Kerridge Robert James Christchurch Nz 1901 1979

edmondsallan - Hello - I once met this man when I was working in Cambridge , Waikato NZ . Bit of a story - Would you Like to hear it ? ? - Not sure _! I'll give it a title " Richmen & their toys race grease monkey and his bomb !! " want to hear it now - wow - your response is over whelming me . Yes ! Yes ! Yes ! you say . Well because you were slow in coming forth - I am not going to tell you !
~#@*~! Ok Ok !! I was just joking . . Lets see - got my first cuppa - " Thee cat has finished her morning lick " not a hair out of place - " Old faithful " is blinking her heart out - and put it on the screen for me to copy - I am persuaded ! here we go . Lets set the scene.
I was working a part time as a grease monkey for a firm to get extra monies to help pay off the morgage . I was cleaning the grease gun when it accidently went off and went over a car window and door of a car parked next door outside a Farm supplier building . Un fortuneately it was " A Rolls Royce " _ " Phantom model - A beautiful car . I was cleaning the grease off this car - " The Rolla " when the owner came out and blew his top - calling me several names - not in the book -. I apologized profusely - ( Knowing he might get me sacked ) Nothing appeased him so I said in defence " You and your flash rich toy think you can park any where and you partially in our business area also . ( attack - best defence I know of ) This biggish man in his shorts & Tratan short sleeved shirt walked up to me ( I though __ Hells bells its all on in a moment & I could suffer physical damage ) mind you I was very brave in those days !!! He then said " I suspose you drive some beat up bomb full of rust that can hardly go up hill in first gear " ( Now that sort of got to me and I said - stupid me " Well it could lick the hell out of your rich toy . " He Says " do you think so Smart AAAAR~`` *# ! ok we'll have ago and perhaps you will learn to keep your mouth shut !!" . Now
if your name is " Edmonds " and have some great warrior cussies in your ancestry . You are inclined to want to beat the other guy into the ground . WE set the place right then . a race along a wide road near his Cambridge farm . I didn't even know who this over dressed monkey was . I knew my old 1953 Vauxhaall 6 cylinder would give him a blast and leave him for dead . ( I was Thinking a bit wrong at the time ) We get their, at the beginning of this wide country road .when he winds down his window & says - Do you want to back off ???? Now I ask you - Just picture the scene ' A sleek blue & pink rusty 1953 vauxhall - motor reving - I could just feel the power under me !!! and over th-e-r-e < A big ugly looking shiney Rolls Royce which was whispering away caused it lacked the horses ! I was gonna skin this guy !!! . He yells out again ! " Do you want to back oo -oo -- ff !!!
or get beaten ??? " Next he gets out of the his " Roller " and says . You're a game " B~*#*~ ! arn't you . Lets call it of - come down to the farm and have cuppa & a yak , till we both cool down . Now I know readers in my own mind , he just knew I was gona out gun his rich toy !! and win . So I thought ( being gracious of course to a loser ) why not . and so we drove on to his palatial Homestead on his farm where a maid brought us tea & choc Biscuits . Suddenly I realized , any one who could afford " Chocolate Biscuits " and a maid to serve to a conquerer , could be decent " Kiwi " after all . After a pleasant chat - Hour or so we said our Good byes . The last thing he said to me as I got into my " racing special" that had just taken the micky out of a " Rolls " - was _ " I would have beaten you - you know !!! " You know folks some people just never learn . About 4 weeks later my boss in the workshop says . " Here you are racing cars these days . - Did you really beat " Sir Kerridges
Phantom Rolls Royce ' ln your rust bomb ??? " About 10 days after that , I received some free theatre tickets to take all the family to the theatre in Hamilton owned by Kerridge . In the envelope was a note
" To a good loser ". Some never give up - do they .

Businessman, cinema proprietor, film distributor, tourism promoter, entrepreneur
Robert James Kerridge was born in Christchurch on 30 October 1901, the son of Frederick Thomas Kerridge, a tram driver, and his wife, Ellen Maude Bell. At the age of five his parents gave him a magic lantern, with which he staged a show for local children, charging a penny each. He left Christchurch West District High School at 15 and started work in the mailroom of Booth, Macdonald and Company, but after two days was transferred to the buying and shipping departments. Studying accountancy part time, he became a junior accountant with Kincaid's grocers when he was about 17, but resigned to move to Gisborne, where his father became an orchardist. There Robert worked as a real estate agent and opened the Commercial College of Poverty Bay. In 1923 he became manager, and then owner, of Wilkinson's Motor Company; renamed De Luxe Motor Service, it ran limousines between Gisborne and Napier.

Kerridge was still in the motor business when he saw a box office report from a Gisborne cinema suggesting there was money to be made from exhibiting films. In 1926 he started to buy theatres, with H. B. Williams, of the pioneering missionary and farming family, as his partner and adviser; Williams also became a partner in De Luxe Motor Service. Kerridge's first cinema was in Gisborne – the Palace Picture Theatre – which he renovated and renamed the Regent. He acquired a second within a year, and soon controlled cinemas in Wairoa, Opotiki, Tauranga and Whakatane. By the time talking pictures arrived in 1929 he had sold his motor business and was operating 16 cinemas. A decade later, profiting from the failure of other cinema owners during the depression, he controlled 26, including two in Auckland. The fastest expansion came in the 1940s: he took over New Zealand Theatres in 1943, the Fuller–Hayward theatre chain in 1945, and the J. C. Williamson Picture Corporation in 1947. By that time Kerridge and his Williams family associates owned or controlled 133 cinemas, the biggest exhibition chain in New Zealand or Australia. Virtually every sizeable town and city in New Zealand had at least one Kerridge cinema, many of them bearing the name Regent.

In 1946 Robert Kerridge travelled to London and sold 50 per cent of his cinema chain to the J. Arthur Rank Organisation, just as Rank (who controlled 1,000 cinemas) was expanding his British production company. The deal netted the vendors almost £1 million, plus the gift of a Rolls Royce car for Kerridge. It also provided the renamed Kerridge Odeon circuit with a guaranteed flow of British movies, to add to agreements with American studios (including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer) who already guaranteed their first-release films to the Kerridge chain.

At this time cinema attendances were increasing every year; they peaked in 1960, the year television arrived in New Zealand, when there were 40 million ticket sales, representing 17 visits each year by every New Zealander. At the outset of his relationship with Rank, Kerridge talked of producing films in New Zealand, but only one local film resulted, The seekers (1954). Apart from National Film Unit newsreels, film-going for New Zealanders continued to offer images and heroes almost exclusively from other places, predominantly the United States and Britain.

Kerridge had a wide range of other entrepreneurial interests. He organised concert tours by overseas stars such as the Beatles, the Bolshoi Ballet and the pianist Julius Katchen. He vigorously promoted New Zealand's tourism industry: Kerridge Odeon Hotels built the White Heron Lodge in Parnell and the Pakatoa Island resort in the Hauraki Gulf, while Kerridge Odeon Tourist Services introduced the first hydrofoil on the Waitemata Harbour. He also financed retail developments such as the 246 Shopping Centre in Queen Street, which opened in July 1964. In addition, he was a generous benefactor to various causes, including the Auckland City Mission's Selwyn Village for the elderly and King's College.

Robert Kerridge married three times. His first wife was Emslie Marie Malpart, the daughter of a French manufacturer, whom he married in the Holy Trinity Church, Gisborne, on 14 July 1925; they had no children, and were divorced in 1935. Two months later, on 3 January 1936, he married Meryl Moye Jones in Palmerston North; they had a daughter and a son, and were divorced in 1955. On 7 June 1956, at St Luke's Presbyterian Church, Remuera, he married Phyllis Elizabeth Calhoun (née Roland), a divorcee with three young children. Born in Te Aroha and educated in Vienna, she had played in a family musical sextet that toured New Zealand in the 1930s.

Kerridge was admitted to the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 1958, for fostering closer cultural relations between the two countries, and was knighted in 1962. He retired as Kerridge Odeon's managing director in 1976, aged 75, but retained the title of chairman and kept going to work as usual; there was 'not the slightest switch in the source of power,' commented the New Zealand Herald.

Sir Robert Kerridge died at his Remuera home on 26 April 1979, survived by his wife and children. His funeral service was held in the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, Parnell. For more than 50 years the Kerridge name had been synonymous with motion picture exhibition in New Zealand, and Kerridge had become one of the country's wealthiest entrepreneurs. In 1987 the Kerridge and Williams family interests were acquired by Pacer Kerridge Corporation, which went into receivership in 1992, by which time less than 20 Kerridge cinemas remained. Till we meet again - Regards - edmondsallan

L. R. Shelton. 'Kerridge, Robert James - Biography', from the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, updated 1-Sep-10
URL: http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/biographies/4k10/1