MANILA'S FIRST-RUN THEATERS IN THE 50s and 60s

Avenida Rizal circa 1960/

See: Señor Enrique's Wish You Were Here

Photo courtesy of University of Wisconsin - Madison Libraries

Lining the stretches of Avenida, Escolta and Quiapo during the glorious days of Philippine cinema in the 50s and 60s were movie houses, theaters, opera houses, music studios, movie production outfits and entertainment centers.

“The owners of these establishments tried to outdo one another by hiring the country’s best architects (National artists Juan Nakpil, Leandro Locin, etal) to design their buildings, which were constructed when Art Moderne and the earlier Art Deco architectural styles reigned.”

Most of these movie houses were exclusive homes of Hollywood movie production outfits. Ideal theater, for example, carried only MGM movies. Likewise, Avenue showed movies made by Paramount and Lyric, only movies by Warner Bros. Other first-run theaters like Capitol, Ever, Galaxy, Universal, Odeon, State, Roman Super Cinerama, and later Maxim and Miramar in late 60s were only showing Hollywood movies.

Tagalog movies then were assigned to only four theaters--- Life, Dalisay, Center and Globe. Life was the home of Sampaguita Pictures; Dalisay for LVN Pictures; Globe and Center for Premiere and other movie studios. A total of 10 screening days were allotted to a movie shown. A movie was shown only in one theater at a time, unlike today where a movie could be shown simultaneously in over 60 theaters.

See: Inquirer's "Preservation, Modernity come together in Manila"
See: Manila's Movie Theaters by Senor Enrique

Updated detailed location map of Manila's theaters/cinemas:
courtesy of our good friend Rod Samonte

It’s always been a delight and wondrous sight to see the wonderful theater logos everytime we browsed the newspapers’ movies sections. Hopefully, seeing these logos again could bring back memories of the golden years past.