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Hoyts acquired the cinema in 1935 and remodelled it in the latest art deco style, it opening in 1938.

Architects Charles Bohringer and Associates re-decorated it with a wide fan-shaped auditorium with a large steep dress circle over which there was a ceiling beamed in large coffers. Reportedly the acute angled intersection site proved a challenge to the interior designers.

The Bondi Daily, 18 March, 1939 reported: “It is just a year today since the remodelled and luxuriously furnished Hoyts Star Theatre, Cowper Street [now Bronte Road], Bondi Junction reopened with that outstanding entertainment service which has made it a feature of life in the district.”

In 1954 the Star was equipped with a new CinemaScope screen, the latest in cinema technology.

In 1973 it was briefly renamed the Hoyts Horror House, but by the following year it had returned to its original name.

It was sold by Hoyts in 1977 for conversion to a squash centre. It reopened the following year as the Star Rock Concert and was showing movies again. But this was short-lived. It closed permanently later in 1978 and was demolished in 1981, having been at its height one of the biggest suburban cinemas in NSW and the last remaining of the four Hoyts theatres at Waverley.

Published by Waverley Library from sources in the Local History Collection, 2008

Contributed by Greg Lynch - dimensional1@bigpond.com