Page 20 - CinemaRecord #85

T hanks to Eddie and Lindy Tamir, the owners of the Classic Elsternwick and Cameo Belgrave, cinema will be returning to Glenferrie’s first picture theatre. This conversion to eight screens will be a story in itself, so it is time to review the history of the building.

When the rail line from Flinders Street crossed the Yarra River and reached Hawthorn station in 1860, rapid eastward development followed. Glenferrie was one station east of Hawthorn and by 1900 the suburb and its shopping precinct was basically completed. The largest buildings were set between the railway crossing (then
CAPALABA
at road level) and the intersection of Glenferrie Road with Burwood Road, a corner dominated by the Church of the Immaculate Conception. The Hawthorn Town Hall was close by. The theatre was constructed near the heart of this administrative, commercial and religious setting.
Moving pictures came to Glenferrie in 1908 when entrepreneur Edward J (Teddy) Riggs set up a weekly open-air show in the Glenferrie Sports Ground, soon to become the home of the Hawthorn Football Club. Riggs was elbowed out of film exhibition by the opening of the Glenferrie Theatre in 1912, virtually on his patch
–its back wall faced into the football ground – so he turned to the promotion of dances and concerts.

Melbourne’s first electric tram service ran on Glenferrie Road in May 1913, an event credited with hastening the development of retail opportunities. As in so many cases, when a shopping-strip materialised, a picture theatre became the next accessory. Local investors reasoned that if one theatre could prosper, surely two could
do the same. So the Palace, less than 100 metres north on the same side of the road, opened six years later.

The histories of the two theatres will intertwine, separate, and later settle into a genteel rivalry. While the history of the Palace is uneventful, that of the Glenferrie is chequered, before re-emerging to respectability as the Glen.
The directors of the Metropolitan Picture Theatre Company engaged Henry Trigg, one of Perth’s foremost architects, to design the Glenferrie. Trigg had moved east to rebuild his practice after his brother, either through bad investments or embezzlement, bankrupted the firm. The Glenferrie is believed to be his only cinema
commission in Victoria.
th
The theatre opened on Saturday 6 April 1912 in the presence of Sir Robert Best MP, and a large group of invited guests, including the Mayor of Hawthorn and councillors from Hawthorn, Kew and Camberwell. Monday’s Argus reviewed opening night, praised the central location and the fact that the soon to be completed electric
tramway would make the theatre well served in regard to transit facilities. The building was an acquisition to the architecture of the neighbourhood. The facade, pleasingly symmetrical in brick and render, matched the scale and style of the buildings alongside.
Viewed from Glenferrie Road the wide frontage suggested that the long axis of the auditorium was parallel to the road (as in the Princess or Her Majesty’s), but this was illusory. Viewed from the rear the building was a T, the auditorium at right angles to the road. Two shops on the south side of the entrance and three on the
north side explained the width. A sliding roof provided ventilation on summer’s nights.
A rather mean corridor entrance (with folding gates) was typical of the time. Upstairs, a billiard room and a tea room faced Glenferrie Road. There was no balcony foyer. Patrons entered the balcony from a very wide and massive stairway (1) which divided mid-way to reach a corridor with entrances to either the commercial rooms
or the balcony. The balcony was small; only 10 rows of seats with a cross-aisle separating the first four rows from the back six. Since this was a purpose-built theatre, the gallery and stalls had sloping floors. The initial seating capacity according to the local paper was 1,800, but the Health Commission recorded it as 1,655.

The Argus noted that the appointments are handsome in design and well carried out. A special feature is a fine proscenium. It stands at some distance from the wall and harmonises completely with the elliptical ceiling. Although suburban cinema design was in its infancy, the reporter sent to critique opening night had some basis
for his judgement. At least a dozen picture theatres were then open across Melbourne.

For cinemas of this age it is rare to be able to match a contemporary description to the present reality, but the Glenferrie does offer this chance. Remnants of the original interior are revealed in the rebuild now under way.
The patterned pressed-metal ceiling glows in burnished bronze and a decorative pilaster near the stage is surmounted by a plaster motif very different to the wreath designs in cinemas of 1919-21.

A change of name to The Glenferrie Picture Theatre Company Pty Ltd. may have coincided with the buy-in by John Wren, Melbourne’s most controversial business man. Wren had an interest in four suburban picture-houses: the Palace and the Glenferrie, the Rialto Kew, and the Cinema Richmond. His front man at Glenferrie
was, as always, Richard (Dick) Lean, best known as the director of Stadiums Ltd. which controlled the West Melbourne Stadium, now Festival Hall.

(2)
By 1918 it was apparent that two cinemas so close together were more than the public needed. The advertisements for the Glenferrie Theatre began asking residents to loyally support the theatre which has always given you the best. Apparently audiences preferred the Palace. Lean closed the Glenferrie in November 1921. It
re-opened as the Glen Palais de Danse on 25 January 1922.
Hoyts were the lessee, and their management of the building was decidedly lax. On 25 November 1925 The Age informed its readers that an inspection of the Palais had revealed a certain amount of immorality going on outside on the promenade. (The promenade was an exit lane way leading to Glenferrie Road). This news was
Fact:
the result of a routine inspection by the Health Commission.
Queensland had at one stage
Expecting the usual litany of minor infringements the inspector who made the visit was taken aback by the revelations offered by a garrulous caretaker. “See that girl over there? [Yes] Well, she has taken on six different chaps tonight, and the funny part, not for money.” (3)
over fifty drive-in theatres
(3)
A subsequent police investigation came to nought. Plain clothes and uniform police have visited this place frequently and only on one occasion have they been called on to stop a row, and that was on a night during the visit of the American Fleet. Sensing the need for discretion Hoyts closed the Palais for renovations.
When it did re-open (possibly in March 1926) it now faced competition as a dance venue from Ziegfelds, even closer to the station. Teddy Riggs used it for occasional variety concerts, but by 1931 the building housed miniature golf, run by a Hoyts subsidiary. Mini-golf was a proven Hoyts stand-by for properties of uncertain
future.

Where one management sees stagnation other minds see opportunity. Manresa Hall, around the corner in Burwood Road, was one of the best appointed church halls in the suburbs. The church Fathers converted it into a cinema, the Apollo Glenferrie. Its better product, from MGM or Paramount, ran fourth week, but it survived
from 1934-39 (See CinemaRecord 41).

In August 1938 the Secretary of the Glenferrie company engaged architects Cowper, Murphy and Appleford to return the Palais to films. Christopher Cowper was a Hawthorn boy, and his first theatre commission had been the Palace in 1918. His firm would now revitalise an old competitor.
The period 1934-41 was the last flowering of the single screen, and Cowper, Murphy and Appleford were at the forefront of this boom. Their work for independent showmen included the new Waverley East Malvern and the Vogue Hawthorn (both 1936); the Sun Yarraville (1938); a makeover of the National Richmond (1939);
the Dendy Brighton (1940) and another makeover, the Moonee Moonee Ponds (1940).

The Edwardian facade of the Glenferrie Theatre was simplified. The obvious external change was to replace the cast-iron verandah with a cantilever version. The big changes were inside. The former billiard and tea-rooms became the dress-circle foyer. Substantial modifications were needed to bring the toilets inside the building.
The stripping back for the rebuild now underway has revealed the plaster ‘skin’ of 1939 wrapped inside the original walls. This in-fill made it a smaller auditorium, with space between the new and original outer wall for ventilation and heating ducts. Whereas surfaces in the body of the old theatre were mostly smooth, the new
fretted fibrous plaster was designed to trap sound and avoid echoes. Lighting from behind it emphasised the designs. A colour scheme of light buff was said to be particularly effective. This interior seated 1,299 (stalls 958, balcony 341).
(4)
A savvy lessee was now in charge. Eric Charles Yeomans had just been elected President of the Victorian Independent Exhibitors Association. He either controlled or had an interest in seven cinemas, including the Vogue Hawthorn/Kew.

The New Glen opened to an invited audience on Friday 21 April 1939. [On Saturday night] the theatre was crowded, and the proprietors received many expressions of congratulation on the appearance of the theatre and the excellence of the programme presentation. (5)
Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Love Finds Andy Hardy, were supported by Melvyn Douglas and Florence Rice in Fast Company.
This program was in its third week in the suburbs and inaugurated the Glen into its place in the release hierarchy. Naturally enough, programs at the Glen were switched with its stable-mate the Vogue only two km west. One year later, the opening of the prestige Rivoli, in what was then called Upper Hawthorn, placed three
independent theatres in an east-west line, with the Glen in the centre.
For as long as MGM, Paramount and the Rank organisation stayed on top of their game, the Glen was a worthy competitor for the Palace and better looking. In terms of design and ambience however, it was never in the class of the Rivoli. Once widescreen was an option the Rivoli broke ranks with the Glen and was screening
MGM’s CinemaScope films much earlier.
Hoyts scale and muscle also meant that the Palace went widescreen four months before the Glen’s first VistaVision attraction - White Christmas - which opened Thursday 24 March 1955.
Thereafter competition between the two theatres was again evenly matched until the decline in the quality of MGM features so weakened the exhibition structure of the independents that competition between the Glen and the Palace became one-sided.
While television continued to hollow-out all audiences for all exhibitors, Hoyts access to broader, more vigorous range of films pulled the Palace ahead. Even so, Glen management stoically maintained each program for one week.

The Glen went under in the first wave of closures, which took out some other big names including the Village Toorak. The last show at the Glen was Saturday night of 14 May 1959. It was a lacklustre MGM double feature: Steve Reeves as Hercules and Alan Ladd and Ernest Borgnine in The Badlanders.
The Palace held out until for another three years.