Former Timaru cinema operator regrets Majestic Theatre's looming demolition

Friday, 20 October 2023

Gavin List started out hanging up posters for the Majestic Theatre around Timaru in the late 1950s and later operated the cinema with his wife, Joanne List, left.

The last cinema operator of Timaru’s Majestic Theatre, the only remaining symbol in the town of cinema's golden age, regrets that a move was not made years ago to preserve the building.

Timaru District Holdings Ltd (TDHL), which owns the theatre and a number of buildings either side of it, was recently given consent to demolish the Majestic as well as other buildings located from 101-107 Stafford St.

“They could have done something with it [the building], but it’s something that should have been done years ago,” Gavin List said. “Unfortunately, it has been let go.”

List and his wife, Joanne, operated the Majestic from the late 1980s until 1997, when a multiplex opened in Timaru, against which it proved too difficult to compete. A video store was then run at the site until closing also. The building has remained empty ever since.

TDHL acquired the theatre and associated buildings in 2018 as part of a $1.7 million deal that included neighbouring properties.

The Lists ran the cinema from the late 1980s to 1997, when the Majestic Theatre became a video store.

List said he had been inside the Majestic Theatre recently and was surprised how intact it remained.

“It looked all right, but like a lot of buildings, in places like Auckland and Wellington, it has not been maintained.

“When we decided to close it, we didn’t have time to clean up. When I went into the dress circle, I saw pottles of popcorn. I said to my wife, Joanne: ‘We haven’t done a good job here.’

“But no mice have got in there. Most of the seats have gone, and you can see the marble” of the entranceway staircase, he said.

The Majestic Theatre was built by a nationwide cinema chain, the Fuller-Hayward Corporation, opening in March 1929 just before the age of silent films ended in New Zealand and the “talkies” arrived.

An estimated 300,000 bricks supplied by the South Canterbury Brick Company in College Rd, Timaru, went into the building, which, at the time of its opening, The Timaru Herald described as being the town’s “most palatial picture house” and a “temple of entertainment”.

The theatre had seating for 750 people downstairs, with 350 seats upstairs, a distinctive marble terrazzo stairway, a golden satin screen curtain, a nearly 40ft wide screen, an orchestra pit, and a stage big enough for vaudeville shows.

The empty Majestic Theatre, centre, was built with 300,000 Timaru-produced bricks and extends from Stafford St to Turnbull St.

Ushers and ticket sellers wore uniforms with gold cuffs and gold lapels; the women had head-dresses of blue and a yellow badge with the letter “M” in the middle.

The Majestic screened the first “talkies” film in Timaru in October 1929 and was managed for most of the period from then until 1963 by Harry “Hoppy” Kennedy, who also managed the Theatre Royal on the opposite side of Stafford St. Kennedy screened movies in the Theatre Royal, which became known colloquially as “The Bug House”.

List said he started working for the Majestic Theatre in the late 1950s, putting up posters around town. He began as a projectionist in 1961 for the cinema company Kerridge Odeon in Timaru, which had assumed ownership of the Majestic, then relieved around the country.

After a stint overseas, he returned to work at the Majestic and another Timaru theatre also in Stafford St, the State, which closed in 1984.

List remembered the time before television, video and then the internet brought the cinema industry to its knees and led to restructuring. It was when top films filled out the Majestic three times a day with “thousands and thousands of people”.

“In the 1960s, I screened A Hard Day’s Night [a Beatles film] and ran it at 11am on a Saturday morning in a preview. There were 1100 in the theatre. The manager came and said, ‘They’re screaming so much you’ll have to put the volume up.’

“I ran it flat out, with the volume controls up to 15. With all the frenzy, it got so hot we had to open it up behind the circle.

Gavin List started as a projectionist at Timaru’s Majestic Theatre in the 1960s and also worked at the State Theatre, which closed in 1984.

“You could hear the screaming at the town clock [about 300 metres away].

“There are plenty of amusing incidents: Bruno Lawrence came through with Utu; Forrest Gump and Ghost were huge; and in 1984 I got stabbed at the place, ending up in hospital.”

The demolition consent for the buildings was issued by the Timaru District Council earlier this month, with a draft timeline showing TDHL hoped to start demolition as soon as January.