One night at Paris

Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd

In October 1957 when I was 8 years old my parents and I waited one night in Liverpool Street across the road from Sydney's Hoyts Paris Cinema (long since disappeared) to catch a glimpse of the glamorous Hollywood star Elizabeth Taylor and her third husband, producer Mike Todd, as they arrived to attend the Australian premiere of Todd's blockbuster movie Around the World in Eighty Days. Todd died in a plane crash eighteen months later.

Hoyts Paris Cinema

Interestingly, the Hoyts Paris Cinema was designed by the American architect Walter Burley Griffin whose major claim to fame in Australia is that he created the basic design for Australia's capital city Canberra.