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MAYFAIR/CAPRI, 721 Hay St, Perth

Photo - Courtesy of Roy Mudge

The MAYFAIR Newsreel Theatrette - The Mayfair Theatrette opened on 25 June 1947 with only 380 seats. It was built by Joel Moss in the basement of Sheffield House, under Levinson’s, in Hay St, Perth.

The birth of The Newsreel Theatrette

The main programming of such theatrettes was the newsreel, and as the distributors refused to supply Moss with the major newsreels available at the time (Cinesound Review and Movietone News), he decided to produce a local newsreel, christened the Westralian News. One advantage of doing this was that both the existing newsreels came from Sydney and concentrated on news from the eastern states: a West Australian newsreel should have had more drawing appeal for the people of Perth. He formed a company (Southern Cross Newsreels Pty Ltd, later Southern Cross Films Pty Ltd), with himself and accountant John Macauley as directors, and Bill Duff as company secretary. Leith Goodall, who had worked as a stringer for Movietone, became chief cameraman, and arrangements were made for processing to be done by Herschell’s in Melbourne. The difficulties and cost of maintaining a regular schedule without local processing facilities eventually defeated the project, and when Cinesound Review was offered to the Mayfair Moss accepted and closed the Westralian News in October 1947.

The theatrette continued, quite successfully. Prices were cheap – in 1948, 1s plus 6d tax for adults, and 6d without tax for children. Sessions began at 10 a.m., and lasted approximately an hour, hence the popular label ´hour show’. There would usually be eleven each day, before the theatre closed around 10 p.m. or later, as most programmes were slightly longer than the advertised hour. The programme for 1 January 1949 could be considered typical: a topical short film on the Royal Christening, an overseas and an Australian gazette, a cartoon, a sporting film, a Fitzpatrick travel film, and a nature film entitled Mirror of Submarine Life.

Television arrives

Television, however, provided such programmes within the home, making newsreel theatrette’s redundant. The Mayfair maintained its policy of continuous programming longer than its competitor, the Savoy, which had opened in 1955. When it finally succumbed, it followed the Savoy’s lead and ran six to eight sessions daily, of shorts and a feature in almost continuous programming, still appealing to the same audience – shoppers and others with a couple of hours to kill in the city.

After Moss’s death the cinema was managed by Mr Monahan, who married Joel Moss’s widow, Esme Moss: after Monahan’s death, Esme Monahan managed the cinema herself. The Mayfair closed 25 May 1968.

The Cinema Capri is born

The venue re-opened, however, on 10 June 1968, as the Cinema Capri, now owned by Ace Theatres, but still managed by Esme Monahan: The entrance to the theatre has been resited, and It was now programmed as a conventional city theatre, and continued with this policy till the late seventies, when Ace were feeling the effects of the cinema slump. They closed the Paris, but wanted to retain the Capri as an outlet for some of the films they were distributing, so made an arrangement with Peter Thomson, then managing the venue, to take over the lease but to continue to get his film supply through Ace. The building was still owned by National Mutual, and at the end of the first three-year lease they wished to raise the rent to market value. Thomson pointed out that the lease required them to charge cinema rent, that is, the rent currently being charged on a similar cinema venue, so he was able to contain the rent rise at this point. By the time the second lease ended, he was already working towards opening in Fremantle, so offered to leave the Capri if National Mutual bought him out of the lease, which they did – to the satisfaction of both parties:

Closure - September 1987

National Mutual were now able to charge market value to the next tenant, and Thomson had some capital towards the Fremantle venture. In April 1986, the coffee lounge had been converted into a second cinema and the venue had begun operating as a twin cinema, but it all closed in September 1987, and the whole venue was immediately gutted for conversion - Mayfair/Capri notes courtesy of Cinema Web.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -