Our Hollywood Bob: 50 years at the movies with Newcastle's picture show man

The movie is Dead Calm and husband and wife Sam Neil and Nicole Kidman are being terrorised on their yacht by Billy Zane, the handsome but unhinged stranger they've rescued from a sinking schooner.

The year is 1989 and the teenaged me is riding every wave of anxiety and every jolt of fright that director Phillip Noyce can conjure in the slick little ocean-going thriller that would go on to set both he and Kidman sailing off to Hollywood.

I'm seeing Dead Calm with high school friends, so obviously I'm trying my best to play it cool. Except, of course, Noyce knows precisely how to do dread and he's got me on the edge of my seat.

I haven't watched Dead Calm in the three decades since Boolaroo, but two cherished moments have stayed with me since that voyage into fear at a packed Lake Cinema: the sound of a sharp intake of breath from 200-odd people bracing in unison for the next violent shock; and the loud, panicked scream of an evidently engrossed woman - "He's behind you, Nicole!" - that sets off a chain reaction of yelps, groans and laughter from the rest of us as the tension - and the fourth wall - are shattered.

Sorry, but no amount of shiny new guff streamed straight to me at home alone on the couch can quite match the communal and yet intimate sensation of sitting in the dark with strangers sharing the action and emotion flickering across a larger-than-life cinema screen.

Bob Mason, proprietor of Lake Cinema for 50 years, laughs as I recount the fascinating sound of his little picture theatre full of people back in 1989 taking a deep breath as one during Dead Calm.

"Yes, it's the same if you're watching a comedy and you've got somebody in the audience who has a funny laugh," the veteran picture show man explains.

"You can find yourself laughing more because you're laughing with them as well as at them and with the movie too. And laughter is so infectious, of course. Musicals can be like that too. I often find when we show a musical we will have people come out of the theatre and they're humming the songs or doing a bit of a jig in the foyer. That's what makes going out to the movies an experience."

March 29, 2024, marks exactly five decades since Lake Cinema opened at 62 Main Road, Boolaroo, in a 1920s-built community hall that operated in the 1950s as a nightclub called the Macquarie Grove Dance Hall.

To mark his quaint and cosy single-screen picture theatre's remarkable anniversary, Mr Mason is replaying on March 30 and 31 and April 1 the same film he ran on its first night way back in 1974: the MGM musical masterpiece, Singin' in the Rain.

"It's the best musical ever made," he enthuses of the razzle-dazzle 1952 charmer starring song-and-dance men Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor and young Hollywood newcomer Debbie Reynolds.

"Today's musicals like the remake of West Side Story are quite good but Singin' in the Rain, with the enormous energy of its dancing, there's been nothing like it since. It set such a high standard."

Indeed, there's no more exuberant scene in movies than Kelly in his dapper grey suit and trilby hat twirling through the rain drops, leaping from a street lamp, spinning an umbrella as he skips, splashes and tap-dances with giddy delight in footpath puddles and under gushing downpipes.

Mr Mason, 79, has fond memories of his childhood introduction to the now-classic film at two of Newcastle's many long-lost suburban cinemas: "I first saw it at the Savoy at New Lambton and then again at the Century at Broadmeadow. And it just stuck to me. In fact, I've already organised the music for my funeral and, for my cortege, that's the song that I want playing, Singin' in the Rain."

Born in Armidale, the softly spoken Mr Mason was eight when his parents relocated to New Lambton in the 1950s.

"The mountain air was so bad for me I was sick for six months of the year so the family was told 'Move near the seaside or he'll die'. The Savoy at New Lambton became our cinema every Saturday evening. But we had to wait for a few years to get seats there because we wanted three and they did twos.

"I've always loved movies. As a boy, where we sat in the Savoy was sort of under the projection box. And I was just fascinated by the light, how it came out of the porthole and how it danced in the air in black and white and then hit the screen as an image. I was always just amazed by that."

He's hopeful that movie-lovers who share his lifelong romance with the magic of motion pictures will not miss the rare opportunity to see Singin' in the Rain dance across the big screen once again.

When Lake Cinema screened the film with 1951 musical Show Boat on that first night in March 1974, tickets cost 45 cents and a box of Jaffas cost 25 cents. But only two patrons showed up for his old-timey double-bill and Mr Mason worried that the 18 months he'd spent preparing the Lake Macquarie City Council-owned building for life as a picture theatre had been for nothing.

The sinking feeling didn't last. Disaster blockbuster The Poseidon Adventure was the feature attraction the following night when then mayor Geoff Pasterfield officially declared the cinema open. The screening was a sell-out.

Mr Mason says his biggest box office hits have included Crocodile Dundee, which ran for three months in 1986, and the Meryl Streep ABBA musical Mamma Mia in 2008 ("We had people come all dressed up and the cleaners were so upset - there were feathers everywhere!").

Singin' in the Rain, an affectionate frolic about 1920s Hollywood stars struggling to make the dramatic leap from silent films to the new-fangled "talkies", is the perfect echo of the challenges Lake Cinema has faced over the years.

First came the advent of colour television, then VHS and DVD, pay-TV, the arrival of big movie multiplexes, digital film projection and now the streaming services that proliferated during Covid.

In the early years Mr Mason worked his day job as a government clerk and took on a second job at nights to keep his weekend movie dream afloat.

"When it all started, it had no air conditioning," he recalls. "We had little fans customers could pick up out of a box at the back. In winter we kept a pile of blankets for people to place over their legs. Then we had fans in and later I took out a mortgage on the house to put air-con in the auditorium.

"We managed to pay that off but all the money the place has made over the years has gone back into it - the seating, new screens, the curtains and chandeliers. And now it's how my vision for it always was. I always wanted red curtains and the Hoyts-type carpet, really nice seats and a ramp so there's no steps in the dark."

Having previously been involved with Adamstown's Barclay Theatre, Stockton's Savoy and the Hunter Theatre in The Junction, he's had a front-row seat as Newcastle's cinema-scape has evolved.

His first cinema job was as an usher at the long-gone Barclay. It was, he laughs, very much like the old Bijou picture theatre setting of his all-time favourite film, the charming 1957 British comedy The Smallest Show on Earth, starring Peter Sellers as the projectionist in a run-down "fleapit" holding out against a larger, more modern, cinema nearby.

In 1976 Mr Mason was a guest at the opening night premiere of Jaws at the now-closed Tower Cinemas, which was Newcastle's first multi-screen picture palace. Now his 175-seat cinema is the last of the region's single-screen suburban theatres.

"It used to be that almost every suburb had a cinema," he sighs. "We've got none left now except us." Of the multiplexes he must now compete with, he says: "We are literally surrounded by them, but we keep on".

Not that movie multiplexes haven't had their own dramas, with regional chain Majestic recently forced to close its Singleton and Nelson Bay cinemas.

Regional Cinemas Australia CEO and managing director Kieran Dell says a recent "outpouring of love" for Majestic's cinemas reinforced for him their vital role in communities "as a meeting place, entertainment hub and so much more".

"Cinema is a way to disconnect from the world - and your phone - which is better for mental health," he says. "It is a communal activity."

The reason for Lake Cinema's longevity is "simple", he says: "knowing the local community and what they want. And Bob has known the community intimately for 50 years, which shows".

Scott Seddon, president of industry association Independent Cinemas Australia and proprietor of Scotty's Cinemas Raymond Terrace and Heddon Greta Drive-In, says Mr Mason has managed to balance tradition with cinema's "constant evolution".

"Having opened on a shoestring budget half a century ago it has shown its resilience through innovation and adaptation," Mr Seddon says. "In the 80s the owner of the cake shop across the road began bringing over the unsold cakes on a Saturday afternoon which were then shared for the evening patrons. That tradition has survived as the free tea and bickies the cinema is still known for today.

"Most of all, cinemas are about people, and the unending devotion shown by Bob Mason over the years has resulted in many thousands of customers becoming friends of the cinema."

Since Newcastle lost cinemas like The Regal at Birmingham Gardens and the Kensington, Lyrique, Showcase and Tower in the city, Lake Cinema has shifted its weekend offerings towards more arthouse fare and what Mr Mason calls "nice dramas".

Last year, for example, he showed only the non-pink half of the blockbuster "Barbenheimer" duet - "something with a bit of meat on the bone".

"We like stories based on books, and we're doing more foreign language films and documentaries," he says. "Our customers like to be entertained and have a good cry or a good laugh or get involved in something deep and powerful like Anatomy of a Fall or Zone of Interest."

While the pandemic lockdowns of 2020-21 almost destroyed the business, the uptake of streaming has extended the slow recovery as the Hollywood studios - when they're not fighting with striking writers and actors - steer their movies straight to their own subscription services.

"Covid really got people streaming because they were isolated in their homes, you couldn't go out and everything was delivered, including movies on demand," he says. "So, we had to come back from that by making a trip to the movies special, an enjoyable experience, to see something you might not find anywhere else. And we still do all the Covid cleaning by the way."

Mr Mason reckons Lake Cinema would not have survived Covid without the support of Lake Macquarie council, a "fabulous landlord, so obliging and helpful".

He's also grateful for his loyal customers, the "strong band of supporters who are always coming back".

And they have returned in more encouraging numbers since the Newcastle Herald helped correct a false Facebook rumour last year that the cinema was closing. Mr Mason said the awareness helped nudge weekly ticket and candy bar sales back into break-even after a lean stretch.

"Rather than being like a movie supermarket, we've always tried to make going to the movies special and personal and an event."

Presented with the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award by his fellow small and regional cinema operators at Independent Cinemas Australia, Mr Mason says he's grateful for the community of local movie-lovers he's helped foster.

"I've put 52 years of my life into Boolaroo because I just love running it. I've had such fabulous staff who care for the public as well as the cinema. They help with the movie program and even what lollies to get for the candy bar.

"I also love the interaction with the public. When they say thank you or good night, I really enjoy that because I'm on my own and I would not be who I am without it. And we must be doing something right because people are always saying on their way out that they're so glad we're still here."