THE trouble-plagued Piccadilly Cinema will close next month, bringing the curtain down on 75 years of history.

Operator Cyril Watson this week confirmed the art deco theatre the only cinema complex left in the CBD would show its last film at the end of the school holidays.



He said it had been his dream to save the grand dame of Perth cinemas when he took on the lease in 2005, but it had lost too much money.



He blamed illegal downloads, greedy film companies and other problems that had beset the business.



The Sunday Times revealed in May that ceilings in the building had collapsed twice, most recently in June last year. And Mr Watson claimed they narrowly missed customers.



He had accused the building's owners of letting the Piccadilly Arcade go to "rack and ruin".



Mr Watson owes more than $400,000 in rent. He recently negotiated a deal with the arcade's owners to wipe the slate clean with a $200,000 payment that would allow the cinema to keep operating on rolling three-month leases.



But the deal appears dead. Terry Posma, who represents the arcade's overseas owners, said he had not been told what Mr Watson's plans were.



"We can't get any firm commitments from him on anything," he said, adding that the owners would now chase all outstanding rent.



The owners were planning a major renovation of the heritage-listed arcade, which would include replacing its asbestos roof.



The cinema's operator before Mr Watson was pedophile Dennis John McKenna, who left the cinema in 2004 with big debts and a trail of angry creditors, including film distributors.



In May, Mr Watson denied he had hired McKenna to help him as recently as 2011. But this week he admitted that McKenna had returned to do some office work. He said this was cut short when detectives charged him with new offences.



McKenna's father, Doug, also said his son had worked at the cinema as recently as 2011, before being jailed again.



He said Mr Watson and his son had met when they were both in prison during the 1990s. McKenna was serving his first jail term for sexually assaulting boys at St Andrew's Hostel in Katanning, where he was the warden from 1975-1990.



"Dennis met him in jail...Dennis rings me every evening around 5.30pm," Mr Mckenna Sr said. "Cyril is a fairly sick man and he used to have a lot of time off ... Every now and then Cyril would ring him (Dennis McKenna) up to take over while he was off sick."



Mr Watson was jailed in 1992 for organising and taking part in the brutal bashing of two men over $37,000 in stolen cash. The victims were innocent. One had both his arms broken.