FILM NOVELTY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 731, 2 August 1929, Page 18

FILM NOVELTY

Midnight Supper Served In Cinema INNOVATION IS POPULAR •‘Tea, madam? Or coffee?” A white -Glad waiter bustled along the corridor. Cups chinked. The conversation and laughter of 500 people taking supper seemed strangely out of place. And so it was. Supper after midnight in a motion picture theatre! Here was novelty and a new pastime for Auckland pleasureseekers, and their numbers taxed the capacity of that portion of the Strand Theatre open for the night. The decision to hold a “midnight” performance of the film “Show Boat” was a bold one on the part of the Strand management. Such screenings are quite part of the regular entertainment routine overseas, and they have been introduced successfully in Sydney, but the attraction is quite new to New Zealand. “Midnight pictures!” snorted the Old Brigade. “Nonsense! No one will attend.” But the sceptics were wrong. They had not counted on the cheerful growth of the city’s night life—the late-sitting restaurants and those who, having managed to “put in” the early evening, feel that the night is yet young. So it was that the Young Brigade and, if the truth be known, a fair percentage of the Old Brigade, too, flocked into the Strand while the rest of Auckland emptied itself into trams and purring motors. Inside the orchestra played. Presently the lights were lowered and the screen began to speak and illustrate. It might have been an ordinary show, except for the theatre clock, the hands of which crept to midnight, and beyond. Then the interval and a dainty supper. After supper the picture resumed and, this time, cigarettes glowed in the darkness. Luxury indeed. At 1.30 a.m. a fleet of taxi-cabs blocked Queen Street from Wellesley to Victoria Streets, and brisk business was done until the last of the midnight picture patrons had been provided for. A few ignored the waiting cabs and, with appetites born of the chill night air, sought hopefully for restaurants wililng to serve a sort of early breakfast in the guise of an ultra-late supper. Thus in Auckland last evening the cult of the midnight show was born.