Old Shanghai Cinemas: Insights from a Logbook

by Tess Johnston//

Back in 2010, I found in a local antique market an old ledger covered in brown wrapping paper, with a handsomely-penciled inscription on the front:

[Not the actual log book – our artist’s impression!]

It was a bookkeeper’s daily log for the two top movie theatres in old Shanghai, the Grand Theatre and the Cathay. Both featured only English-language films, and – coincidentally – both were the work of Hungarian architects.

The Grand Theatre, on Nanking Road just north of the race course (now Renmin Square) was designed by Laszlo Hudec, and the Cathay on Avenue Joffre (Huaihai Lu), by C.H. Gonda. Both are still here and still showing films, although now seldom in English.

Grand Theatre (Laszlo Hudec, 1933). Photo: Virtual Shanghai

What the ledgers revealed was intriguing. Both cinemas had a daily report, all numbered sequentially. I chose the ledger’s first entry as a fairly representative example of what a wide range of details this tattered log reveals.

It provides a fascinating insight into Chinese cinema management – and its meticulous daily record keeping — in a period of the increasing chaos that was to end only six months later with the defeat of the Nationalist forces and the Communist take-over of the city.

Below is the information from the Grand Theatre log.

The log from the Grand Theatre – the information is from the actual log, but the image is the artist’s impression.

By the Numbers: Audience Attendance & Revenue

There were four shows, the first starting at 2:15p.m. The late show, at 9:00p.m., cost slightly more. The most expensive tickets were GY [Gold Yuan] 1.60, with two more categories below that, and the cheapest seats were GY 0.40. Although the top three categories had higher prices for the late show, the prices for the cheapest seats never changed. For morning shows there were GY 0.40 tickets, but there was no morning show that day.

When I read how many people attended this particular film on a fall Friday, and a work day at that, I had to check the figures several times as I simply could not believe them. There under “Tkts. Sold” were these figures:

 First Show: (2:15) 1,542                     Second Show: (4:30) 1,097
 Third Show: (6:45) 1,038                  Fourth Show: (9:00) 1,949

 Total Day’s Attendees 5,626

I don’t know what cinema attendance in the USA is these days, but I suspect any manager would be delighted to get that kind of attendance in a week (or even a month?), vs in just one day in one cinema in Shanghai in 1948! The take for the day was GY 4,113.40 (Gross), GY 3,126.18 (Net), and the total for the six previous days GY 23,771.81 — all this from ticket sales alone.

The Perils of Pauline (1947) was shown at Shanghai’s Grand Theatre in October 1948.

Telephone reservations could be made for all shows. On this particular Friday, however, only 29 telephone reservations were made and, surprisingly, 15 of those were in 4th class, the cheapest ticket category. There were obviously some bad seats in the cheap section and the poorer attendees especially wanted to be sure they got one of the better seats for this popular film.

There was additional income, although more modest (only GY 43.90), from “Programme and Movie Story Booklet Sales” either in the theatre or in its bar. Both of these sold for pennies: GY 0.03 and GY 0.05, respectively. (There was also a more elaborate “11 inch” Movie Story Booklet at GY 0.40, but only one was sold that day.)

On the right-hand side of the Report’s first page there is some mind-boggling information under Film Cumulative Record of Attendance/Receipts.

For “7 Days Thru Today”:

Attendance: 45,005
Receipts: GY 26,897.99

Their Tax Statement shows a complicated formula by which their “Nett Receipts”, GY 3,126.18, presumably represented taxes paid on income (about 11.6%). In the large blank square at the bottom of the page is a notation in blue pencil: 66.5%, perhaps representing the percentage of capacity of seats sold that month – or perhaps that day?

On the reverse side of the page it gets even more informative — and interesting. At the very top we see that the weather was fair and sunny and that exit doors and fire hydrants were examined at 9:20a.m., with three exit doors out of order; they were presumably repaired in time for the first showing at 2:15p.m.

The Gold Yuan was issued in August 1948 in response to the WWII hyperinflation, at the rate of 1 gold yuan = US$0.25. It was never actually backed by gold and hyperinflation continued.

Attendance: Who’s Going to the Flicks? 

More surprising, perhaps, was the attendance breakdown for the four shows, early to late:
Foreign Attendance Percentage: 2% 3% 5% 10%
Chinese Attendance Percentage: 98% 97% 95% 90%

Most of these English-language films were being seen by local Chinese. These figures may not, however, have been quite so skewed in the earlier years when there were far more foreigners in the city; by late 1948, with the deteriorating economic situation, many Westerners had given up and left Shanghai. Since foreigners never comprised even 4 percent of the total population, however, these figures were probably not widely in variance even in the early 1930-40s.

Equipment Report

The Equipment Report had five categories, Projection, Sound, Neon, Generators and Film. The first four were “O.K.” but the film was “slightly scratched & strained”. Interestingly, on every day for the whole month that exact wording appeared. Mr. H.C. Crawford, the House Manager, initialed on all of them, so these notations were obviously important in dealing with the films’ distributors. If this was not merely a negotiating ploy and all the films were indeed in that poor condition, it probably indicates that no new films were being imported at that late date and this is what they were left with.

The “Audience Reaction to Film” was “Good”. In examining previous days’ notations, this seems to be the middle category, the other two being either Excellent or Fair, with nothing lower than the latter.

The Temperature is noted, Inside and Outside: at 3:30p.m. 79 and 78, and at 10:30p.m. 79 and 76, and the Cooling Hours for the cinema totaled “2 hrs & 45 mins”. As for “Complaints: Report ALL [sic], whether Verbal or Written”, there were none. In fact, for the entire month of October there was not one complaint. Quite a feat for any theatre manager!

But even more interesting were the “Lost Articles FOUND” and “Lost Articles CLAIMED” – also none. And, unbelievably, throughout all that month’s reports there was never a single item either lost or found. It is simply not human nature for this large an audience never to leave anything behind in a cinema for a full 31 days. Probably the ushers, or perhaps fellow attendees, were scooping up anything left behind and the items never made it to the Lost and Found office.

Cinema Staff

We learn a lot about the frustrations of running a cinema by reading the large block noting “Staff Changes and the Staff Absentees”. Every single day there were a number out sick, which is not unexpected in that era in pestilential Shanghai. In reading these notations over a 31-day period it is obvious that, with the large numbers either out sick or on leave, it was necessary to have replacements on hand to keep cinemas functioning.

The employee listing is really illuminating: house managers (one foreign, one Chinese), asst. managers, supervisors (perhaps for personnel?), cashiers (who signed off on all these reports), “Captains” (duty unknown, all Chinese), interpreters, ushers and usherettes, door boys, film operators, ticket sellers, carpenters, electricians, fitters, messengers, watchmen, and coolies. The Grand and the Cathay were obviously sister-cinemas, as the staff was shifted back and forth between them to cover for absentees.

The employees were mostly Chinese, with a smattering of English and a few Russian names, usually the usherettes. There was a fairly high personnel turnover in the lower jobs. This probably meant that the wage scale was relatively low; having a work place that was both heated and air cooled – plus an occasional free pass or two? — could not have been such a bad work environment.

Cathay Theater (CH Gonda, 1931)

The Competition: Which Cinema’s Playing What? 

On the right of this page was a section called Competing Features with the names of Shanghai’s seven major cinemas: The Astor, Cathay, Carlton, Majestic, Metropol, Nanking, and Roxy. All but two always showed foreign films such as “The Dolly Sisters”, “San Antonio” and “Three Daring Daughters” in October. The Astor showed “The Soul of China” for the first half of the month, followed by Chinese films, and the Metropol only Chinese films (no names supplied). The distributors for all but these latter two were Hollywood’s four major studios: Twentieth Century Fox (2), Columbia, Warner Brothers and MGM (1 each).

Advertising Slides Shown Today

Finally, we get to Advertising Slides Shown Today. Appended to the report is a listing on tissue paper consisting of two pages containing the names of advertisers and status of their contracts. Their names represent a cross-section of Shanghai’s smaller businesses that were still functioning in 1948’s sharply declining commercial environment. They were about half foreign and half Chinese, advertising restaurants and cafes, small shops, photo studios, clothing, cigarettes, commodities, tailors, drug companies, and even “Great Bible Lectures”.

And how many slides were shown at each performance? “180 Free Slides, 21 Nett Slides.” That must have meant quite a wait before the audience got to the main feature — which was, by the way, introduced that day by the Overture: “Beer Barrel Polka”.

Not only a fascinating insight into life in the declining days of the Western presence in the city, this detailed documentation also reveals how one ran a cinema in old Shanghai.

copyright Tess Johnston

**************

Tess Johnston is a co-founder of Historic Shanghai, who, with her co-author Deke Erh, pioneered research into the western presence in old Shanghai. She is the author of over 25 books, including 15 on Western architecture and the expatriate experience in old China.