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

A Logbook’s Insights into Shanghai Cinema Management

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 data is accurate, the image is the artist's impression. — 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.