Rod Blackmore’s AUSTRALASIAN THEATRE ORGANS South Australia section Best known location: Broadbent residence Macclesfield

Fotoplayer Style 50 (8 pipe ranks) with additions

Originally installed in DeLuxe Theatre, Melbourne, Victoria, 1915-22; briefly transferred to Hoyts theatres in Canterbury and Richmond (Melbourne); sold to Glenelg (later Seaview) Theatre, Adelaide, South Australia 1926; sold to Alf Broadbent of Macclesfield, S.A. 1959, rebuilt and extended to 2 manuals & maybe 20 ranks on his property; acquired by Barclay Wright of Mastertouch Piano Roll Company, Sydney 1975; donated to Powerhouse Alf Broadbent’s extended style 50 Fotoplayer installation, Macclesfield Museum, Sydney (Castle Hill facility) 2006.

Glenelg is on the seaside, 10 km southwest of the Adelaide city C.B.D., and among other features is connected to Adelaide by a historic tramway. Glenelg is also the site of the proclamation of South Australia in 1836. The Glenelg Theatre opened in 1917; it was reconstructed and reopened in 1936, and later renamed as the Seaview Theatre – closing in 1959 to become a bowling alley, and demolished in 1999. Macclesfield is a rural town 40 km southeast of Adelaide C.B.D. Here Alf Broadbent had his property including a large barn. The Mastertouch Piano Roll Company (founded 1919) had premises in Sydney, New South Wales, including a former Christian Science church at suburban Petersham, and later a former fire station at Stanmore. The business finally closed in 2005 and donated much of its music roll artefacts to the Powerhouse Museum, they being currently held in the museum’s secondary storage facility in the northwestern suburb of Castle Hill.

The Style 50 Fotoplayer (manufactured by the American Photoplayer Company, a division of the Robert Morton Organ Company) was the largest of these instruments, specifically designed for the accompaniment of silent movies. It comprises a central cabinet with a player piano, and on either side large cabinets contain organ pipes, reeds, and a series of effects. This particular instrument was first installed in the DeLuxe Theatre, Melbourne (Victoria) from 1915 to 1922 (being replaced by a 2/7 WurliTzer theatre organ, opus 359). After brief periods in Hoyts theatres in suburban Canterbury and Richmond it was sold to the Glenelg Theatre (above) in 1926. Alf Broadbent bought the instrument in 1959 when the then Seaview Theatre ceased showing films, and installed it in the large barn on his property, taking over 10 years to restore and extend it with additional home-made pipe ranks and a 2-manual organ console. Broadbent died in 1974 and Barclay Wright of the Mastertouch Piano Roll Company in Sydney (New South Wales) acquired the instrument in 1975 to add to his collection of mechanical musical instruments at his Petersham factory. The Mastertouch business closed down in 2005 and a collection of items including the Style 50 Fotoplayer was donated to the Sydney Powerhouse Museum, being housed in that museum’s secondary storage facility at suburban Castle Hill. The extensions/additions to the original Fotoplayer The original specification of the Style 50 Fotoplayer made by Alf Broadbent at Macclesfield are said to included: Pipe ranks: Open Diapason, Flute d’Amour, have taken the instrument to a possible 20 ranks of Viole d’Orchestre, Vox Mystica, Flute, Gemshorn, Cornet pipes. In its current condition at the Powerhouse & Melodia. Reed stops: Treble: Oboe, Diapason, Museum it has lost the Broadbent 2-manual organ Principal; Bass: Diapason, Echo, Clarionet; Effects: console and this additional pipework; there may be Bells, pistol shots, Bass drum, Xylophone, Snare drum, no current record of the Macclesfield specification. cymbal, tom-tom, chimes, tambourine, castanets, sleigh A player-piano said to be from a Style 45 bells, horse hoofs, plus other whistles, gongs, horns, and Fotoplayer is currently incorporated but the sound effects. instrument is generally in poor condition and unplayable.