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CINEMA REC O R D

Only later was the seating evidently reduced to a more comfortable number of around 700. As a stalls patron myself I found it
cramped enough so Heaven help the clientele of the GRAND CENTRAL. Conversion to a cinema had essentially involved
cutting back the upstairs floor to create a dress circle; conversion of the downstairs laundry to back stalls and the addition of
an extension to the length of the building to create a front stalls area, a stage and screen with an orchestra pit in front.
During its eight years as a silent cinema, the GRAND CENTRAL underwent a name change to emerge as the PARAMOUNT
Theatre in 1926. For it was on 13 October, 1926 that Robert McLeish Theatres of Swanston Street, Melbourne declared they
had taken qver operation of the former GRAND CENTRAL. Amid muted trumpets they announced that their new acquisition
would be the "home of Paramount and Realart Pictures".

THE WARD ERA

Robert Ward's father, Robert Granville Ward (or "Bert") had been working at the Hoyts SOUTHERN in Hampton as a
"projectionis~-<:um-manager-cum everything" as his son Robert describes him. Bert Ward had seen that the PARAMOUNT in
Middle Brighton was up for sale and he bought it. The theatre was apparently "going cheap and was run-down". At the age of
twenty Bert Ward had taken over running his own cinema. With the help of aunts and uncles he did it up and within a year or
two it was doing "very well". Bert renamed the theatre the PRINCE GEORGE, after the second youngest son of King George
V and Queen Mary, later to become the Duke of Kent. It was still, of course. a silent cinema but, with Bert's entrepreneurial
vision, he made it the first suburban silent cinema to convert to the new marvel of talking pictures. He's also credited with
making it the first suburban house with central heating. I can't personally attest to that because my brief involvement with the
Prince George only brings back memories of chilly winter nights watching filins in an inadequately-heated cinema! Much
more comfortable was the Dendy, just up the road, where Bert Ward had transferred his attentions in 1940. The DENDY was,
for me, a reaJ showcase cinema!

A VISIT TO THE PRINCE GEORGE

But I must return to the PRINCE GEORGE! Let me take you on an imaginary visit to this illustrious "bughouse", with help
also from its manager, Robert Ward: The front doors in Church Street were double glass doors and each day you had a board
that could be reversed so that when the doors were closed the cinema posters were turned to face the street. There wasn't a lot
of area for showcases, as you'll see from modem photographs, apart from poster boards on the walls of the passageway (still
visible today) and space above your head as you walked inside the passageway. The walls of the entrance walkway were
painted a beige colour right through to the foyer, while the floor was composed of large flagstones. Where the passageway
widened out at the ticket boxes the floor was covered with black and
white chequerboard tiles. On each side was a ticket box with a
staircase to the circle also on each side. These stairs were constructed
of bluestone with a railing of wrought iron lacework topped with a
mahogany handrail. If you were a stalls patron (as I was) you
proceeded ahead between the stairs to a small carpeted foyer
decorated with several couches and posters on the walls. The theatre
doors opened straight into the auditorium around the middle of the
theatre. To the right was the back stalls, to the left, the front stalls.
Carpeted side aisles led down to the proscenium. Originally the
proscenium had inner, angled panels with decorative plaster and rear-
illuminated coloured wax-paper fretwork inserts. When
CinemaScope was installed these panels were removed and the
screen extended almost to the edges of the proscenium. Robert Ward
believes the 'scope screen would have been about 35 feet in width.
The ftrst CinemaScope ftlm they screened was Eartha Kitt in NEW
FACES (a 1954 release). Robert remembers this as being an
exclusive suburban release at the Prince George and running for
some months". It was also the first film they ran with magnetic
l liilil~:::::::::::= sound: they were the first suburban theatre to be able to play
magnetic tracks with CinemaScopc. Magnetic sound went into the
DENDY "some five years later" recalls Robert. My only vivid
memory of CinemaScope at the Prince George was confined to a
trailer for some obscure "Coming Attraction": part of the image was
on the ceiling and quite a lot around the walls! Robert says this
wasn't the usual practice for 'scope! The projectionist must have
been

The entrance across Church Street

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