stars and
Wirths Circus Hippodrome from its owners, dull skies of everyday life and passed into an installed to accurately reflect the constellations
the Sydney City Council, and then commission enchanted region where the depth of the blue at the time of the theatre’s debut. A specially
architect Henry White to draw up plans for its heavens had something magical about it, and imported Brenkert Brenograph projector
transformation into a cinema. Though White’s something heavily exotic.’ provided the illusion of passing clouds.

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