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Dendy Brighton with Crying Room at rear of stalls (c. 1983)

that, also in Essendon, a major upgrade of Hoyts Circle in 1947 included
relocating the bio box to the rear of the dress circle and building a crying
room in the former bio box at the rear of the stalls. The adjoining rewind
room was converted to a pram room.
Cowper, Murphy and Appleford also included a Crying Room in their
design for the independently owned Dendy Theatre in Brighton, which
opened in 1940. The door to the Crying Room was prominently located
next to the ticket box and interior photos reveal a large glassed area at
the rear of the stalls. Eric Reed, in CinemaRecord 93, noted that the room
was in great demand during the baby boom years.
John-Michael Howson provided an amusing recollection in his book I
Found It At The Flickers. His Catholic primary school did not approve
of the movies but, when they heard of a movie about a Saint, they
arranged an excursion to The Song of Bernadette: “We were lined up,
marched, checked and re-checked and taken to a special matinee at the
Hoyts, Windsor. While the kids sat in the cinema the nuns sat in a glassed
room which was called the Crying Room - an area where distracted
mothers could remove their distracted children from a distracted
audience.”
The rooms were often decorated with murals which would appeal to
children, as already mentioned in the Mildura Ozone review. The Rivoli
noted “The room is decorated with murals by Miss A. Coleman.”
Several murals can still be seen in the Regent at Mudgee, (NSW). The
cinema was built in 1935 but did not include a Crying Room. There were
two shops at the front, and one was converted into a nursery where
mothers could leave their infants. According to John MacCabe (Kino
No. 51) ushers were told where the mothers were sitting in case the child
should start to cry. For nursing mothers a viewing window was installed
in the nursery so that they would not miss any of the picture. In later
years, the nursery was converted to a candy store, but retained the painted
walls depicting cartoon characters and nursery rhymes. A recent heritage
report details one “prejudiced children’s rhyme, ‘ten little niggers’”
which was painted in 1946.

Right: An excerpt from the February 1938 Opening Night program for the
Corio Theatre, Geelong

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