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Grandeur 70mm Theatres (CR47), Ian Hanson
In his article The Lost World of

included an extract from a Hoyts
Australia Regent magazine of the 1920s, which
predicted that Fox Grandeur, a 70mm
widescreen process, would soon be the
screen standard.
Hoyts never did equip any theatres
for the 70mm version of Grandeur, but
it is well known that they did screen
The Big Trail, one of the few Grandeur
films, in a 35mm wide screen format in
selected theatres.
Now Ian has unearthed a faded
extract from The Brisbane Courier, 8
November 1929. The image is of the
screen at the soon to be opened
Regent; it’s full proscenium width, and
claimed to be the largest in Australia.
CinemaRecord offers this
hypothesis:
The screen proportion shown in this
picture was the 35mm widescreen of
the day. Fox Films (the forerunner of
20th Century Fox) was already a major
film supplier to Hoyts. If Fox intended
to become a Grandeur studio, it would
be logical to equip this Regent, the last
to open and most up to date, from the
outset.
The screen proportion shown is
surprisingly like the current standard
ratio, or the VistaVision format of the
1950s.
The Big Trail was not a success, at
least by the standards Fox had set for it.
Optical quality ran ahead of sound
quality; voices often became indistinct
as the actors moved out of range of the
sound boom.
A widescreen version opened at the
Plaza Sydney on 30 January 1931. A
Melbourne release followed on Easter
Saturday 4 April 1931. It screened for a
week and transferred to the De Luxe in
standard ratio. In Adelaide the film
screened at the Regent in standard ratio.
Wanted: a Queensland sleuth to
confirm that The Big Trail did screen at
the Regent Brisbane on this wide
screen. H
Reporting by: Ian Hanson, John Thiele
and Eric White.

The original caption read: ‘The big screen at the Regent. It is
claimed to be the largest in Australia.’ The base of this screen
may not have been masked when the picture was taken.

CINEMARECORD 2005 35