Last Saturday I saw Oppenheimer at the Paramount Theatre and can highly recommend it.
Sitting in the theatre memories from long ago flooded in. As a boy, Saturday afternoons were spent at the matinee session, the first half consisting of a newsreel, cartoons, then then the weekly instalment of a serial. After interval the main feature, often cowboys and Indians, or the British fighting Arabs in the desert, ‘goodies versus baddies’. Political correctness was unknown. As we got older we graduated to the night session, the cinema packed with people.
Saturday night in Maryborough was a choice between Hotels, the dance at the Workers Hall, or the movies. I still recall , ‘Penguin’ walking up and down the aisles shining his torch on the troublemakers. During interval everyone went to either Kennedy’s Café or Marty’s across the road (this is where the ‘toughies’ went).
The Paramount dates back to the 1930’s and when built was one of the largest buildings in Maryborough. It has been an integral part of our social infrastructure for 90 years. The golden years continued until the 1960’s when the advent of television and videos affected patronage. When I was President of the Tech College we purchased the Paramount Theatre (1980’s-1990’s) using it as our Assembly Hall/Gymnasium. More recently, after being closed for some time a family purchased and completely restored the theatre to a state of the art, multi screen movie complex.
The Paramount Theatre is another of our treasured assets that we must continue to support otherwise we run the risk of losing it!
