A trip to the flicks a popular treat

Young people growing up in North and West Melbourne during the early years of the twentieth century had a choice of cinema to attend, if they had the money to buy a ticket.

The Hotham History Project has oral records of the Seeres Model Open Air Theatre that operated between 1913 and 1918 in a vacant block next to the North Star Hotel in Abbotsford Street, where silent films were screened on a back wall.

During this time, a rival outdoor cinema called Bowmans, on the corner of Roden and King streets, West Melbourne, also screened silent films.

The Imperial cinema, colloquially referred to as the “Imp”, was located at 110-114 Errol St. Designed by a British architect, RJ Haddon, and built in 1913, it burnt down in June 1930. 

By 1937 the North Melbourne Town Hall had started to show regular screenings of popular films. It had a seating capacity of 700 in portable rows of seats, which were stacked away when dances were held.

The Central, at 50 Errol St, was built in 1943 as part of the City Mission’s conversion of the very popular Fitzgerald Brothers Department Store to a Christian Community Centre, which operated in the building from 1898 to 1938.

Miriam Manne recalled that “its Art Deco style, with lots of curved plaster effects, recessed lighting and chrome fittings, gave picture-goers a feeling of luxury they could not afford at home”.

Several local cinemagoers remember the showings at the Central, otherwise known as the “Flea Box”, during the 1950s. Peter Cormick recalled that “there was often so much unruly audience participation, with so many empty lemonade bottles and Jaffas rolling down the aisle, that it was difficult to focus on the film”.

Both the Central cinema and the Loco cinema in Victoria St were hugely popular during the 1940s and 1950s and unless you had a booking for a Saturday night you were unlikely to be admitted. 

The Loco was built in 1914 by the Locomotive Engine Drivers, Firemen and Cleaners Association as a permanent meeting hall for the union. It ran a very popular picture theatre, and during the early 1920s it changed its program twice a week, and employed a permanent orchestra.

During the Depression if there were any vacant seats at interval, unemployed teenage boys would be let in so as to stop them roaming the streets.

The coming of television sounded the death knell for local cinemas and many closed, including the Loco.

However, the Loco is now owned by the Panarcadian Association of Melbourne and Victoria “O Kolokotronis”,  and it has again started showing the occasional film. •