AUSTRALIANS SPEND £1 A HEAD ON MOVIES!

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 140, 3 September 1927, Page 23

AUSTRALIANS SPEND £1 A HEAD ON MOVIES!

“GOD HELP SOCIETY!” ENGLISH TYPES TRUE TO LIFE?

Cross-examining Stuart F. Doyle, managing director of Union Theatres, Limited, at the Film Commission in Sydney, Senator Duncan said that nearly £6,000,000 was paid for admission to picture theatres each year in Australia. The people of Australia paid approximately £1 a head annually to see moving pictures.

f J I HE first consideration of the commission, therefore, would be the general desire of the public. It might have to recommend certain legislation to the Government for the control of the industry. Asked if he thought certain pictures stressed the evils of English society life, including drinking bouts and debauchery, witness said that he did not hold that opinion. He believed most pictures were true to life. Senator Duncan: Well, God help 1 English society! Witness again reiterated his opinion that Austral ian - made pictures depended entirely upon the international market for success. If legislation were introduced it was absolutely essential that it should be uniform throughout the Commonwealth, not merely State-wide. Senator Duncan: You do not think that it is possible to produce an Australian picture for world-wide exhibition for less than £15,000? Witness: No. We are at present working on our second picture, Beatrice Grimshaw’s “Con of the Coral Seas.” We have spent up to the present over £15,000, and it will cost between £25,000 and £30,000 before it is completed. Enormous Expenditure The only way Australian films could be produced, he said, was by big organisations spending large sums of money. He denied that Union Theatres, Limited, was in the same position as the Famous Lasky Players, Limited, in America, which owned 450 theatres, and exhibited their own productions in