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to the switch room (just left of the
Cinerama At The Plaza
auditorium entrance) with strict
Start dates and seasons in weeks
instructions not to let anyone in. Then
Three projectors:
with an easel at the Collins St entrance This is Cinerama 26.12.58 (40)
Cinerama At announcing ‘Operating on Our Own Cinerama Holiday 21.10.59 (40)
Plant’, the premiere went ahead with
The Plaza patrons none the wiser! South Seas Adventure 25.8.60 (37)
With 2001, A Space Odyssey, staff
were asking “Was this a statement of Seven Wonders of the 1.6.61 (40)
World
A Personal Experience. something profound or just a weird
movie that most people found Search For Paradise 5.4.62 (15)
By Ian Williams
confusing?” Fortunately, it found its Windjammer 26.7 62 (21)
audience in later screenings.
Many things were brought back to How The West Was Won 1.1.63 (49)
me by Eric White’s informative article, A creek flows under the Plaza. In Wonderful World of the
Cinerama at the Plaza. (CinemaRecord the Hoyts days the water level was Brothers Grimm 10.12.64 (23)
43.) Being on the Hoyts City Theatres managed by a pump, which
front-of-house management team, I was automatically switched on before water 70mm Single Projector
at the Plaza at various times during the rose into the orchestra pit. This It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, 3.6.65 (59)
Mad, World
years that this visual wonder occupied seepage was to cause problems in the
the theatre. 70’s when both theatres were stripped Greatest Story Ever Told 28.7.66 (26)
and all power turned off. Water first
Eric mentioned that ‘the floor had Hallelujah Trail 9.2.67 (11)
built up in the front stalls area, and was
to be lowered.’ Lowering in this Battle of the Bulge 4.5.67 (11)
getting into the Chapter House at St.
instance meant excavating an additional Khartoum 27.7.67 (15)
Paul’s Cathedral.
couple of feet into rock to achieve a
pronounced slope downwards to the Going past one day I saw workmen Grand Prix 16.11.67 (22)
new stage apron! pumping this water out into Flinders 2001, A Space Odyssey 2.5.68 (11)
Lane. After going home to get a torch, I
He mentioned the Cinerama Around the World In
was able to go through both theatres via Eighty Days 25.7.68 (9)
company’s policy of a red colour
an unlocked Collins St door to the
scheme for the stage curtain and for Charge of the Light Brigade 7.11.68 (14)
office building, for the first time since
curtains along the sides of the Custer of the West 20.2.69 (5)
closing. Well, there was to be a lot
auditorium hiding the wide Ice Station Zebra 3.4.69 (10)
more ‘water under the bridge’ (sorry,
promenades. Sadly, this decree was Krakatoa, East of Java 18.12.69 (7)
Plaza), before its restoration as
carried through to the magnificent
Spanish style foyer, taking it from a originally designed - as a ballroom! ★
bronze-like antique look to a not so
beautiful pink!
I used to love going into the theatre
to see the audience reaction when the
curtain parted after the standard screen
prologue to the Cinerama image! The
best seats were about ten to fifteen rows
from the screen, to get you almost
wrapped in the picture. However, it was
often difficult to convince prospective
patrons of this!
During the fifties, many power
strikes closed theatres that did not have a
stand-by generator. The heaviest load
was when the carbon of the second
projector was struck. At the
Regent/Plaza, the plant that did both
theatres could cope with this - until
Cinerama came along. Three projectors
operating simultaneously in the Plaza
and with the change-overs in the It’s all illusion. Presented as an image for Melbourne, an authoritative source has
Regent, meant that on a day of a power identified every aspect of this picture as a composite. The wall is the Plaza Sydney, the
ban, the Plaza usually had to shut down. audience could be from anywhere, and the screen and its images are obviously
A Cinerama premiere happened to superimposed.
coincide with one such day, but the
Managing Director of Hoyts, George
Griffiths was not to be outdone. He put
the mechanist, Pat Quinlan, on the door

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