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Bijou Theatre 217 Bourke Street, Melbourne, VIC

Ralph Marsden writes - On 6 March 1909 the Bijou reopened under the lesseeship of the World’s Pictures Company, and thus became the first ‘legitimate’ theatre in Melbourne to screen all-film programs on a semi-permanent basis.

The opening program, of 18 short comedies, dramas and travelogues, proved immediately popular. Table Talk of 25 March asserted: ‘The World’s Pictures have put new life into the Bijou Theatre, and it is of general opinion that the cosy auditorium begets extra attractiveness in viewing pictures’.

On 5 June came ‘The Cinephone’, an early device which synchronised the gramophone with films to produce ‘a picture instinct? with life, reproducing the voice, the song, the laugh of the actor or vocalist’, an effect ‘wonderfully realistic’ according to Table Talk.

Films were suspended for eight weeks from 10 July 1909 for the Melbourne debut of Irish-American actor-singer Allen Doone, in a couple of his popular musical plays. Another hiatus came on 27 December for a three week season by Gregan McMahon’s company. Films ran almost continuously after this, however, from early 1910 up to mid-August 1912.

On 17 August came a month long season by William Cosgrove’s Dramatic Company, after which films resumed but were broken for a three-week stint by a minstrel troupe. By February 1913, World’s Pictures were restricted to Saturday screenings only and after 8 March had disappeared - apparently squeezed out by the proliferation of competing shows with bigger and better pictures.

After undergoing some unspecified ‘alterations and improvements’, the Bijou sprang back to full-blooded theatrical life on 15 March 1913,with the arrival of American vaudevillian Bert Le Blanc in The Grafters, ‘a two act musical burlesque by a company of forty American artists’. A month after the close of this twelve-week season the Bijou’s lease was taken up by the burgeoning Brennan-Fuller vaudeville circuit.

Their first presentation, on 5 July 1913, was a four-week season of musical comedies starring Carrie Moore. A season by a company from Sydney’s Little Theatre followed this on 16 August, but the Age critic was moved to record: ‘The Bijou does not at present form a particularly cheerful house for the production of a smart new comedy. Time has dulled the decorations and dust has set its mark upon the furnishings’.

Contributed by Greg Lynch -