New Piccadilly Theatre Opens Tomorrow Night

The News Tue 22 Oct 1940 Advertisement Piccadilly Theatre Opening (Source: The News Newspaper)

It was Tuesday, October 22 1940 and the newspapers are displaying bright glossy full-page ads to announce the opening of Adelaide’s new vogue picture house — The Piccadilly Theatre.

Costing £26,000 (eq. $2.3M in 2022) and incorporating all the latest developments in theatre design, comfort, and presentation, the Piccadilly Theatre, was officially opened on October 23 1940 with a screening of the 1939 musical comedy ‘First Love‘.

Dan Clifford’s Star Theatre circuit

Dan Clifford built South Australia’s largest chain of picture theatres: the Stars.

Clifford started by buying the Torrensville Star theatre. He improved and enlarged Hindmarsh Council town hall as the Hindmarsh Star theatre. Clifford made similar deals with other councils to use Thebarton and Woodville town halls.

Clifford also built cinemas such as the Norwood Star, the Capitol at St Peters, and the New Star Theatre at Unley. Clifford leased a hall in Kadina and later ran cinemas in Murray Bridge and Mount Gambier.

Urban Exploring The Piccadilly Theatre — Awesome Adelaide — The Piccadilly Theatre c.1960s (Source: cinematreasures.org)

In 1938, Clifford opened his first Adelaide city cinema by renovating the old Central Theatre in Wakefield Street and opening it as the New Star Theatre. The following year, he built the Vogue at Kingswood.

During World War II, Dan Clifford built his two surviving great art deco cinemas: the Piccadilly (1940) in North Adelaide and the Goodwood Star (1941), now the Capri, in Goodwood.

Adelaide’s New Picture House

The Piccadilly Theatre was the latest in a chain of 20 theatres established by Mr. Dan Clifford. The theatre originally seated 1,500 patrons in a single auditorium and incorporates an outstanding winding staircase with a striking domed ceiling set off by concealed lighting.

The elegantly carpeted curved staircase leads from the entry level to upstairs, providing views of the outside through porthole and arrowhead-shaped jazz-style amber glass windows.

The high curved façade rises from the O’Connell Street frontage topped by old-fashioned letters spelling out “PICCADILLY”.

The circular designs on the theatre walls that many people believed to be artistic decorations are actually a clever ventilation system. Suction vents on the roof draw off the hot air while cool air comes in through these circular “windows”.

Saved From Demolition

Bob Wallis of the South Australian Cinema Group saved the art deco Piccadilly theatre from demolition by taking it over in 1983.

Wallis added a mezzanine floor and refurbished it as a multi-screen complex that reopened in 1990 naming it the Piccadilly Cinema.

In 2021, the Piccadilly Cinema was named one of Australia’s Most Beautiful Cinemas.

Currently, the iconic cinema is closed and undergoing renovations…

House of Psychedelia – the home of Royce Wells

As you explore the dilapidated house on Fullarton Road, the family home of Royce Wells, you’ll discover a hidden world of history, spiritual enlightenment, and personal memories.

Locals know the home as the ‘House of Psychedelia’.

You enter the front door into a dark corridor. Several pianos line the walls on which old album covers and religious images are pinned.

On the right side of the hallway is the Eastwood History Museum followed by a second room: the Almanda Hideaway.

Urban Exploring The House of Psychedelia — Awesome Adelaide — Royce Wells as a historian with the SA Mines Department in the 1980s. (Source: Supplied)

On the left is a large room filled with mining samples and relics Royce collected while a historian with the SA Mines Department in the 1980s.

Eastwood History Museum

The front room was converted into a museum in 1975, two years after his mother died.

He filled it with significant pieces of history of the Parkside/Eastwood/Glenside area – the neighborhood he grew up in.

Royce would share his deep knowledge of the area to anyone who would visit.

Religious artworks, meat hooks, horseshoes, cans & bottles, radios & clocks, pest killers, vases & pantry items, biscuit tins & baking tins, old-style batteries & cleaning ointments, children’s games & toys, and more lined the walls.

Almanda Hideaway

The Almanda Silver Mine Complex in Cherry Gardens, South Australia was the most complete mine workings Royce had encountered, with building and mine workings fairly intact.

Royce’s appreciation of the mine led him to use the name for the Almanda Hideaway adolescent drop-in music club.

From the mid-60s to the 90s, Royce used this room to entertain members with music from the great composers to modern-day artists.

Weekly he communicated his love of music, mining, and anti-authoritarian culture.

Use of LSD

Royce was an anti-drug law activist and an advocate for the personal use of marijuana, LSD, and other psychedelics.

He stopped at suggesting anyone try illicit drugs, but would often tell people of his experience while under their effects.

He claimed they had given him the deepest spiritual experience of his life.

A kind of awareness that would propel you from the normal confines of your body, to a level where you were conscious of the molecular and sub-molecular structure of all things.

He used the music of Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, and Brahms to give him a deeper psychedelic experience.

During his “trips” he gained a greater awareness of God and described it as ‘intense and life-changing’.

Today scientists are investigating the therapeutic effects of psychedelics to reboot the brain and help relieve anxiety and depression.

Royce Wells passed away on 9 December, 2020, aged 78.

His home, the ‘House of Psychedelia’, was demolished some months later…