Heritage et AL

Auckland’s entertainment sensation of the 1920s was going to the movies – first silent movies, and then “talkies”. Every Saturday night, one-sixth of the city’s residents went to watch stars like Greta Garbo, Gary Cooper or Gloria Swanson in romance and adventure stories. The most-attended movie – Charlton Heston’s Ben Hur - sold 76,000 tickets during its Queen Street run, and Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid drew 21,000 people in a week. Ref: NZ Ephemera - 'The N.Z. Picturegoer', Volume 1, Number 7, 20 January 1928, Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries. However, not everyone was pleased with cinema’s popularity. One of Auckland’s main exhibitor’s, Henry Hayward, had to answer a complaint from the Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society that movies normalised crime for children by encouraging them to play make-believe games such as bush-ranging. Ref: James D Richardson, Looking north down the west side of Queen Street, 22 January 1928, Sir George Grey Speci...

One hundred and fifty years ago, New Zealand enjoyed its first professional opera performance at Dunedin’s Royal Princess Theatre – the country’s first purpose-built theatre. Dunedin had become home to the newly rich who were in need of some 'refined' culture, a sentiment echoed by those tired of the “limited sources of entertainment” offered by grog-shops and other equally seedy places on the Otago goldfields.  Ref: Poster for Princess Theatre, 31-62787, Sir George Grey Special Collections