Shanghai's Deluxe Deco Cinemas

Cinemas
Shanghai offered its movie fans movie palaces with such exotic names as: the Astor, the Capitol, the Carlton, the Cathay, the Crystal Palace, the Embassy, the Golden Gate, the Grand, the Metropole, the Ritz, the Roxy, the Star, the Strand and the Uptown.

These cinemas, built during the glittering heyday of Hollywood, showed foreign films, primarily American, as well as locally-made Chinese ones. Because of the high quality of the latter, Shanghai was sometimes called "Hollywood East".  In 1939 Columbia, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, United Artists, Universal Studios and Warner Brothers all had film publicity and distribution offices in Shanghai.

 
 The Paramount Ballroom/Theatre

Majestic Theatre

Many of these cinemas still serve Shanghai's film-goers. The exteriors have mostly been mutilated but as these pictures illustrate, some of the elegant Art Deco interiors, although the worse for wear, are still intact. Until recently the Majestic and Paramount Theatres shown here were the only two cinemas in all of Shanghai whose exteriors remained as originally designed. These pictures were taken over a year ago, however, and since that time the Paramount Theatre has been renovated beyond all recognition.