This simple flyer/programme promoted the season if films at the Metro, Collins Street, Melbourne. There is a typo of the telephone number in the lower right hand corner of the double page spread ensuring that this programme had to be corrected using an inked stamp. It probably dates from late 1964/1965 as the back page advertises ‘Night of the Iguana’ which was released in the USA in August 1964.
I looked for information about the Metro Collins Street and found this:
Originally this theatre was used for performances as well as screening silent films by various operators, including Union Theatres. Eventually Union Theatres took over the theatre from brothers J & N Tait in 1929. (Sound films came to the Auditorium on May 3, 1932.) According to Thorne (2001) an intervention by the owners of the property, the Presbyterian assembly, stopped the lease to Union Theatres. The demise of the space as a concert hall was announced on Jan 23, 1934. Transformed into an Empire style picture palace and opening as the Metro on April 27, 1934. It was Metro Goldwyn Mayer’s first theatre in Melbourne. It later (1952) became known as the Metro Collins Street in order to distinguish it from the Fullers New Amphitheatre / Palace / Apollo / St James / Metro, Melbourne. MGM vacated Collins Street on June 30, 1971. The last film to screen under the MGM banner was Doctor Zhivago.
After the Metro Goldwyn Mayer folded, the theatre came under the control of Greater Union, and when they vacated in 1974, it came under independent control and was renamed the Mayfair theatre. In 1982 the theatre eventually closed and the site redeveloped into a shopping centre.
Auditorium: Opened: 17/5/1913; Architect: Nahum Barnet; Builder: Clements Langford (Thorne, 1981).
Metro: Opened: 4/1934; Architect: C. N. Hollinshed; and Builder: E.A. Watts (Thorne, 1981).
Source: A brilliant vast website by the Cinema and Audience Research Project: http://caarp.edu.au/venue/439/view?maxrows=50&o2=&order=&page=3
Andrew Hillier says
Hi Mandy, An interesting post. I have a six degrees of separation connection to the Metro site. By way of dad, who worked for EA Watts, the builders who replaced the theatre with a shopping centre. Shortly after re-developing the site, Watts was taken over by a New Zealand company, who asset-stripped the organisation, before closing it down in 1982. Watts most well known projects include The original development of Chadstone shopping Centre in 1960, Melbourne’s first skyscraper, ICI House in 1958, and Miranda Fair Shopping centre, Sydney around the same time.