Mayfair Theatre

How many projectionists does it take to change a light bulb?
This is a common rhetorical question these days used to infer incompetence in some occupation.
One of the “joys” of being an assistant projectionist was being at the bottom of the totem pole and being the last port of call for the jobs that nobody else wanted to do. One such job was the changing of light bulbs and before you start thinking “how hard can that be?”, you need to consider the architecture of theatres. Almost unimaginably high ceilings, an auditorium with inclined or stepped floors to accommodate people seated behind others, single light fittings in stair wells that had to be replaced immediately due to the health hazard of darkened stairs.
Most of the low level fittings I was left to handle by myself, no problem so far. The high auditorium ceiling fittings were lowered by a cable operated from a hand cranked winch directly above. Somebody had to go up there and let it down. This was a rare occurrence and was only done when a number of lamps were obviously out. On at least one occasion I did find myself in the ceiling above the stalls treading the ceiling joists with the theatre manager shouting instructions to me from the lounge area. At one point I managed to lose my balance, fell sideways and put my foot on the soft plaster of the ornate ceiling, sensing it crunching under my weight.
As I’m still here to talk about it, I obviously regained my position and didn’t plunge through the plaster making the deadfall to the stalls perhaps some seventy or eighty feet below. Hearing the crunch, the manager called out “be careful Vern!”. What else could he do? He certainly couldn’t catch me.
When dealing with light fittings above stepped floors with seating we had a very high step ladder with legs of very different lengths. The pair of legs mounting the steps would be placed on the arm rests of the seats in one row and the shortened support legs on the floor of the row behind.
This then became at least a two man job, so I had to request the head projectionist, Harold to assist me. This was reasonably common as we had some down lights immediately in front of the bio box (projection booth) that would often fail.
Being very near the bio box meant a ceiling height of perhaps three metres. Expressing my fear at mounting this precarious ladder, Harold who was always eager to show how easy things were, said “watch me” and quickly scurried up the ladder. Unfortunately he didn’t wait until we had it in the correct position and noting that the legs that I was tasked with stabilizing were shifting off the arm rests as he transferred his body weight from side to side, I called to him to stop. Harold had long been hard of hearing and continued up the ladder. While I was desperately trying to re-position the unstable leg, I lost track of the other one which duly slipped off the arm rest, sending the ladder toppling.
Unwilling to be delivered to his doom by the ladder, Harold wisely selected a landing site and jumped for it. He landed on his feet on one of the cushioned seats, but this being an unstable platform, he lost his balance and fell into the next lower row of seats coming to rest on his back and totally upside down, his feet up in the air.
He arose, apparently unhurt and said to me with a very serious look on his face, “are you holding the ladder?” That had to be rhetorical.
This was a very serious event at the time but these days, more than forty years later, whenever I think of it, I break into uncontrolled laughter.
It’s hard to imagine these work practices being now possible with our current occupational health and safety regulations. Those were the days.

Hello John, I remember you as a teenager, probably around 18 years old when I left there. I certainly did buy the Beatles White Album in 1969, though I don’t know that I was the first to do so. The vehicle you referred to was a 1956 model Land Rover and I paid $600 for it. Your memory is generally pretty good, although I have to differ as to the time of Robert Wise’s visit. He was there for the opening of STAR, which was around 18 months after The Sound Of Music finished. It’s quite impossible that we would be showing him different issues of The Sound Of Music, reel 1. I’m sure that didn’t happen. For the premier of STAR we had instructions from him to slightly dim the house lights and open the curtains, exposing a bare screen. This was maintained for most of the musical entry (these days probably called the entre act overture). He said the cue to take the lights completely down was when we heard Lime House Blues. Now being as Harrold was hard of hearing, that instruction was passed along to me. My response being, what does Lime House Blues sound like? It’s certainly wasn’t on the Beatles White Album. Tim Griffin, the then head electronics technician, was to be in the audience on stand by for this special event. He was assigned the message seat, where he had a button to buzz the bio box in the event of a problem. Tim had enough growth rings on him to recognise Lime House Blues when he heard it. So, he was assigned the task of notifying me of the correct moment to extinguish the lights. Ultimately it all worked. Oh, that horrible bare screen. After my final exit from The Mayfair, I went into the electronics industry, became the production manager of a Sydney based electronics manufacturing company. I ultimately became a TAFE teacher of electronics at Ultimo TAFE College. After some 21 years there, I retired about 2 years ago. I hope you are well John.

Saw Rollerball here in 1975! Then in 1988-89 worked in the office building that sadly replaced it, ‘Mayfair House’. Early history: http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/national_amphitheatre