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Did you lose your 3D image? With construction of the drive-in
A few frames in sequence - crack, under way, Geoff was offered the job to
crack, crack, crack as they went open it. Geoff put it to me to go with
through the machine - and you'd feel him. He would take Field One and I
your right eye blinking. You got an would have Field Two. So it came to
impression that you had a nerve pass that we started there about a
twitching in your eye. month before the theatre opened,
helping Westrex install the equipment
Even before the film was damaged you
and generally setting up the place. Both
wouldn't want to have one of the
fields held 750 cars each; they were
projectors shift out of alignment.
identical actually, 1,500 cars in total.
We used to check regularly with
two copies of an alignment film, one in That must have been an enormous
each machine. The target film had a wiring job?
chart with a cross in the middle, and we All done with trenching, laying the
would move each machine until the wires, sand over and then bluestone
crosses were a perfect overlap. metal put over the top. Then the ramps
were sealed. The apprentice electricians
All this came up at a time when you
came along and located the coils of
still had one year left for your sound
wire under the ground and dug holes to
ticket.
put the speaker poles in - all by hand.
I had to get a special licence to say
Junction boxes were put on top of the
I could be a projectionist for the season
poles, and the wires brought up the
of Kiss Me Kate. Once I had my
poles.
licence I was shifted around to the
There were a few cock-ups. The
Metro Bourke Street and Metro
walk-in pavilion in back of Field One
Malvern for the holiday relief. Tommy
had outdoor furniture and speakers.
Millane was a licensed projectionist
When they came to stoke up the sound
doing a lot of relief work on the Metro
system in One, the lights were flashing
circuit at this time. Tommy drifted off
in the pavilion in time with the sound.
into other things and that left the door
They had wired the sound into the
open for me to become relieving
lights. Fortunately they didn’t put 240
projectionist at the Metro Collins Kiss Me Kate competed volts down into the sound system!
Street and the Metro Malvern. with the opening of The Robe at the
The cafeteria, was an ‘island’ at the
Regent a few doors away.
What do you remember about Bourke back of each field, separating them, and
The Herald Tues. 15 Dec.1953.
Street and Malvern? behind each field was a car holding
Malvern had Australian-made area big enough to hold enough cars for
Centrex projectors. It was a theatre with Apparently MGM had a lot of another capacity house at the next
acoustic problems, which required shares in General Motors, which they session.
absorbent panels set into the walls. pulled out to finance the building The projection rooms were 450-feet
program. When I started at Metro the
At Bourke Street the projectors (137m.) back from each screen, and the
story was that Australian law only
were Super Simplex. The booth was in screens were 116-feet wide (35m.) by
allowed them to remit the equivalent of
the old spotlight box above the Upper 50-feet high (15m.), which gave a 2.3:1
20 cents in the dollar. So they
Circle, at an angle of about 20 degrees (CinemaScope) ratio.
accumulated all this wealth in Australia
to the screen. And all the drive-ins MGM built,
and had it in General Motors shares.
Metro theatres had standby even in Italy, all the projection rooms
generators, hefty ones that could run How did you get involved in were 450-feet back from the screen and
the whole theatre without you knowing establishing the Metro Twin at used identical focal length lenses.
that you were on standby power. Clayton? The projectors were American
Malvern used them a bit because they I was working with the chief Century with R2 soundheads - single
seemed to be on the end of the power projectionist who’d come down from sprocket soundheads. They were a
line, but city theatres never seemed to Brisbane - Geoff Atkinson. He was to soundhead made or designed from the
have trouble. take over the Metro Malvern, but was re-recording head in America. The arcs
I was on relief for about three years, transferred to Collins Street when Tom were Cinex with 18-inch diameter
from about 1956. Then we heard the Payne, the chief there took ill. Tom (7cm) mirrors. We used 165 amps to
news that MGM were going to build transferred to Malvern where there was run black carbons, through silver
drive-ins in Newcastle, Adelaide and less pressure, only two shows a day. At contacts to get the current to the end of
Perth, with Melbourne and Sydney Collins Street Geoff took over as chief the carbon, and water-cooled of course.
each getting a twin. projectionist for MGM theatres in The weight of an anamorphic lens was
Melbourne. like lifting an artillery shell on to the
projector.

16 2008 CINEMARECORD