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Ironically Ken mentioned that in the 1920's he assisted with showing silent films at the Kingston Centre to the
staff and patients. Ken worked as a projectionist at many theatres both in relieving and permanent positions.

Among others he worked at the Regal Hartwell for fifteen years and the Paramount at Oakleigh on weekends.
He went to the Paramount for a three week relief but ended up staying for twelve years. This was when the
Paramount was showing Greek, Indian and German films, and according to Ken the theatre was pulling in big
crowds. Television was not a big threat to theatres screening foreign language films where there was a large
migrant population, and of course videos were yet to come.

The biggest threat to the industry was television, which came to Melbourne in 1956 and Ken attended lectures
which were held at the Melbourne Regent Theatre, for the purpose of working out how the industry would
combat television based on experiences in the United States of America. Unfortunately television took over
much more than was anticipated in Australia with many theatres closing in the early days of television.

Sadly Ken passed away on the 6th of January 1998. He was aged 84.

Confessions of an Assistant Operator by Greg Lynch

Somewhere around early 1957, this writer was working at the Rialto Theatre Kew, and at the same time keep-
ing up a hectic schedule of repairing the Hoyts neon signs, together with a fellow assistant named Tony Hore
from the Regent Theatre Thornbury, and then spending the balance of the week with the late Frank Johnson
working on the maintenance and subsequent stripping out of the various Hoyts Theatres closed down by the
advent of television.

They told us that the Hoyts signs were classified as domestic appliances and therefore you didn't need an
electrician's ticket to repair them, so hand in hand with Tony Hore I ventured into the area of neon display
maintenance. In fact in my mind it wasn't long before I became a neon display expert.

Yes, somehow we managed to repair the old blue signs, transformers were replaced and new tubes along with
high tension leads were put in place, bird nests were cleaned out and we felt pretty good with ourselves, and
then one day came the big call, go to the Regent in Collins Street immediately, painters have smashed all the
neon tubing and destroyed the globes in the chaser, the sign had almost been destroyed.

What brings all this to mind after all these years was our tour of the Regent and the venturing into the old office
area upstairs, one of which from memory was the late Joe Walker's. God help me, I was terrified of this man,
and here we were taking turns on a bosun chair which hung directly outside his window.

Day one and all was well, we replaced all the broken tubing and fixed the chaser, all under the watchful eye of
Joe Walker who was at least four feet away from us as we hung on the front wall of the Regent. Every day he
stood framed in the window with his hands on his hips, a formidable sight for two young players. But wait, we
had left the best to last, the Regent's crown, which sat on the top of the sign seemed to have one hundred
separate neon tubes. Well, that's when it all hit the fan, after replacing all the tubes and the transformer, we
couldn't make it light up. How we tried, Tuesday went, and then Wednesday, Thursday came, and then we
were summoned to Joe Walker's office. (This reminded me of my school days at C.B.C. St. Georges Terrace in
Perth, where summoned to the headmaster's office, I awaited some awful punishment).

Tony and myself, a mere seventeen years old, stood in front of Big Joe and waited for the worst. I knew Joe was
not all that excited with me over an incident where I had fallen through a rotting asbestos roof at the Time
Theatre Balwyn. A long silence and then, "I'll give you another eight hours to get the job done, don't force me to
bring in Claude Neon".

We arrived the next day at 7.00am and went to work on the famous Regent's neon crown, not once did we look
at Joe's office window although we could feel his presence and shadow. For eight hours we tried to get the
crown to fire, regretfully to no avail. In deep depression and without a look at the window, we packed up our
tools and slunk back to our respective theatres and waited for the notice of our fat. It never came and I guess
Joe did ring Claude Neon, because later I snuck a look at the sign and it was working beautifully.

Reprinted from the Society Of Cinema Pioneers newsletter · submitted to Cinema Record by Alan Windley