It has been at the heart of the Dunedin entertainment scene for more than a century. And survived ghosts, bomb scares, drunken bands and even boxing. Nigel Benson has a drink at Sammy's.
Last weekend's Hollie Smith concert at Sammy's brought the memories flooding back.
A world-class performer singing to an enthusiastic crowd in an historic local venue. It's the sort of experience a generation of Dunedin people grew up with at Sammy's Cabaret.
Several generations before them grew up with equally successful shows at His Majesty's Theatre, as it was formerly known.
But the old music hall, resplendent with its memories, has been a fading star in recent years and was briefly placed on the market by owner Sam Chin.
In the end, Mr Chin held on to the property allowing it to have another lease on life in the hands of another Sam (see accompanying story).
It is a comeback for a venue that's already been reborn several times.
The Crawford St building opened in 1896 as the Agricultural Hall, before being renamed His Majesty's Theatre when it became a theatre in August, 1902.
"It is undoubtedly one of the finest theatres in the colonies," the Otago Daily Times purred after the opening.
The first show at the theatre was the J. C. Williamson musical The Runaway Girl, which opened in December, 1902.
Within a couple of years, some of the greatest performers of the era were treading its boards.
"Madame Melba, Mademoiselle Antonia Dolores, Mark Hambourg, and other gifted and accomplished persons have performed in the theatre, and pronounce it to be one of the finest theatres in Australasia, with perfect acoustic properties," the New Zealand Cyclopaedia trumpeted in 1905.
"Music festivals and operatic and dramatic companies usually attract large and sympathetic audiences in Dunedin, which theatrical managers regard as one of the best `show' towns in the colony."
The history of the place is also recorded on its own walls.
Some of the luminaries who have appeared on the bill, such as Sir Laurence Olivier and Olivia de Havilland, who came to Dunedin with the Old Vic Company production School for Scandal in 1948, and Sir Ralph and Lady Richardson, Dame Sybil Thorndike and Sir Lewis Casson, who visited with Separate Tables in 1955, have engraved their names around the theatre.
The orchestra pit is also covered with the inscribed names of musicians dating back to 1904.
The theatre has been cast in myriad roles. The first film circuit established in New Zealand, by Henry and Rudall Hayward, had its Dunedin premiere in His Majesty's on April 10, 1905.
"The Old H. M.", as it became affectionately known, also hosted the Grand Russian Ballet and the Grand Opera in the late 1930s and boxing matches and ice shows in the 1940s and 1950s.
However, the venue languished in the 1960s and 1970s, until it was given new life in 1983 by Dunedin businessmen the late Eddie Chin and his son Sam.
Eddie was a colourful Rattray St nightclub owner, who ran the Sunset Strip and Tai Pei Cabaret for many years.
"We were originally looking at the Ag Hall, but we were going to have to spend $100,000 fire-proofing the ceiling," Sam Chin recalled.
"So we had a look at the old theatre next door. It was being used as a bond room for DB and there were pallets of beer stacked up to the roof.
"I just liked the building and I really liked the ceiling. So I said to Dad `This one will do'.
"My Dad wanted me to name it and I jokingly said, `Why don't we name it after me?' "The next thing I see in the paper it's Sammy's Cabaret and Restaurant.
It just stuck," Mr Chin said. "The first live show we did was Tony Christie. It was a three-course dinner and show for $25 a head. It went really well and we had two full houses.
"I went backstage and said to Tony `You should go out there and meet your fans'.
He said `I'm not going out there, I'll get mobbed'.
"I thought `You're joking, mate, this is Dunedin'."
Sammy's quickly became a venue of choice for international touring acts and a focal point for local bands.
"Two of the best bands for me were Shriekback and The Pogues," Mr Chin said. "Shane MacGowan got so drunk the Pogues kicked him out of the band at the end of that New Zealand tour.
If the licensing people saw how drunk he was they wouldn't have let him into the premises. He was absolutely rotten drunk, but he still sang for two hours.
"The Pogues had the biggest drink rider we ever gave a band. It was as tall as MacGowan was. There were four boxes of beer, six bottles of red wine, six bottles of white wine and a couple of bottles of spirits. Usually, we only gave the bands a couple of dozen of beer."
Other highlights over the years included The Jesus and Mary Chain, Hoodoo Gurus, Billy Bragg, Les Girls, Billy T. James, Steady Eddie and Freddie Fender, while local resident bands, such as Five Go Mad and Sidewalk Sally, also drew large crowds.
"But we had our ups and downs. Someone punched me in the jaw once when the Backdoor Blues Band were playing when I had my hands in my pockets. That wasn't very nice."
"And we had a couple of bomb scares in the early '80s. I reported the first one and got everybody out, but I didn't report the other one. I just crossed my fingers hoping it wouldn't happen.
"But, I was wandering outside all the time . . ." Mr Chin says.
Victorian history is ever-present in the building.
"We found three empty bottles of Moet up in the fly-tower. The dates on them were 1903, 1905 and 1906," Mr Chin recalled.
"We had Miss Otago there once. I was sitting with [Otago Community Trust chairman] John Farry and he said `You know, I boxed on that stage'."
Nobody knows the old building better than Dunedin sound engineer Stephen Kilroy, who has been mixing bands at Sammy's since the venue opened in 1983.
"Probably my favourite gig was when The Clean played there. They were as good as any international band I ever saw in that space. They were jaw-droppingly good," Mr Kilroy recalled.
"There's not another theatre in the world that I have been to that has that intimacy going on.
"Faith No More and Hunters and Collectors were also top gigs, although the biggest crowd I ever saw there was for The Pogues. We were licensed to 1000 people, but there were 1240 there. That was a really big gig.
"Dance Exponents always drew big crowds, too."
Sometimes there was just as much activity going on backstage.
"One night, the guys from Dance Exponents decided to wind up the guys in Push Push. They got a small piece of fish and stuck it in their amp, hidden away where they'd never find it. It must have ended up really stinking," Mr Kilroy says.
"We had a lot of fun with the bands. Kid Eternity always saw it as their job to drink the main band's rider.
"Billy T. James was one of the nicest people I met there. He was a fabulous human being. A really lovely guy. He really stood out in the New Zealand entertainment industry."
But, heaven help any touring acts who got too big for their boots.
"Hoodoo Gurus had a bit of an attitude, so their truck was packed up back to front and a few neutral leads and fuses were taken out of their amps, so they wouldn't go. You don't mess with the local crew," Mr Kilroy says, smiling.
"We had the odd other bit of excitement, too. When Sam put on a few strip shows in the '80s, you'd get 300 people outside protesting.
"But, Sam always took it in fine form. `They have the right to protest and I have the right to make money', he would say."
Mr Kilroy enjoys the history in the old music hall.
"There's banks of names of people who have been up in the fly tower over the years. People like Sir Ralph Richardson and Leo McKern, who played the lead in Rumpole of the Bailey," he says.
"I'm sure there are ghosts in that building. In the 1930s, someone got their arm caught in a rope and was dragged up into the grid and killed. I always wondered if that's who it was.
"I lived in the theatre for a little while back in the '80s, and there was always stuff happening. It can be a very creepy old theatre when you're there on your own.
It got to the stage that I went out there one night and yelled out `Okay you guys. That's enough. That's it, OK.'
"There's definitely something there that's stopping that building from being bulldozed."
The venue was converted to a pool hall in September, 1995, bringing the curtain down on an era of entertainment.
"I didn't think the business was going that well and I'd always wanted to own a pool hall," Mr Chin said.
Mr Chin is the Otago pool team captain and won the New Zealand national pool title recently. After putting the building up for tender last year, he is now leasing it to Sam Carroll.
"I was always happy down there. It was always fun when people were having a good time. You've got to have a bit of humour in life or you get grumpy.
"Dad was the same. He was always smiling. He really liked people, Dad, and he was a very generous man.
A lot of people who came to Sammy's used to call me `Mr Eddie'. I quite liked that."
