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CINEMARECORD

The TELEVISION ERA

After 1956 and the coming of lbe Iinle box in the living room. television was on every cinema manager's mind. The "box"
was making enormous inroads even before !he end of the 1950's. HoyiS had forry five suburb:ln theatres in Melbourne. They
ended up with one. The Ward family had a number of lhealtCS. including lbe BURNLEY in Burnley, the CIVIC in Ashbunon,
MAYFAIR in Gardenvale and interesiS in the SAVOY in Russell Street, Melbourne, apart from the PRINCE GEORGE and
DENDY in Brighton and even a theatre at Phillip Island. In the dark economic days of the late SO's the PRINCE GEORGE
was, in fact, supporting the DENDY, as Robert Ward recalls: 'The commercial films running at the DENDY (like those of
Elvis Presley) were down the tube ... theatres were closing left, right and center ... There was a bad smell in the air about picture
theatres: 'They've had it!' was the general view. But there some that wanted to see arthouse and foreign fi lms,i Robert made
the PRINCE GEORGE an art house cinema. The Japanese RASHOMAN and Swedish ONE SUMMER OF HAPPINESS did
well. The PRINCE GEORGE was soon paying the DENDY's bills. The PRINCE GEORGE also ran old classics. The theatre
was, Robert claims: "the first suburban theatre in Australia to have an arthouse policy. screening foreign language films and
old classics" Film booking in those days was based on the cinema's geographic location: namely its distance from the City.
So, for example, St. Kilda got the first week after the City for new releases; Elsternwick got the second week. Caulfield got
the third and the DENDY in Brighton was always the fourth week. And as much as a cinema manager like Ben Ward fought
the system he couldn't change it. If it were a good film like BEN HUR it might run a year in !he City and !hen be milked by
all those other suburb:ln lheatres before it ftnally reached the DENDY. Over at !he PRINCE GEORGE Robert Ward could see
there wasn't any future for the DENDY while the old "flea· pit" was making mooey on the arthouse trade. "I even had my
mother accusing me of wrecking !he business of the DENDY by building up !he PRINCE GEORGE!"

THE END OF THE PRINCE GEORGE

Robert could see there was only one way out. The banks were threatening his father and the DENDY. So Robert went to all
the distributors and look matters into his own hands. "I ripped up the contracts in front of them and said: 'Sue us!' My father
was chasing me all around town in horror. !told him we were changing the policy of the DENDY. I came down from the
PRINCE GEORGE to the DENDY, changed the arthouse policy across and closed the old theatre. We started running at the
DENDY lirst release films that other cinemas didn't want to run. He also programmed films that had failed to find an audience
in their City releases: like 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY and WRBA THE GREEK. The first had run at the PLAZA for two
weeks and was pulled out. The DENDY ran it for nine months. WRBA ran for three days at the Melbourne ATHENAEUM:
"We bought it off the distributor for a very low percentage (20 percent) because it was a flop and ran it for something like 60
or 70 weeks! The DENDY became !he most successful anhouse in Australia bar none! The City foreign language houses like
!he SAVOY. AUSTRALIA. CURWN and ROMA were <mall (only one or two hundred sealS) whereas !he DENDY was
1156 seats. So when the Wards had a hit like THE WAGES OF FEAR they made a lot of money. Incidentally. when the
Ward Family opened !he DENDY in 1939/40 it was apparenlly named !he "Mayfair Picture Theatre". But by 1942 it was
being referred tO as !he DENDY, nanaed after the founder of Brighton. Henry Dendy.

DECLINE AND FALL

By the time I became a patron of the PRINCE GEORGE the theatre seemed decidedly tally. With its original decorative
features covered by the CinemaScope screen, the proscenium seemed a very plain and unadomed affair. Downslllirs, as I
recall, had lillie if no mke on the floor and, although the standard screen wasn't very large and the screen was set fairly high,
sight lines weren't always the best. Perhaps l was over-critical of the theatre's ''atmosphere". Probably it was less austere and
much more atlnlctive in iiS earlier years but then I've never found a photograph from iiS glory days 10 prove otherwise (nor
any photograph of the exterior or interior at all for that mn11er; a pity). Technically speaking I would never have described the
theatre as exceptional. II was doubtless the only real "bughouse" in the fashionable suburbs of Melbourne's bayside. It was
lherefore all the more surprising to read the orbituary for Robert Granville (Bert) Ward re-printed in "CinemaRecord" of April
1995 and 10 find it said that !he sound system Ben developed for !he PRINCE GEORGE was "one of !he best sound systems
in Melbourne" As fmancial pressures increased for the DENDY, Robert Ward made his decision to close the PRINCE
GEORGE. In a leuer dated 13th September, 1960 from Bruce P. Selleck of Selkirk Enterprises Pry Ltd to the Public Health
Department. Selleck advised that his company had taken over !he now-closed theatre. The result was it; re-opening as the
Basin Street Jazz Centre, a relatively short- lived but reputedly very popular venue. But the old PRINCE GEORGE bado 't
entirely seen the end of films: when the Public Health Department inspected the theatre in October I 961 they reported that
films were being shown. to Jazz Centre members only, on Friday and Sunday nights. By the start of 1962 even the Jazz Centre
had gone. The electricity supply had been disconnected from the building and Robert Ward was quoted by the Health
Inspector as saying there was considerable doubt whether the building would re-open. Later again. at a periodic inspection in
December of 1962 a local light car club was meeting there once a fortnight (by torchlight?) while almost a year later it had
become purely tl storehouse. With construction of an adjacent Safeway Supermarket the space occupied by the PRINCE
GEORGE was seen as a potential carpark for customers and so it was inevitable that the derelict theatre would fall to the
wreckers' hammers.

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