Poster Exhibition |
Recently discovered in a warehouse in Sydney, we are delighted to be offering this remarkable hoard of early Australian Entertainment posters. Nearly 30 unique pieces from the earliest days of cinema in this country - a time when a silent short was considered a curiosity and was always part of a vaudeville or variety production. In 1907, a hundred years ago, no one thought moving pictures would last long as a medium of entertainment or information. These wonderful posters give a graphic insight to the time - the subjects, the events, the performers and the locations. Arts & Entertainment historian, Peter Sumner, has provided us with the following appraisal of the collection, which forms part of a much larger offering of Movie, Magic & Entertainment memorabilia to be offered in our May 17th public auction.
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The last decade of the 19th century saw an explosion of new inventions for the projection of moving pictures. Thomas Edison had patented the Kinetograph in 1891 which used celluloid roll film, produced by George Eastman for still photography. In 1894 the Lumiere brothers developed their combined camera and projector, the Cinematograph and presented a public program in Paris at the end of 1895. By 1896 the electrically driven Kinetoscope was screening in Melbourne and in Sydney the device was set up in the Edison Electric Parlor. Soon the great vaudeville producer Harry Rickards was advertising the photo-electric sensation presented by an American magician Carl Hertz. In 1896 Marius Sestier opened the Salon Lumiere in Pitt Street showing Sydney street scenes and the Melbourne Cup. Other entrepreneurs began refitting old shops or halls to create The Cinematographe in George Street and the Salon Cinematographe in Pitt Street. The great theatrical impresario J.C.Williamson jumped on the bandwagon touring films around Australia as the Wonderful Williamson Biograph and later as The Anglo-American Bio-Tableau. By 1897 the Edison Vitascope had opened in Pitt Street and the Latest Cinematographe in George St. Harry Rickards took over the Palace Theatre and combined live vaudeville acts with the American Biograph. Most of these enterprises were short lived and by 1898 the Polytechnic in King Street, opened by Sydney photographer Mark Blow, was the only survivor. The Polytechnic advertised an extraordinary array of Australian short news items including the English and Australian cricketers, Fort Street School, the Northern Mail arriving at Strathfield, George Street at Redfern Railway Station, Sydney Fire Brigade practice, North Shore ferry landing passengers at Milson’s Point and the NSW troops in a march past for the Queen’s Birthday Now began the struggle between cinema and live theatre for the hearts and minds of the people. A nationalist impulse had risen in the production of popular theatre in the second half of the 19th century and plays were peopled with local melodramatic figures such as bushrangers and crooked troopers, outback heroines, the usual evil landlords and the naive new chums. Many of these plays such as Robbery Under Arms and The Kelly Gang were later to be filmed. )
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But the public’s taste for this new form of amusement had been whetted and as the New Country embarked politically, so began a sea-change in public entertainment. Joseph Perry filmed the opening of Australia’s first Federal Parliament in Melbourne by HRH the Duke of Cornwall and later went on to make ‘The Soldiers of the Cross’ for the Salvation Army. By contrast it is interesting to note that the grand 1901 Christmas pantomime presented by J.C.Williamson at her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney was ‘Australis, or the City of Zero’ a futurist story set in 2001, with The Boss running the country with the help of a bunch of unionists known as ‘The Push’. In the first years of mixed bills the exhibitors devoted part of the program to live acts on stage and partly to short film sequences. It was not till around 1904 that the narrative form in film began to dominate and film makers were quick to adapt successful stage productions for film. The acts were anything from opera duets and small orchestra pieces to jugglers, tumblers, ventriloquists, canine performers and the multitude of small travelling vaudeville professionals from all over the world. As the decade unfolded these acts would support an increasingly wide ranging selection of film of local and world events, from wars to Royal Weddings and famous sopranos to infamous boxing matches. This first decade was boom and bust for many of the pioneer film makers and exhibitors. By 1904 the surviving exhibitors were the Queen’s Hall in Pitt Street and the Cyclorama which imported a Chrono Cinematograph. James McMahon set up the Lyceum at which C.Spencer established his Great American Theatrescope. In 1905 J.C.Williamson opened his Bio Tableau at the Palace Theatre where he presented such film highlights as Busy Day at the Homebush Cattle Markets, Panoramic Views of Circular Quay, Championship Wood Chopping and the Australian Cricketers in England. By 1908 the great impresario T.J.West was running the Glaciarium in Sydney where he drew big crowds with film of a terrible train crash in Victoria and the Sydney tram strike including mob violence and troopers patrolling the streets. His next sensation was the Burns-Squires fight which Burns won in the first round. )
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The Bijou Picture Palace at Railway Square in Sydney has the distinction of being the first purpose built cinema in Australia. Opened in 1909 it was described as a small theatre with an Edwardian style façade, a marble foyer and a roof opening out to make it the ‘coolest place of amusement in Sydney’ By which time the main exhibitors, Spencer, West and Williams, were catering to audiences with comfortable theatres, upholstered seats, electric lighting, orchestras, continuous programs and prices from one penny to three shillings. Hidden by history are the many small outfits who set up projectors and equipment in suburban and country halls, scratching a living by trading on their audiences’ fascination with the new ‘reality’ of moving images. In 1977 Joan Long produced an Australian classic about these adventurers, ‘Picture Show Man’. Ahead lie the golden years of early Australian film making with creative pioneers emerging such as Raymond Longford, Lottie Lyall and Arthur Higgins. Film will begin to dominate the popular imagination, and theatre in Australia enters a new dark age. Peter Sumner 2006 The posters will be on display from mid April 2007 at the CLA premises. |