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Image - Courtesy State Library of South Australia

Savoy News-Luxe Theatre opened at 43-45 Rundle Street, Adelaide city, during World War II on September 26, 1941, showing a loop of the latest from the war front, local news, a cartoon and a featurette.

Admission was one shilling with seating for 310 and a change of programme every Friday. The ornate little theatre side had large art deco molded plaster designs and wall light fittings.

Outside, on Rundle Street, the theatre’s façade presented a spectacular neon display, with the world rotating at the top and skyrockets shooting up and exploding into myriad coloured stars. This added to Rundle Street’s reputation of being the most-brilliantly-neon-sign-lit street in the world after Broadway in New York. This reputation, and the Savoy’s display, was dimmed by World War II brownouts: drops in the South Australian electrical power supply.

The Savoy News-Luxe Theatre also opened, as The Mail newspaper reported, with its own “picture producing plant” to record newsreels of important South Australian events “such as the recent floods, Adelaide’s remarkable industrial development, important Charity and Patriotic Functions, A.I.F. (Australian Imperial Forces) pictures taken with the Government’s approval”.

The Mail said the South Australian-made newsreels “all will give an intimacy and local interest which will fulfil the craving we all have to see ourselves on the screen as others see us”. The Savoy’s production plant in Adelaide also would be “fully capable of acting as the nucleus of a full-size Production Unit, which may ultimately lead to the development of actual feature picture production, as the clear atmosphere of South Australia, free from humidity – the enemy of the Movie Camera – makes such a development attractive”.

The Savoy, showing the latest newsreels from Cinesound Review or Movietone News and comedy shorts such as a Steve Smith special, installed CinemaScope in the mid 1950s but the impending dawn of television in 1959 began the end of the popular little newsreel theatre.

It closed as the Savoy Theatre in February 1961 and reopened a week later as the Globe Theatre and screened newsreels for the next 18 months before closing in 1962 with the building later demolished.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -