Page 24 - CR

Steel City

Movie Days

By Crosley Carpenter

In July of 1986 I was summoned to the State Theatre building, 49 Market Street Sydney,
to attend an interview for the position of Trainee Theatre Manager for Village Theatres in Sydney.
After the interview, not wanting to miss an opportunity, I went to the Greater Union Pitt Centre around
the corner and saw the just-released A Room With A View. It was a great movie and I got the job,
spending the next 20-plus years working in the cinema business, doing something I loved.
It all started from my love of films, acquired at an early age in Newcastle N.S.W…

rowing up in Newcastle during the Today, there has been an almost pretty well went every Saturday once I
G 1960s and 70s meant I started out complete reversal of fortune, with most was old enough to catch the bus into
in a time before major suburban of the business and shopping being town on my own or with a friend. The
shopping centres and cinema done in the suburbs, the city a shadow films I saw then remain among my
complexes, when pretty much all of its former self. There is just one favourites to this day.
business, shopping and entertainment lonely three-screen cinema left My earliest cinematic memory is of
took place in the city, in “town”. operating in the city, two suburban seeing Walt Disney’s animated One
Befitting its status as a major eight-screen and one six-screen cinema Hundred and One Dalmatians, age
regional city, Newcastle was home to a complexes and a lone single screen. five, with my mother, in the stalls at the
range of city and suburban theatres, A lot has changed since I grew up, beautiful Civic Theatre in Hunter
from grand Picture-Palaces like the but the experience of going to the Street.
Civic, to Newsreel Theatrettes, Fleapits pictures continues and, when done well, Like a lot of children I was terrified
and Drive-Ins. is still a memorable one. by Cruella De Vil, but at least I had
When I saw my first movie in 1962, This article is mainly my something to hide behind - I have a
there were still six city cinemas reminiscences of going to the pictures clear memory of being troubled by one
operating, at least 17 suburban cinemas when growing up in Newcastle. of the support columns for the balcony
and two drive-ins, not counting the Weaned on the latest Disney school obscuring my view. Perhaps that’s
theatres and drive-ins elsewhere in the holiday attraction, my love of going to where my interest in and love of
Hunter Valley. the pictures grew to the point where I cinema and theatre buildings began as
well. (Fortunately the columns were
removed during the extensive
restoration undertaken in the 1990s.)

PHOTOS-
Left and Below: The Civic Theatre.
Opposite page: The Theatre Royal as it
appeared in the 1950s.

24 2011 CINEMARECORD