One significant aspect of the work currently being done on the history of film exhibition and audiences in the United States stresses the importance of rural cinemas and itinerant showmen (Fuller Seeley, 2008). It is perhaps a commonplace of Australian film history that rural exhibition venues outnumbered urban ones, and that travelling picture show men played a vital role in Australia, yet we still know very little about the detail of rural exhibition in Australia. Questions which require detailed answers include: what models were available for exhibition business, how did films travel around rural circuits, and what issues of regulation had particular salience to rural exhibition? This study attempts to frame answers to some of these questions through a study of cinema exhibition on the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia during the 1930s using local newspapers of the period and the extensive official records held by the State Records of South Australia. It will discuss the different modes of film exhibition and the difficulties touring exhibitors faced in coming to terms with a framework of regulations that were often applied in an inconsistent manner.

The importance of picture shows in rural and regional communities in South Australia during the 1930s has largely been overlooked. Very few South Australian local histories give any detailed account of the regular screening of films in local community halls. Yet, the picture show was the dominant all-year amusement in rural South Australia and, as elsewhere in Australia, the vast majority of exhibition outlets were in the country. Based on this alone, the history of the rural cinema deserves a larger place in social histories.

Film exhibition in South Australian country towns at the beginning of the 1930s faced the same challenges as the rest of rural Australia. The cost of installing talkie equipment and the effect of the Great Depression on people’s disposable income had the potential to bring about the demise of the cinema in remote areas. For the travelling picture showmen of Eyre Peninsula there were added pressures. There was opposition from moral campaigners and other competing amusements and there was an active campaign to regulate the halls in which itinerant exhibitors screened.

The Eyre Peninsula is one of South Australia’s largest regional areas, being some 70,000 square kilometres in area. While it is only 200 kilometres from Adelaide as the crow flies, it was regarded as isolated in the first half of last century. Port Lincoln, the peninsula’s main town, was 650 kilometres from Adelaide by a tapestry of roads in various conditions. Shipping was the peninsula’s main connection to Adelaide and as cereal growing became the dominant industry, the cost of transport limited farming, and the townships, to the coast. Such was the reliance on shipping that the residents referred to Adelaide as being on the mainland. (Knife 2006: 1) It wasn’t until the first rail line opened in 1905, linking Port Lincoln to Cummins, that agriculture expanded into the inland areas. As the tracks were laid, towns emerged along the way. Prior to the coming of the railway, only one town, Ceduna, existed on the 480 kilometre route which the rail took from Port Lincoln to Penong. (Knife 2006: xi)

Initial research into 1930s cinema exhibition on the Eyre Peninsula suggests there was a pattern supporting Ross Thorne’s thesis that “the railways played a crucial role in the organization of the regional entertainment business” (Thorne 2007: 315). The picture shows followed the rail line as far west as Penong which leads one to believe that the railways provided the means of transporting films from one town to another. However, further research revealed that this was not necessarily the case on the Eyre Peninsula. Rail timetables did not match the movement of the films and there were tours which deviated from the rail line to visit townships even more remote than the rail towns. As many of these railway towns had only small galvanised iron halls with no electricity and no projection equipment, projectors and generators, as well as films needed to be transported to the towns. Loading such equipment on and off trains on a daily basis would have been cumbersome. Instead, the itinerant exhibitors on the Eyre Peninsula travelled the roads which followed the railway and those roads linking the coastal towns. While the railway was a general factor in bringing towns into being and forming focal sites on which audiences could converge, road transport provided the necessary flexibility for travelling picture showmen to function throughout the range of their circuits.

By the close of 1932 exhibitors on Eyre Peninsula were screening sound films. It appears that only two exhibitors who had been screening silent pictures did not make the transition to talkies. By this time, the structure of the industry on the Peninsula comprised of a range of competing exhibition models co-existing in the same space at the same time. Based on advertisements in the local papers, there were five exhibitors operating in the region. They collectively represented the three different models for rural exhibition which simultaneously existed and competed with each other. Mrs McGregor, the proprietor of a local newspaper, The West Coast Recorder, ran the Flinders Picture Theatre in Port Lincoln, the only purpose-built cinema on the peninsula screening films twice weekly on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The second way that films were exhibited was through local associations using their own halls and Institute buildings. Ceduna Talkies was operated by a hall committee and screened weekly on Saturdays at the Ceduna Memorial Hall. West Coast Pictures, which was a local company, hired the Streaky Bay Institute Hall and also screened on a weekly basis on Saturdays. The travelling picture show man, working in a variety of halls, was the third exhibition option. Len Hawkes, a private operator, screened twice weekly at the Memorial Hall in Port Lincoln in competition with the Flinders Picture Theatre. He also had regular picture shows at Tumby Bay, Kimba, Cleve and Cowell and screened at various towns with his touring picture show, Paragon Talkies. Norm Stubing also screened regularly at Kimba, Cleve and Cowell, and less regularly at Thevernard but spent most of his time travelling the peninsula with his Cleve Talkies touring picture show. There were two other companies which occasionally toured the peninsula as a part of a much broader tour of the State – Lester’s Pictures and the Melbourne-based, Holland’s Pictures.

The Eyre Peninsula exhibitors seemed to be at the end of the distribution chain. Although they occasionally screened films which were recently premiered in Adelaide, in the main their audiences waited a considerable time to see a film. Table 1 below shows the average time between a film’s premiere screening in Adelaide and an exhibitor’s first screening of it on the Eyre Peninsula.

Table 1: Average Time Taken from Adelaide premiere to exhibitor’s first screening on the Eyre Peninsula

Exhibitor                                       Time Since Adelaide Premiere
Paragon Talkies                           18 weeks
Flinders Picture Theatre            35 weeks
Ceduna Talkies                            39 weeks
West Coast Pictures                   42 weeks
Cleve Talkies                                53 weeks

Based on 1933 newspaper advertisements

Most exhibitors hired films from a variety of exchanges. The main exception was Paragon Talkies who screened only Paramount and Warner Bros.-First National films. As can be seen from Table 1, Len Hawkes’ Paragon Talkies showed the most up-to-date films. His restrictive block-booking contracts with only two distributors shows the advantages offered by block-booking, through contracts which gave him quicker access to films. It is also evident that Flinders Picture Theatre were locked into a partial block booking arrangement with Fox for their Wednesday night screenings as often their advertisements did not even name the films. They would simply read ‘Fox Specials’. The ship would only arrive with the films on Tuesday, one day before screening.

Len Hawkes began screening pictures on the Peninsula in 1925 in his home town of Tumby Bay. He expanded his circuit to include Cowell in 1927 and two years later he secured a lease on the Parish Hall in Port Lincoln screening on Friday and Saturday nights in competition with the Flinders Theatre. In late 1932, Hawkes purchased a talkie plant and began screening as Paragon Talkies. He would screen a film in Port Lincoln and then one fortnight later screen the same film at his regular Cleve show and then on to either Cowell or Kimba. This pattern is so pronounced that it is reasonable to assume he was booking the films for at least a fortnight. There are no advertisements in the local newspapers to indicate Paragon Talkies would be touring the films in the intervening period. However, the application for a cinema operator’s licence for one of Hawkes’ operators indicates that in 1929 he was employed by Hawke’s Touring Picture Show. (SRSA, GRG67/33/1929/263)[1]  This suggests that Hawkes had been touring his picture show some years before Paragon Talkies began advertising in 1934. Len Hawkes died in 1933 and his wife took over the running of the business. Paragon’s only real competition came from Flinders Theatre in Port Lincoln and Norm Stubing’s Cleve Pictures, the most prolific travelling picture show on the Eyre Peninsula at that time.

Competition between travelling exhibitors was carefully managed. Hawkes and Stubing used the same circuit but always managed to avoid screening in any one town at the same time, although on occasions their route would find them screening in towns within 30kms of each other on the same night. As most of these halls did not have electricity, they would bring their own projector fed by a generator which was coupled to the gear box of the car. (Davis 1995: 54) Where there wasn’t a bio box, they would set the projector up on the floor in the middle of the hall. This practice was a concern to the authorities and in 1933 the Inspector of Places of Public Entertainment embarked on an aggressive campaign to regulate cinema exhibition on the Eyre Peninsula.

Norm Stubing began screening at the Cleve Hall on a regular basis in 1930. In 1932 he commenced his touring picture show. The films he screened were at the end of the distribution chain and had played in Adelaide and its suburbs on average a year earlier. Because the films were so old, he could book them from a distributor for a longer period and probably for a lower fee. This meant he could operate a more drawn out circuit screening more widely to a larger number of smaller audiences. When Stubing managed to secure Sunshine Susie(Saville 1931) he made the most of the print and screened it in 35 towns in six weeks covering over 1,600kms.

Such tours were expensive taking into account the cost of film rent, hall hire, petrol and wages, and this was reflected in admission charges. In comparison to the Flinders Picture Theatre in Port Lincoln, which charged 1/2d for the stalls and only 1/9d for the more salubrious dress circle (prices on par with the city second-release houses and suburban chains), the touring picture show was expensive. The people of the remote towns paid 2/4d for the back seats and 1/2d for the front seats. These prices would suggest that leisure activities were scarce on Stubing’s circuit but this was not the case. Considering their remoteness, these towns were reasonably entertained with sport, dances, strawberry fairs and even live theatre. For example, coinciding with the Sunshine Susie tour was a travelling pantomime which only charged 2/-.

In addition to competing with other activities and his main opposition, Paragon Talkies, Stubing had to contend with other exhibitors who had secured leases for Saturday nights in some of the major towns. With the exception of Kimba, where he had the lease on the hall for alternate Saturday nights (Paragon Talkies had the lease for the other Saturday nights), Stubing had to plan his tour so Saturday night screenings were in the smaller towns. He had to settle for the less lucrative week night screenings in places like Streaky Bay and Thevenard. He would often screen a double feature in these towns which was not a part of his tour with the films arriving by ship and shipped back to Adelaide the next day.

Exhibitors lacking purpose-built venues were always vulnerable to competing attractions vying for their exhibition space. There was sporadic opposition to the domination of picture shows on Saturday nights. In 1933, the Ceduna Memorial Hall decided to show pictures fortnightly instead of weekly to allow for other events such as dances on alternative Saturdays. This became a contentious issue for hall committees in other towns. Sporting clubs in Streaky Bay believed they would receive more revenue by holding their entertainments on a Saturday night rather than a week night. (Anon. 1934: 2) Those hall committees that restricted picture screenings to alternate Saturday nights generally suffered losses in revenue and soon went back to leasing their venue to the exhibitors every Saturday.

Despite this opposition, the smaller towns along the rail line generally welcomed the touring picture showmen. In the words of the Secretary of one remote hall faced with the alternative of cancelling the picture show if an exemption from the regulations was not granted, “It would be rather too bad as it is the only fun we have once in three weeks.” (SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/108) This would indicate that people saw the pictures as an integral part of the entertainment on offer in remote townships.

In mid-1933, the Inspector of Places of Public Entertainment embarked on a campaign to ensure halls on the Eyre Peninsula complied with regulations governing entertainment venues. The Inspector’s files held at the State Recordsappear to have no record as to why he should embark on such a campaign. It may be that his attention had been brought to the monthly advertisements in The West Coast Sentinel outlining Cleve Talkies’ current tours of the Peninsula. Towards the end of May, Stubing began a number two run overlapping his circuit, that is, his next tour began before his current one finished. This increase in his activities may have upset the delicate balance of competition in the region and spurred his competitors to invoke the authority of State regulators to pull Stubing into line. Writing to the hall committees on Stubing’s circuit, the Inspector expressed concern at the practice of placing the projectors on the floor inside the hall. He pointed out that the practice not only contravened the Regulations, but also nullified insurance policies should the building be destroyed by fire. His letters concluded that the letting of the halls for Talkie pictures shows must be discontinued.

It is important to stress that the Inspector’s heavy-handed approach was not enforceable by law. One of the provisions of the Act, which had been in operation since 1913, was it could only be extended outside of the Adelaide metropolitan area by proclamation. By 1933, the Act had only been extended to ten towns on the Eyre Peninsula and none of these were among those targeted by the Inspector. (Walker 2007: 356) Therefore, the halls on Cleve Talkies tours were not contravening the legislation. The Inspector’s threat drew various responses from the hall committees. The Yeelanda hall committee wrote to the Inspector advising that they would cancel picture shows until their next annual meeting when the issue could be discussed. (SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/120) One hall committee challenged the Inspector’s concerns saying that according to the picture showman, “it is impossible to cause a fire from their machines, as there is 2 feet of film exposed, and if this ignited it could not burn through a fire trap each end”. (SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/113) This irritated the Inspector and his rapid response cited an example of a fire in the bio box at one of the major suburban cinemas. Out of all the towns on the Cleve Pictures’ tour, Yeelanda seems to be the only one that discontinued its picture show.

Nevertheless, the threat to close down the halls on his circuit was enough for Norm Stubing to travel to Adelaide in early August to meet with the Inspector to discuss the issue. There is no record as to what was discussed at the meeting, which is odd considering that the Inspector’s files held at the State Records are reasonably complete. It might have suited the Inspector for the discussion not to be on record. It is evident from follow up letters to the hall committees that during the discussions Stubing put forward an offer to build bio-boxes for the halls to comply with the legislation. The cost of building a bio-box at this time was around £40. (Anon. 1932: 3) Given that some of the screenings attracted audiences as small as twenty and that these screenings were held only every three or four weeks, it would have taken Stubing over two years to recoup his costs. Such an offer may have been attached to exclusive arrangements for screening in those halls. However it is unlikely that Stubing entered any long-term contracts for the hire of the halls as his competitor, Paragon Talkies, also screened in those halls from 1934 onwards. Stubing’s offer may also have been a tactic to shift the responsibility away from him, as there is no evidence that it was followed through. Writing to the Inspector in October 1933, the secretary of the Mudamuckla hall committee points out that “we have now made an offer to Mr Stubing but up to date have not received a reply” (SRSA GRG67/33/100). Stubing’s persistence in screening films in those halls which had been warned indicates that he knew he was not contravening the Act.

The campaign to extend the Places of Public Entertainment Act to Eyre Peninsula gained momentum during the 1930s and was clearly tied in with moral concerns about the cinema voiced by religious groups. Under the regulations films could not be screened on Sundays without a permit and then they had to be of a religious nature. In October 1933, a resident of Penong wrote to the Chief Secretary, to whom the Inspector of Places of Public Entertainment reported, alerting him to picture shows being screened on Sunday evenings. (SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/164a) The same day, a resident of Yantanabie wrote:

I think healthy, unorganised, or private sports on Sunday in country districts are an aid to real Divine Worship and moral training, but I think you would agree that a great many moving pictures are the opposite.
(SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/164b)

There are numerous letters on file from other individuals and organisations asking that the Act be extended to include the whole of the Eyre Peninsula. The Inspector decided to investigate the matter and asked the police to make enquiries. The subsequent enquiry reported that no picture shows were being screened on Sundays on the Eyre Peninsula. One month after the report, Stubing had admitted to the police that he had screened three times on a Sunday in Cootra in that year. (SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/164c)

By the mid 1930s, the Inspector had been successful in extending the Act to the Eyre Peninsula. As new halls replaced old, they were required to have a bio-box in their design if they wanted to screen films. Despite the fear that the regulations would deny the small remote towns their own picture show, there seems to have been very little impact. Both Cleve Talkies and Paragon Talkies continued to tour the Eyre Peninsula until the Second World War. Having survived challenges such as distance, shocking roads, inclement weather, opposition to them screening and the stringent regulations, it was petrol rationing that brought about their demise. Many of the histories written about the remote towns of the Eyre Peninsula briefly mention Norm Stubing – he was the picture show man that brought “the only fun once in three weeks”.

This initial outline of the archival holdings concerning cinema exhibition in one rural area demonstrates that rural exhibition was a good deal more complicated than romantic notions of loners arriving in towns with projectors and white sheets. There were several ways in which films could circulate through areas, and there was a pronounced element of regulated competition – regulated both by the participants in the exhibition business and by government regulators, who were ready to act on perceived dangers that were both physical and moral.

References

Anon. (1932), ‘Yorketown Talkies’, Southern Yorke Peninsula Pioneer, 8 January, p. 3.
Anon. (1934), ‘Streaky Bay Institute – Long Sitting of Committee’, The West Coast Sentinel, 15 June, p. 2.
Davis, E.J. (1995), Towards the Mist: A History of Poochera and District, Poochera Book Committee.
Fuller-Seeley, Kathryn (2008) Hollywood in the Neighbourhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Knife, P. (2006), Peninsula Pioneer, Wahroonga: self published.
Sedgwick, J. (1998), ‘Cinema-going Preferences in Britain in the 1930s’, in J. Richards (ed.), The Unknown 1930s: An alternative History of the British Cinema, 1929-1939, London: I.B. Tauris, pp. 1-35.
Thorne, R. (2007), ‘Rethinking distribution: developing the parameters for a micro-analysis of the movement of motion pictures’, Studies in Australasian Cinema 1: 3, pp. 315-331. doi: 10.1386/sac.1.3.315/1.
Walker, D. (2007), ‘Rural cinema audiences in South Australia in the 1930s’, Studies in Australasian Cinema 1: 3, pp. 353-375. doi: 10.1386/sac.1.3.353/1.
State Records of South Australia (SRSA)
SRSA, GRG67/33/1929/263, application for cinematographe operator’s licence from C.A. Schramm.
GRG67/33/1933/100, letter from O.E. Zippel, Honorary Secretary of Mudamuckla Hall, to Inspector of Places of Public Entertainment, 19 October 1933.
GRG67/33/1933/108, letter from P. Skinner, Honorary Secretary of Denial Bay Hall, to Mr Craigie, MP, 27 July 1933.
GRG67/33/1933/113, Police Report, Elliston Police Station, 21 August 1933.
GRG67/33/1933/120, letter from the Secretary of Yeelanna Hall to Inspector of Places of Public Entertainment, 19 July 1933.
SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/164a, letter from G. Cooper and C. Freeman to the Chief Secretary, 21 October 1933.
SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/164b, letter from F. Robinson to the Chief Secretary, 21 October 1933.
SRSA, GRG67/33/1933/164c, minute from Inspector of Places of Public Entertainment to Chief Secretary, 3 January 1934.

Endnotes

[1] All references to State Records of South Australia material will be referred to by the initials SRSA followed by the appropriate archival record number. Full SRSA reference details are provided in a separate list at the end of the article.

Created on: Tuesday, 21 April 2009