Heart and soul of the Regent Theatre bows out
Val (Valmond) Page, former Regent Theatre manager, born January 5, 1933, died March 13, 2021.
A flamboyant personality with eclectic interests and a rich personal life who was once the heart and soul of the beloved Regent Theatre, Val Page, has been farewelled after his death at the age of 88.
Described by the late former Manawatu¯ Standard columnist Peter Hawes as ‘‘dangerously overinteresting’’, Page was a colourful, creative character well-recognised in Palmerston North, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.
Nicknamed by some as ‘‘The Count’’, he had longish, wild, curly hair and cut a tidy figure in his formal suit, white shirt and bow-tie, an attire soon dressed-down to his alternative un-buttoned shirt-look once he stepped away from the formality of hosting theatre patrons.
Page was born in Waipukurau, but grew up in Palmerston North from the age of 4 years, the youngest in a family of four.
As a child, he suffered badly from asthma, and missed out on a lot of formal schooling.
That would not hinder a man with an aptitude for learning and an interest in almost everything, including the theatrical.
The Regent Theatre dominated his life for more than four decades.
He started work there as an ice cream boy in 1948, qualifying as a projectionist, and going on to train many more apprentices in the technical art.
He was a successful promoter and marketer of both movies and live shows, originally for Kerridge Odeon, and after the buy-out that eventually brought it all to a crash in the late 1980s, for Pacer Kerridge.
‘‘He was Mr Regent,’’ said son Wyatt.
After the cinema was closed in 1989 he took over a lease on the building and continued to show Chinese movies until the building closed in 1992.
He struggled on pretty much as a one-man show.
He was the projectionist, he was on the door, and he cleaned up afterwards.
The city council decided in 1989 to take over ownership of the Regent in exchange for the later-demolished Opera House, and to preserve and redevelop the building as the Regent on Broadway.
When the council announced it had no job for him, he shunned the suggestion he stay on as a volunteer on the preservation team, and left the building.
Fortunately, he had a range of other interests.
He was an organist, whose free recitals in the theatre’s foyer at lunch times sometimes included music he composed himself.
His other skill was repairing and collecting old valve radios, from an era when people actually fixed things rather than throwing them out and buying a replacement. The collection cracked 900 items at its peak.
He wrote prose and verse, some of it published in what was then the Evening Standard.
A lifelong vegetarian, he was a keen gardener, who experimented with playing classical music to his cabbages to encourage growth.
After the Regent, Page had a parttime job at Norwoods, drawing on his practical skills with anything electrical or mechanical, until retiring.
He is survived by wife Leonie, sons and daughter Sherman, Marcus, Wyatt and Antoinette and families.
Nicknamed by some as ‘‘The Count’’, he had longish, wild, curly hair and cut a tidy figure in his formal suit, white shirt and bow-tie.