Tom Snooks

Who was Tom Snooks?

Thomas James Snooks was a pioneering picture-show man and a developer-builder in the north-eastern suburbs of Perth, Western Australia. In addition to his professional interest in cabinet-making and building, Tom possessed a love for live theatre, staging a number of Gilbert and Sullivan productions in the Maylands Methodist hall, when he was in his early twenties. Not long after the First World War he began showing silent films at a number of venues in Maylands - at the Maylands town hall and the old Lyric Theatre - as well as in Bassendean, and Inglewood, under the business name Central Pictures. By staggering the starting times, Tom and his brothers were able to shuffle canisters of film between competing venues via a speeding motor cycle, thereby keeping the local police force on its toes. In the early days, Tom would go on stage to introduce the silent films, as he believed in the power of the word as well as the image.

Tom was born in Hawthorn, Victoria in 1890, and, when he was six or seven, migrated with his family to gold-booming Perth in order to escape financially depressed Melbourne.