Page 23 - CinemaRecord Edition 3-2002 #37

The sound was on a disc, and we
put a start marker on the white
spacing, and that machine played
the music while the other one
showed the picture.
We'd put a buzzer on the
stage to let the men down there
know when we wanted to change
screens. When it came to the end
of the overture and we wanted to
get back to the small screen, we'd
fade out the picture. During that
fade out they'd just let the big
screen go and 'whoosh' up she'd
go. When the picture faded back
in we were on the small screen
and still on the same sound track.
It worked quite well but the big
screen image looked a bit washed
out because it was blown up so
much, however we ran it for quite
a while.
The Coconuts, with the four
Marx Brothers at their best, by
gosh they were funny.
Then there was Gold Diggers
of Broadway, a sort of filmed
compilation of stage numbers.
Four people came on and they
recited a quatrain. The first
man’s bit of the poem was about
a Quaker girl, the second was
about a race horse, the third
about a car and the fourth was
about a yacht. Anyway they
recited these lines and it was
absolutely flat, not a laugh in it,
everybody sat quietly. The
compere in the film came up to
these four people and said to
them, "Well, that's not much
good." So they said, "Alright,
we'll do it again."
But they mixed up their lines.
The first man said, "There once
was a quaint little Quaker called
Jane." That was his first line.
Then the second man said his
first line, "It's a shame she'll
never be fancied again."
Then the third man, "Her
body was painted all purple and
white."
And the fourth man, "She
was known in the town as the
sailor's delight."
Well, they put the whole
thing together and it broke the
house up, the second lines did
the same, I can't remember the
whole thing. The last couple of
lines were. "I could see that
something was going to bust. So
I slackened her stays and prepared
for the wust."
When the Princess first went
over to films every thing was rosy,
everyone came to the theatre and
had tons of money to spend. They
all bought big boxes of chocolates
for their girls; after the show the
chocolates would be left lying on
the seats. It was the same at the
State and the Athenaeum.
Then the great depression hit.
Well now, houses at the Princess
dropped, wop, like that.
Everywhere did from then on. We
only showed one more film at the
Princess after that review. Then in
1930, they just shut everything
down. Union theatres gave back
any theatres not freehold, they just
walked out. A chap was sent here
from Sydney, he came in and
sacked the lot of us. Well, I didn't
know what to do, I was going to
be married that November and
now I had no job.
I wrote to Stewart Doyle (the
new head of Union Theatres)
because I thought it was a bit
rough. ‘I was up at the Princess
where you sent me from the State,
well now the Princess is gone and I
find myself out of a job.’ I
suggested that something be done.
Stewart Doyle was a reasonable
sort of a bloke. It wasn't long after
I had written that Eddie Leonard
(Union’s chief in Victoria) wanted
to see me. "You can have the old
Britannia." "Right-o, that'll do me."
The Britannia was in Bourke
Street. I was there for about two
or three months when they said,
"The Empress in Prahran is
vacant, would you like to go
there?" It was a step backwards
because the Empress was in the
suburbs, but I went, and was there
until the early part of 1932. The
Empress ran afternoon and
evening, it was pretty solid going,
but because of the two shows,
financially I was better off than I
had been at the best of times in
the city. Hoyts took over the
Empress from Union Theatres. I
was there for Hoyts under Trevor
Headberg for quite a while until
MGM came along and took over
Jim Lawrence was literally the man
the Auditorium. They pulled the
who introduced Marx Bros.
insides out of the Auditorium and
mayhem to Melbourne.
it became The Metro.
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