For the second time in as many years, the Astor may have escaped a grisly end.

The fate of the historic art-deco cinema has been in question since May 2013, when the relationship between tenant George Florence and landlord Ralph Taranto began to fall apart.

Both have claims on the Astor: Mr Taranto bought the building in late 2012, Mr Florence has operated the cinema there since 1982, and owns the business name. Both say they want to keep the Astor running as one of the last single-screen cinemas in Australia. But escalating hostilities between the pair have brought legal challenges, Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearings and even a restraining order that prevents the landlord from entering his own building.

Advertisement

In August, it was reported that Mr Florence would be turfed out when his lease expired in May 2015.

Now, though, peace may have broken out, as Palace Cinemas has agreed to become the new tenant, and to continue the business largely as is. Remarkably, it also wants to hire Mr Florence to run the place.

"George has so much experience there I think it would be wonderful to have him stay on, in whatever capacity he chooses," says Palace boss Benjamin Zeccola.

Dale Smith, a representative of Mr Taranto, echoed that sentiment. "We have in mind that George and the other staff there are very much part of the Astor," he said.

Friends of the Astor spokeswoman Vanda Hamilton agreed, too. "We want George to be there, he's the soul of the place," she says. "In a perfect world he would own the building, but that's not the case, so this is a good solution."

The only one yet to be convinced seems to be George Florence.

It was "not appropriate" to comment on any deal between himself and Palace, he told The Sunday Age in an email on Friday, "given that the key terms of a possible agreement have not been settled on and are in very early stages of discussion".

So it's a cliffhanger. But that's a massive improvement on a situation for which the word "toxic" barely suffices.

The white knight rises

Mr Taranto was hailed as a white knight when he purchased the building at 1 Chapel Street, St Kilda, after a community campaign to save the Astor from redevelopment.

St Michael's Grammar School had bought the building in 2007 for $3.8 million, and proposed spending up to $25 million on an Ashton Raggatt McDougall-designed revamp. The school promised the facility would include a cinema screen and would be available for use by the wider community, but much of the original character and fabric of the heritage-listed 1936 interior would be lost.

In May 2012, the Friends of the Astor (FOTA) – an independent group, but one with close ties to Mr Florence – launched a social media campaign to pressure the school to drop the plan or to sell the building. In August 2012, facing damage to its carefully cultivated brand as a good community citizen, the school sold the building to Mr Taranto for about $3 million.

A major plank of the FOTA campaign was that ownership of the building should be transferred into a trust that would guarantee its future as a single-screen venue for the projection of film.

"It's Ralph's and my intention to form a not-for-profit trust, and he will bequeath the Astor to that trust and I will roll my business into it," Mr Florence said on August 24, 2012. "I believe he has honourable intentions."

But for 83-year-old Mr Taranto – who has repeatedly avowed his desire to return the Astor to its original glory – putting the building into a trust wasn't on the radar.

"First I'll own it, then I'll fix it up, and then we'll see what happens," he said of the proposal.

It was only day one of their relationship, but already the dynamic had begun to shift.

Whose Astor is it anyway?

George Florence has never owned the building, but at some point he claimed ownership of the Astor name. "The word Astor is a registered trade mark of my company, and it is a breach of my trademark to make reference that Mr Taranto owns 'The Astor',", Mr Florence wrote to me in an email last July. "Imagine you owned a building that you lease to Coles Supermarkets, then you go around saying 'I own Coles'."

Mr Florence's analogy may not bear close scrutiny – he does not own the Astor sign outside the building, for instance – but it does illustrate both his deep connection to the Astor and the level of hostility that had developed between owner and tenant.

There are plenty more illustrations of that hostility in the 19-page list of complaints tendered by lawyers for Mr Florence to the civil and administrative tribunal in April 2014.

Mr Taranto was accused of entering the Astor while a wedding was underway, helping himself to cucumber sandwiches and "saying that he owned the Astor".

He allegedly suggested a female employee of Mr Florence should use her "pathetic, arrogant 'power pussy' tactics" elsewhere.

He was accused, too, of ripping up plants from the tiny yard at the rear of the building, of being "rude and aggressive", and of carrying out repairs and alterations without warning or consultation.

For his part, Mr Florence was accused of preventing access to the building for necessary and, in some cases, urgent repair work (Dale Smith says Mr Taranto has spent about $750,000 on repairs since buying the building); of failing to carry out maintenance for which he was responsible; and of failing to pay the building insurance, as required under the terms of their lease (all of which had been sticking points, too, when St Michael's was the landlord).

Both sides claimed they had its best interests at heart, but as the lawyers' letters went back and forth, the Astor itself was crumbling.

Somehow, a marriage that had seemed so promising had become the custody battle from Hell.

It's all about the building

Benjamin Zeccola says he wants to save the Astor because it reminds him of the cinemas in which he grew up. Specifically, the old Palace on Bourke Street, where his Italian-immigrant father Antonio screened films in the 1970s and from which the company takes its name.

"I'm driven by an emotional connection, by a love for and a memory of the cinemas of that era," he says. "It's certainly not about profit. At best, this will be a break-even proposition."

Mr Zeccola insists he has no intention of multi-screening the Astor, though that's exactly what Palace did with another art deco building, the Westgarth in Northcote (converted from one screen to three, with the interior restored).

"I'll be honest, when I first came in here I did think about that. But I think there are already more than enough screens in this area, so it doesn't make sense to 'Westgarth' it," he says. "What there aren't many of – anywhere in the major cities of Australia – are single-screen picture palaces like this."

Mr Zeccola sees the future of the Astor as being much like its recent past, with repertory programming – hopefully overseen by Mr Florence – coupled with the Palace's operational nous. "I can imagine us holding the opening night of the French Film Festival here, for instance," he says.

Palace is already a tenant of Mr Taranto's at the Brighton Bay. "There's trust there," Dale Smith says.

Now, it's all down to Mr Florence.  There's work to be done, but he's quietly confident.

"We've all got one thing in mind," Mr Smith says, "and that's the restoration of this wonderful icon."

On twitter: @karlkwin