purchased by newly formed Greater Union Theatres. This new company split from Australasian Films, established the Hollywood-model subsidiary Cinesound Productions, expanded into radio and newspaper, and kept its major focus on building and managing cinemas. Due to The Depression, Greater Union Theatres merged into the General Film Corporation with Hoyts, a competitor who had secured Fox Film as a shareholder. In 1937 Norman Rydge became managing director and removed the company from the previous merger. 1945–: post-war expansion In 1945, the last year of World War II, there was a box office boom and the British Rank Organisation purchased a half share in Greater Union Theatres. During this time Greater Union acquired the rights of ownership of many theatres across the country including what became the Phoenician Club in Broadway, Sydney in 1943, originally owned by McIntyre's Broadway Theatres and established as a cinema in 1911. It acquired the Clifford Theatre Circuit in Adelaide in March 1947. The purchase price of £300,000 for the 22 suburban and regional cinemas was "believed to be the largest motion picture transaction ever made in Australia". The Clifford name was retained as a tribute to the entrepreneur Dan Clifford, and South Australian staff were retained. In 1958 the four holding companies in the Greater Union Theatres group were merged into the Rydge family Amalgamated Holdings Limited (AHL), and in 1965 Greater Union Theatres was renamed the Greater Union Organisation (GUO). In 1980 billionaire Alan Rydge was appointed Chairman of AHL to become the youngest chairman of an Australian public company. In 1975 Greater union bought the old Metro Theatre in Hindley Street, Adelaide, and redeveloped it as a modern four-screen cinema complex, called Hindley Cinemas 1–4. In October 1980 the company bought the building that had once housed the first cinema in Adelaide, West's Olympia, also in Hindley Street, reopening a rebuilt complex in December 1982 as Hindley Cinemas 5–6. In 1984 AHL regained control over the now-defunct Rank Organisation's half share, meaning that it once again became fully Australian-owned. In 1987 GUO merged with Village Roadshow to form the distribution company Roadshow Film Distributors, and by that time, GUO and Village Roadshow partnered on a $100 million cinema chain that will see 200 circuits expanded by use by 1990. In 1991 GUO acquired Birch, Carroll & Coyle. In the same year, Hindley Cinemas 1–4 and 5–6 closed. 21st century In 2003 AHL and