The 'magic' has gone from the cinemas today, or is that just me? Seems the swanker they get the less I like them. I loved the creaky old seats, the bare boards, the hokey plastered walls and statues doing their damnedest to look like marble in a palace in the little suburban ones. It was the kitsch of them that appealed I think.
I went through a stage of wandering the city alone before or after a shift just to look at it as 'a tourist'. I'd ride the ferries, (had a free pass
) or go to the zoo, or explore around the Quay and the Botanic Gardens, but I found I was drawn to the area where many of the theatres were. I'd do 'study' tours of the foyers and take note of things we never look at when going to see a movie. Some of the cinemas in Sydney were gobsmacking when really looked at, but so few really saw the details in them.
Warrigal would remember the Prince Edward, it was gorgeous, and they demolished it!! I'm not a 'heritage' person as a rule, just because some buildings are old doesn't mean they're worth keeping, but that one was! I was devastated to lose that one in particular, but most have been dusted now. We still have the State Theatre which is
real marble and an absolute gem, and I think the Capitol has survived, but I missed my other old plaster and fake gold paint 'friends'.
[story alert]
An elderly distant relative lived in a nearby town and I'd met him often but only visited his home once. He had been the manager of the cinema in Muswellbrook back in the 50 to late 70s. It was the fulfillment of his life's ambition as he was mad for movies since he was a little kid.
He was one of nature's most boring men to converse with, and had only two subjects to discuss. One was his health the other was the cinema industry and old movie stars. He was a walking encyclopeadia of things Hollywood. He said he'd collected 'a bit of stuff' through his stint at the cinema but as he was boring at everything else I wrote that off as probably a few posters and mouldy film reels.
When the front door of his house opened I was greeted with a scene from 'Hoarders'. It was clean, but it was just stuffed tight with his 'collection.' There was a track barely wide enough to squeeze through the hall between all the cabinets and tables piled with books and god knows what. The whole house was like that. How he kept it as clean as it was is beyond me. He even had 'movie stuff' in the kitchen.
He lived with around a square foot of table space and one chair that wasn't piled with his cataloging projects. It was the El Dorado of film buffs! It would have exploded the heads of those fellas from American Pickers.
He had hundreds, thousands? of books, biographies, albums, cigarette card collections, clippings, copies of contracts, scripts, autographed photos, you name it.
He showed me his 'gem in the crown'... the script from the original Frankenstein, fingerprints, coffee stains and all!
I kept hearing kerchinggggg noises and all I could think of was that this collection was at huge risk of catching fire!
He didn't even have it insured! He lived on the old aged pension and hadn't a penny in the bank and he was sitting on a bloody fortune!
He didn't see it's value beyond what it meant to him.
I gave him a good talking to, and told him to let his daughters, who were scattered far and wide and didn't give much of a damn about him, what the stuff was and that it was valuable! I had visions of them throwing it all on a fire as rubbish! It's not that I wanted them to get rich, I just couldn't bear the thought that this irreplaceable memorabilia would be lost.
He died not long after I moved away so I have no idea what happened to the collection, I don't really want to think about it.
I often wish I could have gotten my hands on it but short of mugging him that wasn't on. He wouldn't have sold any of it anyway.
I just hope it was appreciated for how valuable it was and not destroyed.
[/story]
