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the hour, then leisurely walk to the back the second theatre, then return to the After one film had been hired by
door and hear the process repeated - the first theatre. By this time the second four theatres over two days, I remember
difference between the speed of sound reel would be off the projector, hearing one of the manager’s say that if
and the speed of radio waves. The town rewound and ready for transfer to the he ever did anything like this again, he
hall was five miles away. second theatre, and so on. Sometimes hoped someone would shoot him!
Set on a hill above Roma Street was on the return journey the runner would Lives of a Bengal Lancer is the film
an old treadmill, used in convict times to take back the first reel of film used by that stands out as my difficult change-
grind flour. The convicts supplied the the second theatre. over. It was to be shared between the
(4)
energy needed to drive the treadmill. This is easy to describe, much Lyric and the theatre at Sherwood, six
This Wickham Terrace building had a harder to achieve without a hitch, night miles away on the south side of the
large ball on top, which was raised at ten after night. The transport car might Brisbane River.
minutes to one o’clock and lowered at break down, a film might break at the Transfer plans were discussed at
precisely one p.m. This happened every first theatre throwing out the schedule, length by the two managers. Every
day, and was considered very reliable. or someone might simply make a possible contingency was mentioned,
(As these events happened over half a mistake. I remember a time when the and a solution considered. The first
century ago, my memory says it was one wrong last reel was delivered to the obstacle was the crossing of the
o’clock, but it may have been noon.) second theatre, a mistake that caused Brisbane River, thence car to
A fellow by the name of Tom Elliott much bad feeling. Sherwood. The only way cars could
was living in the treadmill. Probably his cross the river was by a slow vehicular
job was to attend to the time ball on ferry. To avoid using the ferry, the
top. The television experiment was transporting car was to be parked on
going to take place there. the opposite side of the river from the
For a while I had great difficulty Lyric.
following the conversation. I did work The Lyric was to start with Bengal
out that what I was looking at was a Lancer, the first reel to be rewound
scanning wheel, somewhere in the while reel two was running. Then reel
vicinity of 12 to 15 inches in diameter two would be rewound as reel three
(30 to 38cm), which was driven quite started.
rapidly. Waiting outside the bio-box was the
The wheel had a series of holes about person entrusted to carry the reels to
three-sixteenths of an inch in diameter Sherwood. That person was me.
(0.5cm), drilled in a curved pattern With two reels in a canvas bag over
from the centre outwards. my shoulder, I did a fast run for nearly
The result of the transmission was a half a mile to the railway bridge. The
(5)
picture hardly recognisable as such. river was a quarter of a mile wide and I
The subject was meant to be the face of did my best, hoping not to meet anyone
Janet Gaynor, a popular movie star of on the narrow walkway. Reaching the
the day. car I drove it as fast as it would go. At
Soon after my 18th birthday I could Janet Gaynor - the face that launched a the Sherwood theatre the first words I
see there was an abundance of thousand …TV signals. heard were, “Where have you been?
projectionists and a shortage of
theatres. I was able to get employment
in a local garage and also obtain my
driver's licence.
To save on costs, a film would be
rented by two theatres, for the same
night. I became a runner, transferring it
from one theatre to the other. This was
usually straightforward for a film of
standard length; one theatre would
show the film before interval, the other
after. The length of Interval and with
the second theatre showing introductory
reels such as a newsreel and trailer was
usually plenty of time in which to bring
over the second feature.
The problem was with long films,
for which a newsreel, cartoon and the
feature were the entire program. In
these cases, the first theatre would
rewind the first reel after showing it,
the runner would pick it up and drive to

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