Dear John and podyperson. The Greater Union centre built on the site after the Paramount’s demolition was indeed separate to the neighbouring Hoyts complex. The Greater Union Centre opened with four screens, later expanding to six by slicing a cinema in half and fitting out a basement space where one had to navigate pillars for an unobstructed view of the screen! It was several years later that the Hoyts, Greater Union and Village Complex were joined through a labyrinth of passage ways and remodeled cinema spaces.
I am certain the staircase and foyer seen in the second photo are the King’s Chatswood, not the Arcadia. The short flight of four steps leading up to the auditorium floor level; the island ticket box (can just see one corner of it in the picture); the rectangular pillar at the base of the stairs plus the stairs doing a right angle turn to the left are clear indicators. I did a job at the Kings in Chatswood just a year before it was demolished and became very familiar with the space.
Just received this information from the unidentified donor of the restored curtain…
“When the proscenium was widened (to accommodate Cinemascope projection), the height was lowered considerably so as to take a new steel beam to cross the greater width. A completely new, and very plain, blue curtain was installed, without the old valance or any decoration on it at all.” That curtain remained until the 1990s. The new proscenium and curtain have reinstated the original proportions of 1928.
The Barclay continued to run films into the 1980s. One of the last was a reissue of ‘Gone With The Wind’. It was looking very tired in its last few years. Around 1984 it closed for good when the Greater Union Orgainization built a new multiplex a few blocks up the road on the site of the former Rapallo and Paramount theatres.
A video postcard from a cinema / theatre still in the midst of being renovated. Another of the surviving Kaberry & Chard cinemas, common through the states of regional New South Wales and Victoria in the 1920s and 1930s.
Dear John and podyperson. The Greater Union centre built on the site after the Paramount’s demolition was indeed separate to the neighbouring Hoyts complex. The Greater Union Centre opened with four screens, later expanding to six by slicing a cinema in half and fitting out a basement space where one had to navigate pillars for an unobstructed view of the screen! It was several years later that the Hoyts, Greater Union and Village Complex were joined through a labyrinth of passage ways and remodeled cinema spaces.
I am certain the staircase and foyer seen in the second photo are the King’s Chatswood, not the Arcadia. The short flight of four steps leading up to the auditorium floor level; the island ticket box (can just see one corner of it in the picture); the rectangular pillar at the base of the stairs plus the stairs doing a right angle turn to the left are clear indicators. I did a job at the Kings in Chatswood just a year before it was demolished and became very familiar with the space.
Just received this information from the unidentified donor of the restored curtain… “When the proscenium was widened (to accommodate Cinemascope projection), the height was lowered considerably so as to take a new steel beam to cross the greater width. A completely new, and very plain, blue curtain was installed, without the old valance or any decoration on it at all.” That curtain remained until the 1990s. The new proscenium and curtain have reinstated the original proportions of 1928.
The Barclay continued to run films into the 1980s. One of the last was a reissue of ‘Gone With The Wind’. It was looking very tired in its last few years. Around 1984 it closed for good when the Greater Union Orgainization built a new multiplex a few blocks up the road on the site of the former Rapallo and Paramount theatres.
A video postcard from a cinema / theatre still in the midst of being renovated. Another of the surviving Kaberry & Chard cinemas, common through the states of regional New South Wales and Victoria in the 1920s and 1930s.