SIR BENJAMIN FULLER

New Zealand Times, Volume LIII, Issue 12394, 13 March 1926, Page 14

SIR BENJAMIN FULLER

No. n. Them were days of great joy. great expectations and great anxieties. I had quickly cottoned on to the show business, and flatter myself I taught my father a few new wrinkles. We were getting on, and about this time we bought our first theatre, the City Hall in Dunedin. It is twenty-eight years since that day, and we hare just sold that very theatre. It seems strange to look back on that time of struggle and to think that now we have .eighteen theatres in New Zealand any many more in Australia. When , we engage an actor in London he is' committed to travelling over the' biggest theatrical circuit in the world. By the time he gets home he has travelled over 35,000 miles. I remember with horror taking a company to a little place in New Zealand called Puhoi. We had advertised the show, and as the time far opening drew, near we felt a little alarmed because no one seemed to be coming. Tima went on and no one but a caretaker was in the house.. We made inquiries and concluded that a showman has got to keep abreast of religious' prejudices, for the solution of the mystery was that, it was a strong Roman Catholio community and the season was Lent. Lent! We were' sold. Whenever I, have seen people congregated together I have studied them and wondered what their mentality wsb like. I remember sitting, as a young man, with Harry Rickards, one of the greatest showmen in this country, in a box’atthe Bijon Theatre, which is mine to-day. The 'Rickards show had been moved, there while the present Opera House was being built. I looked round at -the crowd and thought to myself "if they'll come'upstairs to you, my boy,: they'will for me." It took me twelve, years to buy the Bijon Theatre, "but I was always .determined to possess it. Some day, and at no distant data, we are going to rebuild that theatre and give Melbourne something to be prOud'of. It always has seemed to me that the buildi ing of a theatre j>t other fine achitectural monument is tfie most effective reminder of the man who builds it; for it makes his name remembered when his ordinary life is forgotten. ' It gives me a peculiar thrill to .create a lasting (memorial of this kind. ' , My brother, Johnny, when he first cafe to New Zealand, used to be call boy at the Princes Theatre, Dunedin. Do you think it is not a tremendous source of pride to him to look now.at the hoards over which ho used to hurry on his many messages—for a call hoy iB everybody’a servant—and compare those days with the present, when the theatre, far finer than In his youth, is now partly his own property P People talk glibly

SUCCESSFUL SHOWMAN REVIEWS HIS CAREER' g

EARL,Y EXPERIENCES IN NEW ZEALAND _| wnmran»ii»nnu»mmimi»i»Mn»wttMm»iinnnii»nnnniiiinimiww»miiiniminmmwmnm»iimiHimnffi<S

about a turn of fortune’s wheel bringing success to a business, but I .think the term “Fortune’s Wheel" is wrongly chosen* for with ue it was hot luck, hut dogged purpose which brought about tie result; And in 'that' you have the real reason for such an article as this. Every success made by a man from small beginnings ought to be an .inspiration to others. ;

When things go wrong a great deal of tact is needed to keep an audience in a goad hamonr. On one occasion, at a place called ' Helensville, my brother johnny and/ I were running a lantern show when the gas tank exploded suddenly and ruined the- whole programme. It conld not be mended, and we were billed further on up the coast. Mid stood to lose considerable money by ’cancelling our' fixture?. Johnny , rushed hack to Auckland for a new tank and told me to carry on and open In the next town. He said he would be sure to turn up. Things , went wrong, and he was unable to get a train as he . expected, being forced to come np by sailing vessel. I had a big audience, packed into the hall and no entertainment to give them. They howled and they stamped, and they raved I kept telling them that Johnny would be there. I felt like Wellington at Waterloo, except that night had come and Blucher, I mean Johnny, hadnot. I was at the end of •my resources, and conld see nothing but letting the crowd stampede the "box office when Johnny sprang from abroad the lugger, clasping his tank to his bosom.' The situation and the money were saved. Once we had a strike called on us by the audience. I think this is a. pretty unique sort of strike, and though I am not a revengeful man, I have often thought I should like.to'get even ■with that crowd. It was in a mining district, ,and the population was composed of very hard doers indeed. We had advertised a fight picture, and the miners thought the prices were too high. They came to the hall all right, hut could not be induced. to "step up and pay up/' A delegation put it to me with a. wealth of adjectives that the prices muert he reduced before they would come in. I had no strike breakers handy, so I was forced to give fn. I used to live in hopes of going hack to ' that town collecting a big audience of miners, wonder* ful programme, watching the/mouths of the audience water for a time and then announcing that therh would he no performance. I may do it yet, if aeroplanes are improved. ‘ ‘ There was nothing particularly dramatic in our gradual success. My father's watchword was ''Keep Faith." It was a simple motto, hut I never knew him prove falsb to it. BEN 'J. FULLER.