I worked at the drive-in during 1971 when Rod Rose was the manager and he also ran the kiosk. Rod was also responsible for advertising and promotion. John Kenna kept an eye on things all the same. “Eddie” was the projectionist. It was a profitable business at the time. It could accommodate nearly 500 cars but I exceeded this number on only one occasion. The first night screening of the film “Airport”, saw queues back nearly into town! I crammed in as many cars as I could, not realising I was breaking the fire risk laws. Didn’t take long for the friendly police in Alice to inform me of what I was doing and I had to turn away dozens of cars. We screened the film for 5 days and filled the theatre every night. Of course in those days, Alice had a large contingent of Americans both at the USAF base and Pine Gap. The showing of “Airport”was not as profitable as it might have been as we had to pay the distributors 55% of the gross for the last two days instead of the agreed 30% for the first 3. Reason given was that as we were retaining the film longer than scheduled, another print had to be ordered to be sent to the theatres which were next on the list for their screening.
I worked at the drive-in during 1971 when Rod Rose was the manager and he also ran the kiosk. Rod was also responsible for advertising and promotion. John Kenna kept an eye on things all the same. “Eddie” was the projectionist. It was a profitable business at the time. It could accommodate nearly 500 cars but I exceeded this number on only one occasion. The first night screening of the film “Airport”, saw queues back nearly into town! I crammed in as many cars as I could, not realising I was breaking the fire risk laws. Didn’t take long for the friendly police in Alice to inform me of what I was doing and I had to turn away dozens of cars. We screened the film for 5 days and filled the theatre every night. Of course in those days, Alice had a large contingent of Americans both at the USAF base and Pine Gap. The showing of “Airport”was not as profitable as it might have been as we had to pay the distributors 55% of the gross for the last two days instead of the agreed 30% for the first 3. Reason given was that as we were retaining the film longer than scheduled, another print had to be ordered to be sent to the theatres which were next on the list for their screening.