West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Saturday 4 May 1946, page 5


LIFE4 ?LE TERS

AUSTRALTAN CONEMA. A Lifet me Association.

TuERE are few people in Australia today who can claim as long an association with the film industry as can Mr. S. W. Perry, who retired this week from the position of resident manager in Western Australia for Hoyts Theatres. Not only has Mr. Perry himself spent a lifetime connected in some way or other with the picture entertainment industry, but he is also a member of a family of film industry pioneers, his father and his two brothers having been prominently associated with it from its early days. Mr. Perry's father was the owner of the first motion picture projecting unit in Australia-in the days of flickering, uncertain pictures when the film was about 2 inches wide and the projecting apparatus had to be turned laboriously by hand. But Mr. Perry's memories of the picture industry go farther back than that-back to the days when with his father he toured Australia and New Zealand with a slide lantern. The entertainment consisted of lantern slides with a running commentary. An orchestra provided part of the entertainment at these shows, and the young Stan Perry had his earliest Job as the boy who banged the triangle at appropriate spots during the performance. Later he was to play most instruments in the orchestra and in between times he learnt all the other jobs associated with the productions. One of the contraptions associated with the lantern slide equipment was known as a Chromotrope, which comprised revolving disks with a cooling tank in front of the projector to stop the heat from breaking it. This same tank gave the screen its first "living" action when a couple of goldfish were placed In it and their swimrming projected on the screen. The .idea finished in a gory climax, the illusion being a fish fight in which the "fade-out" was given real colour by the addition of a few drops of cochineal to the bowl at the critical moment. Salvation Army. Mr. Perry gives the Salvation Army full honours for pioneering the motion picture industry in Australia. The Army established the first exchange for hiring pictures in Australia and it also established the first studio and produced the first feature picture. Later the Army had the first electric light tottring show, which the rry family controlled. Mr, Perry's father was a member of the Salvation Army and it was for this organisation that he undertik his earliest adventures in films. Their original studio, the first in the southern hemisphere, was established in Inkerman-road, Caulfield, soon after the turn of the century. It was at this studio, working under the Salvation Army, that flnis such as Life of the Early Christians" and "Scottish Covenanters" were produced. All the members of the Perry family were closely connected with the venture. Mr. Perry's father was producer, one of his brothers was principal -operator and he himself was .assistant operator and "ham" actor. At different times he had a varlety of roles in these films, varying from being the hindquarters of. a tiger-his brother Reg was the front halfto becoming one of the reluctant early Christians forced to jump into quicklime pits. There was also the classic oceasion when one of the unfortunate Scottish Covenanters (not Mr. Perry), taking part in a scene where he had to femp into a stream with a weight tied around his neck, performed so well that he did not come to the surface again and a great panic followed until somebody dived into the stream and cut the' rope. First TaUcing Pictures. The celluloid entertainment business was growing anace at this time, and in 1907 the Perry family joined forces with Johnson and Gibson. who were conducting

popular shows in and around Mebourne on several nights of each week. They brought to Australia the first of the original talking pictures many years before the modem "talkies" arrived here. In one of these experimental ventures, called the "Cinephone," the films carried a. clock in the corner of the picture which had' to be synchronised with a gramophone on the stage. Unfortunately synchronisation was achieved rarely and then by good luck more than by good management. The films were all short subjects, the! artists being singers such as Billy Williams, Harry Lauder and Flora Forde. Provided some sort of synchronisation was achieved, these films had plenty of entertainment quality although, as Mr. Perry said, it was unfortunate! when the film happened to show' Harry Lauder while the gramophone reproduced the voice of Flora Forde. In the early days of motion pictures the operator had a most unenviable job. He had to be responsible for the assembling and dismantling of the operating machine at every stop. The advent of electricity saved a considerable amount of work, but the show still had to be fitted up and the operator had to adapt himself to: the uses of electricity long before' there were any. regulations governing the projection of motion pichures in halls. The Perrys were early in the field of electrical motion picture projection. They toured Australia and New Zealand with a special unit which included a power generator to work the machine, and in more than one instance they introduced electric: light for the first time in small towns which they visited. "Kelly Gang" and All That. About 1908 Johnson and Gibson, in association with the Perry family, embarked on a major production programme. Some of. the films which were produced by Billy Lincoln (long-since dead) included "The Kelly Gang" (second edition), "Never Too Late to Mend," starring Stanley Walpole, "Luck of Roaring Camp," with George Marlow, Esther Buckley and John Cosgrove, "Called Back," starring Arthur Stein, "The Breaking of the Drought," "The Bells" (Nellie Bramley's introduction to the entertainment field). "The Mystery

Mr. S. W. rRRY..

of a Hansom Cab" and "Double Event," starring Martyn Hagen. "The Squatter's Daughter" was also produced at this time and Bert Bailey, who has appeared in recent films, shared the starring honours of that film with Eugenie and Edmund Duggan.One One of the most important changes that took place in the industry was when J. and N. Tait entered the field by producing -'Living London," the motion picture -that made history in this country. Perhaps, said Mr. Perry, this film was responsible for taking the Tait brothers from the concert field to motion pictures and led to their association with the Johnson and Gibson enterprise in the formation of Amalgamated Pictures and later Union Theatres Ltd. Amalgamated Pictures, with which Mr. Perry was associated at the time, made history in 1913-14 with the opening of the Majestic Theatre in Flinders-street, Melbourne. Prior to that Wests and' Breccians had established permanent motion picture theatres- at the Athenaeum, Melbourne, and later at Wirth's Olympia. However. the building of a modern motion picture theatre meant a change in oresentation and Bill Yearslev was brought from America specially to establish the undertaking and his job included the introduction of one of the most comprehensive! advertising campaigns ever. attempted with motion pictures. "Kinemacolour." Mr. Perry remembers other important sidelights in connection with those early days. It was Amalgamated Pictures who introduced "Kinemacolour," the first coloured films to be screened in Australia. That was in 1910. Al year earlier Mr. Perry himself hadl been closely associated with an irDortant step forward in motion picture presentation. .In 1909 he was one of the team which filmed, the Caulfield Cup race and the film of the race was screened the same night in Melbourne. From those early times Mr. Perry has.progressed a long way in the film industry. At one stage he attempted to popularise British films -in Australis--in the days before "talkies"-but the venture was a failure. -He joined Hoyts Theatres about 25 years ago and has been with that organisation ever since.