The former Union Master Pictures/Cinesound Studios as they appeared in 2011, with the original wicket gates in evidence. Photo by author.
In a quiet street in Bondi Junction sits a nondescript fabric warehouse, with only a series of bricked-up entrances as evidence that it ever served as anything else. Few passersby would pause at the remaining door, and fewer still would describe it in the terms that were used by the media nearly a century ago:
"Pass 'neath the portals of the gates of romance, squeeze through the narrow wicket entrance that guards the great Studio from the gaze of the inquisitive sightseer, and stand on the threshold of a strange and wonderful world ... Here at our own door, is Australia's Hollywood, a Mecca of motion picture production for the Sunny South."
The studio as it appeared during its time as a roller skating rink. (State Library of NSW, Sam Hood Collection).
Errol Flynn, Peter Finch and Paramount Pictures president Adolph Zukor are amongst the international celebrities that stepped through the entrance, along with countless forgotten stars who were household names in the 1920s and 30s.
The building began life in 1912 as a roller skating rink, the Centennial Skating Palace. Skating was a popular pastime of the early 20th century, and the rink frequently hosted fancy dress parties, artistic displays and other novelties.
Union Master Pictures Studio No. 2, as it appeared in 2011. Photo by author.
In 1925, Union Master Pictures (the production subsidiary of what was later known as Greater Union) were preparing for the biggest local film production attempted in Australia's history - Marcus Clarke's convict epic For The Term of His Natural Life. Though a purpose-built film studio existed at Rushcutters Bay, it would not be adequate for this mega-production. Nor was there time to construct a new studio. The skating rink, featuring a hard concrete floor, 30,000 feet of floor space, an enormous domed ceiling supported by steel girders, and easy access to the city and amenities, was an ideal compromise. Publicity boasted that £40,000 was being spent on making it the largest and best equipped studio in the Southern Hemisphere. A dedicated film laboratory was established at the south end of the building. The remainder was given over to internal stages.
The establishment of `Studio Number 2' as it was officially titled, was part of a larger and more ambitious goal on the part of Union Master Pictures: the establishment of a Hollywood-style system of continuous production. If such a venture was to be financially sustainable, films must be produced that appealed not only to Australians, but compete on the world market.
Two smaller scale local films, Tall Timbers and The Grey Glove inaugurated the new studio. Both were directed by Dunstan Webb, who set down his megaphone to play an acting role in For The Term of His Natural Life.
Newspaper advertisement, 'For The Term of His Natural Life'
No expense was spared on For The Term of His Natural Life, with an unprecedented budget of over £50,000. Genuine Colonial-era antiques were borrowed to furnish the interiors, and costumes were copied from original examples in a Tasmanian museum. Several American actors and technicians were imported, in the understanding that their superior skills would foster higher standards in the local industry. In practice, the only talent that could be afforded was either inexperienced or not of the first tier.
The film's American director, Norman Dawn, is today recognised as one of the great pioneers of film special effects. It was Dawn who is thought to have either originated or perfected both the 'matte shot' and 'glass shot', techniques in which part of the film picture is replaced by a painted section in order to create an illusion. In this way, he was able to add lavish Colonial ceilings to the studio interiors, and restore the roof of Port Arthur's partially ruined convict barracks in the scenes shot on location in Tasmania. These effects were impressive, and remain so today. Dawn’s skill in directing actors was more limited.
Nevertheless, Dawn was good natured and inclusive, praising the Australian film industry and the beauty of the country's flora and fauna, inviting the public to observe the crew at work when the production was shooting outdoors. He might have had cause to regret his generosity. He underestimated the interest of a public for whom even the basic terms of filmmaking such as 'close up' and 'shot' were mysterious, and the number of onlookers that arrived sometimes made shooting impossible.
Meanwhile, Bondi locals were soon caught up in movie fever. "All around Bondi Junction they are rubbing their eyes and wondering whether it is not Hollywood come to life," reported one newspaper. "At lunch hour the studio emits a stream of daintily-clad maidens In Early Victorian attire and forbidding looking convicts." In later years, residents would sometimes be invited to participate in studio crowd scenes. Usually, their pay was nothing more than the thrill of seeing themselves onscreen, but on one occasion, local children were invited to bring their pet dogs to the studio for a crowd scene, for which they would receive two shillings each. The plan backfired when thousands of children and barking dogs were found thronging the streets around the studio the following day.
For The Term of His Natural Life was released in June 1927. Its masterful visuals and use of the Australian landscape were universally praised, and the sheer spectacle of the production distracted from an episodic script and some uneven performances. It was a massive success in Australia.
A second production, The Adorable Outcast, commenced filming later that year. Its story was an example of the then-favoured theme of a beautiful native brought into contact with modern life, typified by the stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, with whose film company Dawn was to work later in the 1930s. The majority of the principal cast remained from For The Term of HIs Natural Life, although Eva Novak had already found work with another Australian film unit, so another American, Edith Roberts, was imported to play the main role. The exteriors were filmed in Fiji, where the cast and crew had what sounds like a very agreeable time sampling the native food and kava, and enjoying the kindness of the natives, who assisted in building exterior sets and advised Dawn on local customs.
The company returned to the Bondi studio in August 1927 to film interiors, which included a ballroom, a ship's hold, and a well-stocked island trading post. The plant was further upgraded, with the high ceiling permitting the installation of a series of klieg lights on movable platforms.
During the course of filming, one enterprising young woman took matters into her own hands. Foiled in her attempts to sneak into the studio, she carefully threw herself in front of Edith Roberts' car. Carrying her inside, Miss Roberts was so relieved that the girl was unharmed that she convinced Norman Dawn to give her a small part in the film. History does not record the plucky girl's name.
Just as production on The Adorable Outcast was nearing completion, The Jazz Singer premiered in New York. It it soon became clear that there could not be a worse time to sell a silent film on the international market. Union Theatres Managing Director Stuart F. Doyle publicly admitted that a three month British sales tour by a high ranking executive had been entirely futile, though he colourfully dismissed media suggestions that his company was backing away from Australian film production in favour of exhibition as 'patriotic flapdoodle'.
The situation was more somewhat more encouraging in America, where many regional theatres remained silent and eager for new material. Both For The Term of His Natural Life and The Adorable Outcast were both released there in 1929, the latter retitled Black Cargoes of the South Seas. There was no way either films could compete in a market that was now firmly geared towards sound. The much-needed international profit did not eventuate, and the productions ended in the red, losing a combined £10,000. After returning to Australia for a single, troubled talking film, Showgirl's Luck (1931), Norman Dawn and his film unit went back to America.
The newly created Cinesound Productions Ltd in 1933, with cinematographer Frank Hurley at front centre.
The onset of the Great Depression might have served as an excuse not to continue, but the Bondi Junction studio did not stay dark for long. With the coming of sound, Union Master Pictures was recreated as Cinesound, and production was placed under the guidance of Australian director Ken G. Hall. Hall immediately set about making what was later considered Australia's first all-talking film hit, the massively successful On Our Selection (1932). Always an unapologetic populist, Hall had one core philosophy: 'Never make a flop'. An operation run on such economical lines could not risk anything less than a solid success, and that meant a familiar story and wide appeal rather than attempts towards artistry. This was the formula Cinesound was to follow throughout the following decade in successes such as The Squatter's Daughter (1933), The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934) and It Isn't Done (1937).
Hall operated the studio in direct emulation of the Hollywood studio system that flourished between the 1920s and 40s - a recognised roster of players and directors, continuous production, and a flagship studio, "a gigantic, efficient machine, a fertile garden of great thoughts transposed into pantomimic actions." Whilst overtures towards the international market had been recognised as over-ambitious, the monopoly nature of Union's local distribution network guaranteed that all features would receive a wide release.
There was a pause in production in 1935, when Hall toured Twentieth Century Fox studios in Hollywood to investigate new technology. One innovation in particular was to prove very useful: back projection. This technique, which first became common in the early sound era, would allow studio work to take the place of costly location shooting at exotic locales, and was extensively used in future Cinesound features. The lengths to which the studio would go to capture this footage could be extreme. One crucial scene in Thoroughbred (1936) required a low-angle shot of a galloping horse. This was achieved by a cameraman reclining on a sled that was dragged behind a moving vehicle that sped alongside the horse.
At around this time, the sound stage was expanded, probably to allow full use of the new technology. It is posssible that this is when the remaining windows on the eastern side of the studio were bricked in, as they remain today, though actors recalled the wicket gates being opened on particularly hot days to let air circulate through the studio. The sets constructed within this space over the years included the realistic bushland home of several kangaroos, (1936's Orphans of the Wilderness), an elegant Art Deco apartment with views of Sydney Harbour (Thoroughbred), and the interior of the Bounty (In the Wake of the Bounty, directed by Charles Chauvel). It might even have served as the bottom of the ocean for the pearl-diving adventure Lovers and Luggers (1937) except that the local water was so cloudy that the idea of using a studio-constructed tank had to be abandoned. The nearby North Sydney Pool was used instead.
Hollywood's Helen Twelvetrees poses in front of Cinesound Studios during filming of 'Thoroughbred'. Source: State Library of NSW, Sam Hood Collection
Hollywood glamour came to Bondi in the form of the high-profile American actress Helen Twelvetrees, star of the 1936 racing film Thoroughbred. Although her fee was considerably lower than what she stood to receive on an American film, it still represented a significant proportion of the film's production costs. It was money well spent - the publicity value of 'Twelve', as she was nicknamed, was immense. She received civic receptions and plaudits from all quarters, and ceaseless media coverage. Though her performance in the film was good, things were more troublesome behind the scenes. 'Twelve' had begun an affair with her Australian co-star, Frank Leighton. When caught by her husband, former stuntman Frank Woody, he responded by pulling a gun on the couple. Greater Union hastily parcelled Mr Woody off to a fishing trip in New Zealand for the remainder of production.
World War II put an end to continuous feature film production at Bondi, though the facilities remained in heavy use. War footage shot all over the world was processed at its laboratories, and its studios were adopted by the American Army Signals Corp for the production of newsreels and instructional films. Though many of the American technicians had worked in Hollywood, the Australian crews, who had never had the luxury of specialisation, were considered more versatile.
Advertisement for Australia's ill-fated dalliance with Canada Dry soft drinks (Sydney Morning Herald, 13 February 1952)
By the time the war had ended, corporate changes at Union Theatres (by then Greater Union), combined with the coming of television, led the company to concentrate more closely on its exhibition chain at the neglect of its production arm. With no warning, the studio building was sold to soft drink company Canada Dry in 1951. The shocked workers, some of whom had been associated with the film laboratory for twenty years and had made their homes in the Bondi area, were forced to commute to a more restricted site at the former Amusu Theatre at Balmain. The much-hyped soft drink concern had collapsed by 1954. Film star Chips Rafferty was part of a consortium that attempted to re-establish the Bondi studio as Sydney's home of film production, spending a great deal on improving facilities but meeting with only limited financial success.
Television arrived in Australia in 1955, and the building was purchased by a newly formed production organisation, Australian Television Enterprises Ltd. It was later known as the Visatone Television Studios and was used for a number of television series and the occasional feature production, including Bungala Boys (1961) and They Found A Cave (1962).
The studio's interior as it appeared in 2011, with the 'flying buttress' style wall supports visible below the drop-in ceiling. Photo by author.
Features returned in 1965 when the building was adopted as a studio by the British-backed Ajax Pictures. The Ajax Filmcentre would play a part in the production of They're A Weird Mob (1966), Age of Consent (1969), Squeeze a Flower (1970), Ned Kelly (1970) and Between Wars (1974) amongst many others, hosting its last film production, The Removalists(1975), almost exactly half a century after it had seen its first. For many years the building was a Norman Ross furniture warehouse. The main studio is currently a Spotlight fabric store, while the former film laboratory is a self storage centre.
A one-time studio doorway. Photo by author.
Though the great curved roof is now concealed by a false ceiling, the metal girders that support it are still visible, as is one of the wicket gates that once led to a strange and wonderful world. Perhaps not as famous as the Paramount Gates in Hollywood, the remaining gate is nevertheless a small reminder of the days when Studio Number 2 was described as 'a living monument of Australian faith in their own, a stepping stone to ever greater things.'