When the Town Hall was christened the Regent Theatre and opened in the first week of February 1937, patrons were treated to an opening night of short films, a Popeye cartoon and two features.

‘Piccadilly Jim’ was the first movie shown, a very small sample of the film is on YouTube and can be seen below, a description of the movie can be found here.

The Popeye Cartoon didn’t have a title listed but several were released in 1936 and may of been sent to Deniliquin in 1937 and so we’ve picked one from 1936 for readers.

The second film was called ‘The Devil Is A Sissy’ and featured three of the greatest talents of perhaps all time in Mickey Rooney (played Andy Hardy in the Andy Hardy series of films), Jackie Cooper (known for playing Perry White in 1970’s – 1980’s Superman movies) and Freddie Bartholomew (starred in Oscar winning movie Captains Courageous with Spencer Tracy), unfortunately there is no clips on YouTube but IMDb has a description of the movie.

The next week had a Clark Gable movie in the form of 1934’s ‘Men in White’ and the Olivia De Havilland movie ‘Alibi Ike’, the trailers of which you can see below.

After this great start, The Regent lived in the Town Hall for another decade and a half before a new cinema was built on the spot of the Lyceum (which in turn moved to Davidson Street) in 1953.

Ironically there was a plan to build a Theatre where the Methodist Church was in Cressy Street but for some currently unknown reason it was never built despite the site changing hands twice.

Deniliquin has had a lot of Cafe’s over the years and we’re attempting to name them all which will take time.

Broadway Café
Mona Café
Café Bakery 285 (current)
Bronte’s Gourmet (current)
Crossing Café
McDonald’s Café
Globe Hotel and Café
Scoop n Brew
Primrose Café
Red Rose Diner (current)
Deni’s Diner

Tru-Frute Cordials was a much loved icon of Deniliquin during its long run of existence as a provider of drinks.

Over time it was called Tru Frute, Maher Bros. Trufrute Cordials, Trufrute Cordials and Tru-Frute and the range of drinks they provided was amazing from Vanilla to Mandarin to Sarsaparilla and the popular flavour of Blue Heaven.

Tru-Frute’s array of drinks were made at 103 Hardinge Street, they may be long gone but the building itself remains and thanks to eBay readers can check out five labels from a variety of eras.

There is still a decent amount of Tru-Frute memorabilia around, aside from the labels two intact bottles with almost perfect labels were found on a property in 2015 and other locals have other items as well.

This entry will continue to be updated as more facts come to hand.

Deniliquin have had a lot of Football clubs over time from junior football to senior football.

This story will be updated over time as more records are looked at and added to the narrative.

Deniliquin Rams (named Rams after name search in 1984)
Deniliquin Rovers
Deniliquin Colts (known as Red and Whites)
Railway Football Club (stopped briefly in 1915)
North Deniliquin
Central
West Deniliquin
East (East End?)

Local Grand Final clashes

Rovers defeated Colts in the 1930 Grand Final 14.14 – 98 to 10.10 – 70
West Deniliquin defeated North Deniliquin in 1953

Leagues

Murray Football League
Echuca League
Edwards River League
Edward River Junior Football League
Picola & District Football League

Since finding out about the Lyceum Theatre, we couldn’t stop thinking about it and so we started looking for any detail we could find.

Trove had lots of scanned articles mentioning the Lyceum mostly news about the Regent being established at Town Hall in 1937 and a couple of ads promoting movies and even a story of a dance held by the Basketball Association in 1928 presenting a shield called the Allison Shield to the winning Roman Catholic team.

The Lyceum Theatre was reportedly established in 1910 but there are two pictures dated 1905 with a sign saying Lyceum Pictures and reports that the building was previously named Temperance Hall pre-1910.

It was not uncommon to read Lyceum Pictures in one publication, Lyceum Theatre in another and Lyceum Hall in yet another.

From what we’ve read on the report and what we’ve seen on Trove, The Lyceum Theatre was a place with the lot with Dances, Movies and Skating all taking place on a weekly basis there was even one instance of Boxing and Wrestling.

A past owner of the Lyceum was Lewis Frank Probert who at one stage owned the Lyceum, Globe Hotel and Globe Café all in one go until the late 1930’s.

So after finding out all of the above, We put in ‘Lyceum Theatre Deniliquin’ in Google to learn its ultimate fate and the third result was Ennor Engineering and in their history they tell the story of buying the Lyceum Theatre in 1953 and instead of demolishing it, they dismantled it and moved it north to 133 Davidson Street.

Ennor Engineering’s history detailed report has given us great details for example the building was auctioned in June 1953 and was rebuilt by Hardman Bros. in December that year, the report also has the dimensions of the Lyceum (’40 x ‘110) and reported that the frame was made of Oregon which we believe is also known as Douglas fir.

The report goes on to discuss the changes to the building from the shortening of the columns to having a new brick frontage and changing windows plus more but it is the best report on the Lyceum and we are grateful that Ennor Engineering kept great records.

We want to thank Deniliquin History in Photos for inspiring us to find out more about local history, they have probably given us a very expensive hobby but it sure is a lot of fun.