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Reconstructing the Visit.
A visitor to Australia with a
professional interest in theatre
management would need to include
Sydney or Melbourne in their itinerary.
Although Adelaide is the only city
mentioned, some comments suggest
that Mr. Crystal did see theatres in the
three cities.
Any reader who has undertaken a
study tour and been required to report
on it, will know the difficulty of getting
every fact correct. Even so, there are
hints that Mr. Crystal’s hosts were not
above pulling the leg of their Yankee
visitor.
Not unusual to find 3,000 to 4,000
seat suburban theatres in Australia?
Very unusual, actually. The only
example is the Palais in bayside
Melbourne, which seats almost 3,000.
Mr. Crystal was very taken by the
fire safety precautions in Adelaide.
Paramount’s films screened at the Civic
and the Majestic in the 1940s, both old
theatres. Perhaps at least one of them
was fitted with the sophisticated phone
service he describes, precisely because
they were old. However, the Adelaide
theatre experts consulted are skeptical
about whether even the Regent had
such a system. (No answer to this
question has been received from The
Adelaide Metropolitan Fire Service.)
Mr Crystal could have seen Crying
Rooms in a number of suburban
theatres built after 1934. If he saw them
first in Adelaide it would have been at
the Ozone, Glenelg (now Cinema
Centre) or at the Ozone, Marryatville,
(Chelsea). These theatres had a Crying
Room and a Party room. Did staff at
either really heat a baby’s bottle and
bring it to the mother, or have the
usherette care for the child?
Few theatres were so deeply
excavated that lounge patrons entered
directly from a ground level foyer.
Theatres with this layout, or one close
to it, were the State, Sydney and the
Prince Edward, Sydney. (The Regent,
Dunedin, NZ is also in this category, as
CATHS tour participants will
remember.)
Reporting by: Colin Flint,
Brian Pearson and John Thiele in In Sydney Paramount had a fine home at the Prince Edward,
Adelaide, and Gerry Kennedy in while in Melbourne the State, after 1940, had that role.
Melbourne. The Herald, 18 June 1942

34 2006 CINEMARECORD