Who was Harry Shine?
In early August, 1896 a “clever young character comedian with a ‘bright’ future”, Harry Shine, is headlining at the Melbourne Opera House, a 2000 seat firetrap situated near the corner of Bourke and Swanston Streets.
After just two weeks of star billing, however, Harry finds himself bumped by a touring magician from San Francisco, Carl Hertz, who has brought along a fancy new contraption he’s picked up in London called the Cinematographe – “The Wonder of the Nineteenth Century”.
Hertz’s film screenings, the very first in Australia, are a sensation. Newspaper ads for the Opera House are now dominated by this amazing new attraction while Harry Shine’s name drops further and further down the bill until, after a fortnight, he is dropped from the line-up completely. The very next day the cinematographe season is extended “by popular demand and at great expense to the management” and a new programme of Moving Photographs announced, including such attractions as “negro dancers”, “boxing cats” and “a serpentine dance performed by a dog.”
In the tragi-comic history of cinema in Australia one over-riding theme is the dominance of our screens by the United States and Britain. It seems fitting then that we name our own humble effort at bringing more Australian work to the Australian screen in honour of the very first casualty of that dominance: Mister Harry Shine.
