Hoyts Esquire Theatre

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Hoyts De Luxe Theatre 238 Bourke Street, Melbourne, VIC – Later in 1946 to become Hoyts Esquire Theatre - Wurlitzer installation 1920

Photo – Ross Thorne

Wurlitzer*

By the early 1920s, a more sophisticated instrument was deemed necessary to reflect the status of Hoyt’s main Melbourne theatre. A two-manual, seven-rank Style 185 instrument had left the Wurlitzer factory on 25 October, 1920. It was installed in the De Luxe, on one side of the proscenium, behind a dummy façade of diapason pipes, with a matching façade on the other side. The De Luxe was the only theatre in Australia to feature display pipes in the auditorium, but several early American Wurlitzer installations were similar. The console was on a raised platform at the left-hand side of the auditorium, beneath the display pipes. A separate roll-player console was also installed. The organ was inaugurated on 12 June, 1922, by Horace Weber:

Hoyts De Luxe Theatre was built on the site of the St. George’s Hall which had become Hoyts Picture Theatre in 1912. The Hoyts De Luxe Theatre opened on 27th March 1915 and only showed films, and like many other Melbourne Cinemas had a Wurlitzer organ.

The theatre was re-named Hoyts Esquire Theatre from 1946. The cinema’s policy was changed in 1957 with the movie, “Around the World in 80 Days”, and among the other classic films screened were “South Pacific”, “Can Can”, “West Side Story”, “Tom Jones”, “Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines” and “The Graduate”. It closed on 31st March 1976 and the interior was gutted with the façade covered over – Contributed by Greg Lynch –