Page 17 - CinemaRecord Edition 3-2003 #41

The train’s route took it along Why, turn it into the Star Cinema of
Moseley Street from Jetty Road near course, with the then Clarence Hotel
Moseley Square (‘Ryan's Corner’), next door. The Majestic had a narrow
through its depot on the triangle and entrance and down stairs foyer that
through Somerton. At about the point concealed the elaborate auditorium
where Whyte Street now meets the beyond. In the manner of the
beach (not far from Uncle's home) it Melbourne Regent the auditorium
unbelievably chuffed through a cutting opened out behind the building on the
in the sand hills, and then along un- non-hotel side. In the roof were two
ballasted rails set directly into the sand large oval vents.
just above the high-water mark! At each side of the proscenium two
And so to Brighton - for half its up and two down boxes, including the
total trip along the beach itself. It is Royal Box - did the Duke of Clarence
hardly surprising that perpetual sand visit? And was he really Jack-the-
drifts, derailments, landowner right-of- Ripper? The circle was steeply raked
way and route squabbles, poor with round-backed red plush velvet
patronage and a fatality conspired to chairs. Paramount and the bouncing
extinguish the little train's boiler fires in ball seemed to appear here frequently.
a year and a bit. The Town Hall, with its beautiful In its last years known as the
A trip to the City by tram was Italian marble foyer was surmounted by Warner Cinema, the Majestic
always a thrill; up Jetty Road and then a clock tower. The mystery to a child eventually made way for the
for the most part along the old was why the General Post Office with Commonwealth Bank building. Family
dedicated steam train reserve - complete its own clock tower, would have been folklore had it that great-grandfather and
with level crossings - to South Terrace, built almost diagonally across King his legal partners-brothers, plus one of
terminating in the city at Victoria William Street? Even stranger, why the wine company brothers and their
Square. None of this business of only three faces on the GPO version? father, had been involved in building or
passengers having to face backwards on Perhaps the lowly residents in the owning this theatre. Not only that, but
the silver-tail line - at Victoria Square slums of West Adelaide were not supposedly great grandfather's in-laws
the conductor would walk along the worthy of this expensive condescension had been involved in the architecture of
aisle and flip the backrests of the seats into equality. not only the Majestic but also the much
into their ‘Glenelg-facing’ positions. On the next block, next door to the earlier Theatre Royal in Hindley Street.
Majestic Hotel, stood the Majestic At the Royal incidentally, with its
theatre. Built as a live (and presumably Princess Theatre, Melbourne-style-
legitimate) theatre late in the 1800’s, it posts posing as sight lines, an eleven
had been known as the Tivoli. When year old at primary school had suffered
the New Tivoli (later Her Majesty’s) the excruciating elucidation of the
had been built in Grote Street not far marionette Tin Tookies. The Royal was
from the Glenelg tram terminus. What demolished in 1962 to make way for a
to do with the old Tivoli? retail store’s car park.

Walking from the Square along King
William Street, and past the Old
Treasury Building, one observed in the
center of the road the ornamental iron
supports of the catenaries for further
suburban tramlines, to a small boy like a
line of legless giants with arms akimbo.
Then past the Adelaide Town Hall,
where films had been screened since
way back, starting with the early
exhibitions of the legendary T. J. West.
That was in the days before the ice-rink
in Hindley Street became the Olympia
(about 1910), and in about 1940 the art
deco West’s Theatre.
Great-grandfather's sister-in-law had
been a guest at the premiere at the Town
Hall of a locally produced feature film,
which reputedly received extremely bad
press; but was exonerated in view of the
fact that it was being screened for
charitable purposes. Above: The original Tivoli Theatre and Clarence Hotel rejuvenated as the Majestic.

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