Touie Smith snr would venture to town as a young boy and watch the pictures at his beloved Liberty Theatre once a fortnight. Now, he says, he goes to the movies once a year, and his 1930s theatre is on the market.
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Liberty Theatre on Comur Street was built in 1939 by Mr H.L. Phillips for £13,000 and showed entertainment and newsreels during World War Two. As a ‘talkie’ theatre, it had one of the most modern operating boxes in the state at the time, and its first feature to air was Goodbye Mr Chips on December 15, 1939.
“At the time, it was a state-of-the-art facility and the place to be before the days of TVs,” Mr Smith said.
“You'd come into the town with dad and mum on a special night, or you'd get your driver’s licence … and take your girlfriend to the theatre. Theatre in the country towns in those days were the centre of activities.”
In 1974, 35 years after opening, the 700-seat art deco theatre closed down, and was bought by a local family as an art gallery and retail shop. Later it became a real estate agency, then a Video Ezy store.
“One of the reasons it shut was because the younger generation became more mobile and got cars,” Mr Smith said. “Why come to a picture theatre in Yass when you could drive to Canberra and go to the drive-in.”
In a letter to the Yass Tribune in 2016, Mrs Smith said the owners in 1974, the Tates, felt they were ready for retirement, and that the experimental nature of some films at the time was challenging to public tastes. “Mrs Tate even cited A Clockwork Orange as an example of a movie they didn’t want to screen,” Mrs Smith wrote.
In 2004, Mr Smith and wife Denise bought the building in the hope of restoring its former glory. They became the new owners within 24 hours of finding out the theatre was on the market, Mrs Smith said, for $380,000.
“Business has been very good to us out in Yass and we would talk about what we would do for it if we ever could and that dream for us was to buy the theatre,” Mrs Smith said.
The theatre, including a dress circle and first-floor foyer over a 480 sqm block, had been largely untouched since 1974, they said.
“We didn’t buy the theatre as an investment, but as a way for Yass to retain this magnificent building,” Mrs Smith wrote to the Tribune in 2016.
“As one specialist in the field of old theatres has called the Liberty, [it’s] the last Grande Dame of Art Deco’.”
They set aside $2 million and five years for the project, but said they had difficulties with the Yass Valley Council.
Last year, the couple decided it was time to put the building, presently home to community groups, back on the market.
“We would like to think the Yass community deserves to have a cultural spot where people can come,” Mr Smith said.
“It would be a shame for this to fall into the hands of a shoe shop or something and tear the guts out of it. That would be horrible.”
Liberty Theatre at 173 Comur Street Yass is listed for $580,000-plus.
