Page 18 - CR

Celebrating
ALAN WOODARD

CINEMA PIONEER

By Brian Pearson

e’s a spry 100 years old. A talented This was a single-cylinder water-
Hcarpenter, who in retirement cooled engine driving a 110-volt DC
became a skilled cabinet maker whose generator with a thick cable snaking in
exquisitely crafted grandfather clocks, through the doors to the lamp house,
chests, occasional tables and display and had during the week been chugging
cabinets adorn his beautiful Tusmore away in Strathalbyn and Goolwa where
Avenue apartment in the leafy Adelaide the same reels of film were exhibited,
(SA) suburb of Leabrook. (As well as and the audience waited in the
the homes of his children and friends). acetylene gas-lit halls while the spools
were changed.
It is a couple of hundred metres
from Adelaide’s elegant heritage-listed The travelling showman, whom
Chelsea Theatre, which he and I know Alan remembers fondly as a good
best as the Ozone, Marryatville. family man, took the star-struck boy
under his wing and allowed him to help
His name is Alan Woodard,
set up the hall for the show, share a
Cinema Pioneer and the last remaining
meal afterwards, and then sit alongside
board member of Ozone Theatres -
him as he cranked the projector and fed
one of South Australia’s two highly
the arc by hand – the envy of all his
competitive but friendly and mutually
friends.
supportive picture theatre chains.
A local pianist, Mrs. Deed, played
Like many of us in the long-ago
music fitted as closely as possible in
heyday of cinema construction when
tempo and mood to the action on the
silent and then the miraculous sound
screen, ramping up to rousing tunes to
and colour movies were the primary
drown the whistling and stamping of
entertainments of hundreds of millions
the youngsters in the audience while
of people, Alan began young.
the show came to a complete stop and
It was 1926, he was fifteen, had left
the mostly 1,000 feet spools were
school and become a carpenter’s
changed, while Alan took the ‘End Out’
apprentice, when he hung around the
spool to a back room to be rewound.
Institute Hall at Victor Harbor each
Some of the feature spools were
Saturday while the Yankalilla-based
2,000 feet in length, running
touring cinema exhibitor pulled up in
approximately half an hour, but the
the lane alongside to unload his single
distributors forbade the joining of short
projector from his De Dion van, set it
subjects to lessen the gradual
up on the floor of the hall behind the
shortening of the beginnings and ends
banks of seats, and then went outside to
of the films as they were cut apart and
connect up the arc power supply.
rejoined by successive exhibitors.
Soon Alan was trusted to crank the
projector while the projectionist went
outside, ostensibly to check the
Blackstone engine, but almost certainly
to enjoy a cigarette, dashing back
inside to change the spools.
News report from January 1934.

18 2011 CINEMARECORD