CAARP
Cinema and Audience Research Project

"The Mechanics Institute was the venue for early film screenings. Bridgetown was visited by the Salvationa Army Biorama Company in October 1904, and was one of the towns visited in 1906 by Heller's Mahatma Company, from India, mostly screening Boer War films. In August 1907 and again in 1909, the Corrick family visited, with Leonard's Beautiful Pictures. Films were screened intermittently over the years, but by the sound period in the thirties there was a regular weekly screening by a local operator (A.Jefferies?).

In 1939 Goldfields Pictures (founded in 1933 in Kalgoorlie) bought out the local operators and established a circuit, which included Harvey, Donneybrook, Bridgetown, Greenbushes and Boyup Brook, using a program sent out from Bunbury by manager Ron Elsegood and switched among the five venues. A resident operator (A.Jefferies?) screened in Bridgetown two nights per week.

In 1947, Alan Larkin bought the Bridgetown and Harvey picture businesses from Goldfields, converted them to Cinemascope and was screening two or three nights per week, commuting each week from Perth. The Film Weekly Directory lists Goldfields returning in 1962 and opening a gardens which lasted only two years. When these screenings ceased after the drive-in opened in 1960, the projection equipment remained in the bio-box in the hall for twenty years, because there was no market for secondhand apparatus in the wake of the collapse of film exhibition throughout the state.

Roy Mudge re-opened regular weekly screenings at Bridgetown Town Hall on 16 May 1983, starting with The Slipper and the Rose. Screenings were on Friday nights till Mudge also re-opened at Katanning, and after that the Bridgetown screenings were on Sunday nights. These weekly screenings ceased on 22 June 1985, and Mudge resumed screenings on 10 December 1994, with Lion King, continuing every three weeks till 14 July 1996 (the last film in this series was Dunstan checks in). Steve Marvin of Suburban Theatres then took on the venue and in 1997 was screening there irregularly, but this has now ceased." (Bertrand 2001)

References
Cinemaweb: http://www.ammpt.asn.au/CinemaWEB/SITE/view.php?rec_id=0000000510