Page 8 - untitled

CINEMA REC ORD

POSTCRIPT

It has constantly surprised me how few people ever remember the PRINCE GEORGE from personal acquaintance. I've run
into barely a dozen or so. One was the PRINCE GEORGE's ex-projectionist Andrew Rooney. He remembered (shades of
Peter Sellers in that delightful British comedy THE SMALLEST SHOW ON EARTH) that if there was even a slight earth
tremor, the picture would shake on the screen! The reason for this was that the projection box was merely an appendage to the
original Caledonian Hall, attached to the outer wall and braced on struts which very effectively picked up any vibrations in the
building and transferred these to the projectors. While two female patrons of the theatre had more colollrful memories: of the
unique flagstone entrance and its apparently deserved nickname as the "tunnel of love"! Today, it's only the "tunnel of love"
that remains. It seemed longer and more cavernous in my schoolboy memories. In the cold hard light of day you walk along
what seems no more than a narrow open Janeway running from Church Street to a Safeway carpark. And the space beyond this
walkway seems too small to have once contained a theatre. But, pause a minute at the Church Street end: on the wall inside
the entrance you'll still see two of the original display boards, where the daybills were pasted up each week for coming
attractions.They're a poignant reminder of a vanished era (and so are the double doors that once opened into the sweet shop
for the lollyboys) They recall a time when, in every major shopping street around the suburbs, one or more brightly-lit
marquees drew crowds to view the latest movies on offer. When the "local" wasn't the hotel but your local fleapit, or
bughouse or picture palace as the case might be. The PRINCE GEORGE wasn't an architectural marvel. You can even gauge
this from the scant evidence remaining today. But it was a special place for many avid film-gocrs before television came
along. Its big brother up the road, the DENDY, survived the bad years of the 60's and 70's to finally be revamped in the early
1980's. It is now the triple-screen DENDY of today, pan of a multi-purpose shopping complex. The PRINCE GEORGE
became a statistic: just one of hundreds of small suburban cinemas whose lights went out forever at the end of the 1950's.

The Herald Jan 171945

Prince George Theatre

AND
Sttecial Ho6day Malioee
Mo!Uiay,
Hew Year's Day
A'J 2 P.M.

Flyer and ticket from the Stan Gunn Collection

PRINCE GEOitGE ,

ftM"
11 , ___ _

A ticket to joy for
a young boy

8