Village East End 1-3
100 Bourke Street,
Melbourne,
VIC
3000
100 Bourke Street,
Melbourne,
VIC
3000
1 person
favorited this theater
Additional Info
Previously operated by: Village Theatres
Previous Names: My Fair Lady Theatre, Palladium Theatre, Embassy Theatre
Nearby Theaters
A conversion of the former Tye department store. The My Fair Lady Theatre was opened by Village Theatres on December 9, 1962 with the Melbourne premiere of “My Fair Lady” starring Audrey Hepburn. It was a 70mm roadshow house. “My Fair Lady” ran for 21 months. The next presentation was Elizabeth Taylor & Richard Burton in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” in September 1964 when the cinema was re-named Palladium Theatre.
The Embassy Theatre was a stand alone cinema created within the same old department store walls. Both cinemas were seperated by entrance and exit driveways leading to a multi-storey car-park created from the upper floors of the original building. The Embassy Theatre was opened on 24th December 1964 with Cliff Richard in “It’s a Wonderful Life”. The Embassy Theatre retained its name until a third screen was created in the huge foyer space of the Palladium Theatre in 1974 and the name was changed to Village East End 1-3. The Palladium Theatre was cinema 1, the Embassy Theatre was cinema 2 and the new screen was cinema 3, which opened on 30th June 1974 with “Some of My Best Friends Are…”.
This configuration was later changed by swapping cinema 2 to cinema 3, and cinema 3 to cinema 2. The 3-screens were closed in 1980. It was demolished in June 1988.
Contributed by
Ken Roe
Want to be emailed when a new comment is posted about this theater?
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater.
Recent comments (view all 6 comments)
The site is now a private investigator firm(Australian Civil Investigators.
The former department store building was called Tye.
Has anyone by any chance found any pics of the Palladium they could post?
Cinema 3 (the former Embassy cinema) suffered a bad reputation from day one, but in fact was a perfectly serviceable house. Given todays seating, the original capacity of approx. 400 would today be considered quite large. One of the main complaints was the entrance to the auditorium at screen end, but double sets of black-out curtains never seemed to be a major concern to me. A very early Espresso Bar in the foyer was a major attraction for the “hip” early 60’s audience it attracted with many important foreign films of the era, e.g. I Vitteloni, Woman Of The Dunes, Umbrellas Of Cherbourg, 81/2 and many other European and British hits. When all 3 cinemas came under corporate control the end was near. The former Embassy deserves much more acclaim for the product it introduced to many Melbourne film lovers.
The My Fair Lady Theatee, Palladium Theatre, and Embassy Theatre might have been seen in the Australian tv series “Saturday night at the movies”(available on dvd).
May 16, 1974 print ad as East End Two added courtesy Peter Norrish.