Cathay Theatre
The Grand Cathay Theatre Today
The French Concession had 33 theatres making Shanghai one of the most cultured and international cities in the country even long before it’s rise as a modern metropolis.
The Cathay Theatre is one of the City’s most valued and easily recognised buildings from the past.
The Cinema was designed by the hungarian architect C. H. Gonda (who also designed the now bank of communications office at the bund and the capitol cinema) and completed in the year 1930.
This reinforced concrete structure stands magnificently at the intersection of now maoming road and changle road.
It covers a total area of 16000 square meters.
It aired it’s first movie MGM’s “The Gate of Soul and Flesh” in 1932.
This was a first run movie and the cinema became famous for premiers in the city.
In 1946 during the pacific war it fell under the jurisdiction of the the china film cooperation an arm of the puppet goverment of Wang Jing Wei.
The Grand Cathay Theatre Then
After the cultural revolution the cinema was renamed people’s cinema.
In 1979 it resumed to run under it’s original name the Cathay and in 1986 it added an additional floor.
In it’s glory era The Cathay Grand Theatre held 978 seats, the largest in Shanghai at the time and usually catered to foreigners and wealthy local residents.
Ticket prices used to range from 1 to 1.5 Yuan in a time when the average salary was around 50 yuan per month.
Today the cinema is famous for running low-budget artistic movies, it received a congratulary letter in 2005 after reporting record revenues of 10.38 Million Rmb. ( a year later it actually already reached revenues of 11 Million Rmb)
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Philip,
Yesterday I was doing research
on Sir Victor Sassoon and Silas Hardoon and came across The French Concession.
Great new blog! Looking forward to future posts. Also enjoyed The Cathay Theatre.
Good luck on this project.
David Parmer/Tokyo
PS. If you have a minute pls take a look at my website:
http://www.shanghai-vintage-hotels.com/
There’s a fabulous Cantonese cafe in the Cathay Theatre itself.
Oh thank you,
I didn’t know, what’s it called?