Page 25 - CinemaRecord Edition 3-2003 #41

Out of Sorts and Out of Form:

Cedric Ballantyne and the Regent Wellington

He wasn’t the first to design one in
Australia, nor was he the last, but
architect Cedric Ballantyne’s initial
design for a Regent theatre was so
assured, so definitively chiselled, that it
became the template against which
1920s cinema work was inevitably
compared. If delivering a degree of
innovation with each subsequent
Regent was something of a private
burden, it usually didn’t show in the
finished work. Except once.
For his second Regent commission,
in Wellington NZ, one might expect
that Ballantyne would produce a design
worthy of a capital city, and one
offering improvements on his first, the
Regent South Yarra.
Why then - and admittedly this is an
assessment based on one photo - was
the stage setting so clunky? The
Auditorium, Regent Wellington. The proscenium arch seems ‘squeezed’ and thus
elements are there, but set in a ‘look
over-emphasised in this setting; odd for a building with a Ballantyne pedigree. Compare
and put’ fashion, with none of the grace this setting with his Regent Auckland on page 18.
on display in Ballantyne’s third
Regent, in Auckland. Perhaps parts of
the Wellington theatre did show
Initially J.C. Williamson Films (NZ) Ballantyne’s Regent Series
brilliance, but assuming that the camera
Ltd. located their head office in the Opening Dates
does not lie, what went wrong in this
Regent Wellington building, but this
auditorium? South Yarra 25 April 1925
was short-lived. When the company
Speculation is always fraught, but Wellington 10 Dec. 1926
was reorganized in 1932, the directors
N.Z. film and theatre historian David Auckland 24 Dec. 1926
moved head office to Mercer Street,
Lascelles offers a possible explanation.
Wellington. Williamsons always Sydney 9 March 1928
The story is that when Williamsons
considered the Regent Auckland to be Ballarat 7 April 1928
called for tenders for Wellington, both
their flagship, which is a rather telling Adelaide 29 June 1928
Ballantyne and local architect assessment.
Llewellyn Williams were frontrunners. Melbourne 15 March 1929
- D.L. and I.S.
Initially, so the story goes, Williams
was selected, but such was Ballantyne’s
See also:
reputation that the company reversed
Cedric H. Ballantyne: Palaces to Order
their decision. Frank van Straten CR40
When Williams threatened legal Ranking Regents Brian Pearson et al
action, Williamsons weighed up the CR50
cost of a court case and the delays to The Regent Dunedin David Lascelles
construction. They offered a CR55
compromise: both men should work
together on the building.
Ballantyne and Williams were said
to have had an unhappy working
relationship. The awkward
circumstances of their collaboration
didn’t help, and their ideas about design
didn’t mesh. No surprise then that the
blended building looks a compromise.

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