Could a Canberra cinema in 1942 have projected a message asking if the prime minister was there? This was a key question I had in assessing the story by John Burton that Curtin went missing on 21 February 1942 just as a crucial reply needed to sent to Churchill. I was thinking I must find someone with this kind of knowledge, but I hadn’t even thought of where to start yet. Then, arriving in my inbox, was the answer! Reader of this blog, Michael Piggott AM, had kindly asked Dr Ray Edmondson for me, and he gave a detailed answer:

The technology available in the Civic and Manuka cinemas would have been the separate projector for advertising slides. A sequence of advertisements would normally have been shown before the show started, and quite separate from it. The slides were the same dimensions as the magic lantern slides used in the 1800s. They were made of glass so it would be quite possible to write a message on a blank slide and then project it on the screen, even superimposing it over the film while it was running.

I’m not sure how the messages were written – was it a particular kind of ink? – but it was common to annotate slides. For example, a slide promoting a forthcoming film would have a blank section at the bottom allowing the projectionist to write in the days on which the film would run – e.g.  THU – SAT  

The are some examples of these slides currently on display in the NFSA library.    

Typical cinema equipment in the 1940s was two 35mm film projectors plus a slide projector.

Ray’s information certainly makes the message-in-the-cinema part of John Burton’s story plausible. I’m grateful for Michael and Ray’s help.

The picture on this post is the cinema listings on page 3 of the Canberra Times for 21 February 1942. Imagine a message, ‘Is the prime minister there?’ appearing in the middle of your Saturday night comedy – Lady Be Good or Hot Spot? Interesting to see the different war news available at each cinema, too – it would have been a factor in choosing which session. You could choose the bad news (Japanese bombing Burma) or the (presumably and ghoulishly) ‘feel-good’ news – ‘the unimaginable sensation of an authentic bombing raid over Germany’.