Page 14 - CinemaRecord #76C

No more stripes!

Other big changes were to occur in the
1970s. In February John Jennings retired
and was replaced by Ray Kelleway, who had
been supervisor of the circuit, and prior to
that, manager of Skyline at Frenchs Forest.
Another major change occurred in 1974 when
the theatrical employees union managed to
obtain a five-day-week for all employees in
the cinema industry and this made working
conditions much brighter. Hoyts technicians visited Dundas and declared
that they would be installing new equipment
Television was now well entrenched and with to increase its performance, and that we were
films becoming more available for home now Hoyts employees. In a short space of time
viewing, we saw a reduction in attendances. they removed the valve amplifiers and replaced
Filling theatres even on a Saturday night them with a set of completely new transistorized
became only occasional by the late 1970s. cabinets and followed this by replacing carbon-
arc lamps with xenon bulbs. The results obtained
In February 1979 we received a memo from head proved very noticeable.
office to say that the board had decided to divide
the drive-ins into two separate operations. Hoyts immediately opened Dundas on Sunday Xebex Xenon lamphouse.
nights and the program now often consisted of
Consolidated had built and acquired top first release attractions.John Merrin had
other drive-ins, and now had twelve in been appointed Supervisor of the Consolidated In October 1979 Merrin sent a letter to say that
total. Six would be operated by Greater Group and Hoyts retained him to supervise their he was resigning his position with Hoyts and a
Union and the others by Hoyts. Under group. Merrin had been quite generous with short time later he was appointed supervisor of
this arrangement Dundas now came under all projectionists on the circuit inviting them to the Greater Union group of drive-ins.
Hoyts control. luncheons each Christmas.
In January 1982 we received a copy of
a telex sent by Terry Jackman (head of
Hoyts) to say that 20 Century Fox who
th
were a principal stock holder of Hoyts,
had sold their interest in Hoyts to and Mr.
Marvin Davis and they expected it would
be business as usual for Hoyts.
A short time later we were advised that GU
had purchased all of Hoyts’ interest in the
drive-ins, Dundas then became a full-time
unit of GU supervised by John Merrin.

A little later GU installed a Cine-Fi AM-
Radio-Sound system at Dundas. They had
already installed this system in the drive-ins
which they had acquired since the split.
So again we had another sound system
installed to accommodate the new innovation
with the left side ramps retaining speakers,
whilst the right side had Cine-Fi Radio-
Sound to each patron’s radio. An odd point
was that when the first cars drove onto the
ramps it was the speakers they headed for the
first and these were soon all taken up.

GU programmed a lot of the first release films
and they were a pleasure to run being new
prints. Business at the drive-ins remained
steady throughout the early 1980s and then
a steady decline was evident once movies on
home video-tape became readily available.

14 2012 CINEM AREC ORD