Photo Info

Uploaded on: October 3, 2026

Size: 83.4 KB

Views: 11

License:

The Metro theatre Bourke Street later known as the Palace theatre.

The Metro theatre Bourke Street Melbourne “Ben Hur” season ran for 55 weeks commencing on May 12, 1960 - This report written by: Eric White, Melbourne, Australia - Date: 22.05.2010

Back in the late sixties or early seventies, during the run of “The Shoes Of The Fisherman” in Melbourne, I remember Graham McGhee, one of the projectionists, telling me that MGM had planned to put 70mm into their Bourke Street Metro for “Ben-Hur”, but decided that the theatre would not have been able to install a wide enough screen to make it worthwhile.

“Ben-Hur” was filmed in a process called Camera 65, which was basically 70mm with a slight horizontal ‘squeeze’, and if projected in this format there would have been a projection aspect ratio of about 2.7:1, much wider than CinemaScope, whose aspect ratio in the late fifties had settled down to about 2.3:1 (Originally it was 2.55:1).

I would assume that Metro would have wished to have shown “Ben-Hur” in 70mm at this ultra wide ratio in its hard ticket seasons, and the Bourke St proscenium could just not accommodate it. (Neither could MGM’s St James in Sydney if reports from that city are to be believed). Apart from that, the projection room at Bourke Street was very small.

I am not sure that there would have been enough head-room for 70mm machines, with their big 6,000 ft spool boxes. The rewind room was so small that the supply arm of the rewinders had to be mounted unusually high above the bench with the film making a right-angle bend around a roller to allow enough bench space to make splices on. I have seen nothing like that anywhere else.

The Bourke Street Metro was a two-gallery theatre, like the Collins Street Athenaeum, and as was the case there, the projection rake was quite steep. I cannot remember if the screen was tilted at all. An ultra-wide screen would have required some sort of a curve, which would have produced the sort of distortion that the picture had at the Greater Union’s Chelsea Cinema in Flinders Street. Horizons and credits buckled upwards towards the sides of the screen.

It is reputed that the CinemaScope prints of “Ben-Hur” had a slight frame-line because of the wide aspect-ratio used in shooting, and it is likely that the height of the screen was actually reduced a fraction, so the picture would have been about 2.5:1.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -