The range of plays essayed was impressive – from classics to avant-garde pieces, from recent West End and Broadway successes (sometimes the Australian premiere) to offerings from local dramatists.
The death of Doris Fitton's co-producer Peter Summerton in 1969 put extra strain on her deteriorating health, and with no-one able or willing to fill her shoes, the Independent closed in 1977.
From 1931, most performances were given in The Savoy, a small single-floor cinema on Bligh Street, chiefly on Wednesday and Saturday, movies being shown on other nights.
But after the Players' Club had cancelled their lease of St James' Hall, the management of The Savoy evicted them both in order to become purely a cinema.
[8] For a time they were running two productions in parallel: at Pitt Street and at their new premises, renamed "The Independent"; by September 1939 the move was complete.
In 1942 The Independent embarked on a joint management arrangement with Alec Coppel's Whitehall Productions which entailed nightly professional presentations, alternating seasons with the Minerva Theatre across the other side of the city.
Those selected included Marie Rosenfeld, Ethel Gabriel, Jessica Noad, Molly Brown, Haydee Seldon, Leonard Bullen, John Carlson and Grenville Spencer.
They held a reception for Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson in September 1932, at which members of the Independent Theatre were conspicuously absent.
[45] Mrs Albert Cazabon (aka Norah Delaney)[46] and Joy Howarth[47] were notable actors associated with the Pickwick group, whose productions (all at the Savoy Theatre) were: