Of all people, it came from the Ministers Fraternal, threatening to have him closed down if he went ahead with a planned three-day screening of the R-rated film, The Case of the Smiling Stiffs.

The screening went ahead, and Mr Brainwood said the response from local audiences

was amazing.

The usual run for R-rated films at the time was just three days but the audiences were so big the movie screened for two weeks, and returned to the Roxy twice by popular demand.

The threat was one of several colourful

incidents Mr Brainwood remembered as

the Roxy prepared to celebrate its 75th anniversary tomorrow.

He received a similar threat the following year when preparing to show the popular Monty Python movie, The Life of Brian, with ministers saying his business would not survive if the screening went ahead.

The screening proceeded, with the Roxy since becoming one of the oldest cinemas still operating in NSW.

Mr Brainwood said there was another cinema that opened in 1935 at Grafton, which continued to operate, and while a couple of cinemas in Sydney were older they were not still operating as movie theatres.

Both the 75-year-old cinema complexes are art deco and both have had to evolve over the years to become multi-screen complexes.

Mr Brainwood said it was all about developing and changing to meet customer needs and keeping abreast of changing technology.

“You’ve got to be prepared to make changes for people’s comfort,” he added.

That has been a key to surviving the onslaught of home theatres and movie downloads,

ensuring “in the past two years our box office has increased”.

Changes in recent times have included running regular art house movies, introducing 3D technology to several cinemas, installing larger, more comfortable chairs with lift-up arms, and more digital sound systems.

Mr Brainwood hopes to continue the evolution with plans for a gold class cinema comprising just 40 seats with the best of digital sound and picture quality in luxury surrounds.

“They’re probably the future of cinemas,”

he said.

It is a far cry from 1935 when the Roxy became Nowra’s second cinema, built by Ronald Sutton and Charles Owen on a design by architects Guy Crick and Bruce Furse, who were renowned for adding art deco elements to their buildings.

At the time tickets were the equivalent of 15 cents for adults and nine cents for children.

At the time films were screened on a 1928 Cummings and Williams projector that was still in use when Mr Brainwood took over 41 years later. Since retired, the original projector was placed on permanent display as a reminder of the changes over three-quarters of a century.

When he took over there was just one cinema in operation, and that Christmas there were

five sessions a day screening Smokey and

the Bandit.

In the following years Crocodile Dundee became the longest-screening movie, showing for 57 weeks, while the Lord of the Rings movies brought in the most money in the shortest time.