Movie Palaces on Canadian Downtown Main Streets: Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver"
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Article "Movie Palaces on Canadian Downtown Main Streets: Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver" Paul S. Moore Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine, vol. 32, n° 2, 2004, p. 3-20. Pour citer cet article, utiliser l'information suivante : URI: http://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1015713ar DOI: 10.7202/1015713ar Note : les règles d'écriture des références bibliographiques peuvent varier selon les différents domaines du savoir. Ce document est protégé par la loi sur le droit d'auteur. L'utilisation des services d'Érudit (y compris la reproduction) est assujettie à sa politique d'utilisation que vous pouvez consulter à l'URI http://www.erudit.org/apropos/utilisation.html Érudit est un consortium interuniversitaire sans but lucratif composé de l'Université de Montréal, l'Université Laval et l'Université du Québec à Montréal. Il a pour mission la promotion et la valorisation de la recherche. Érudit offre des services d'édition numérique de documents scientifiques depuis 1998. Pour communiquer avec les responsables d'Érudit : [email protected] Document téléchargé le 7 March 2015 04:31 Movie Palaces on Canadian Downtown Main Streets: Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver Paul 5. Moore Abstract Understanding how the sign of the theatre marquee continues The emergence of movie palaces is traced for St. Catherine to be a meaningful way people imagine Canadian downtowns Street in Montreal, Yonge Street in Toronto, and Granville requires an examination of the prominence of first-run movie Street in Vancouver. Beginning in 1896, film shows were in• palaces in Canadian downtowns from the 1920s to the 1950s. cluded in a range of urban amusement places. When dedi• This review of the geography of film-going combines histories cated movie theatres opened by 1906, they were quickly of movie theatres and film distribution with discussions of the built throughout the city before the downtown "theatre cultural significance of consumption, amusement, and elec• districts" became well defined. Not until about 1920 were tricity in urban life. Here, the emergence of downtown movie first-run vaudeville-movie palaces at the top of a spatial palaces at the top of a spatial hierarchy of urban film-going is hierarchy of urban film-going, lasting into the 1950s. After outlined, followed by a consideration of the cultural relation of outlining the formation of movie palace film-going, the downtown to the everyday life of the city. Into the 1950s, down• paper notes how the downtown theatres were next to each town marquees and theatre signs became taller and brighter, city's major department store. A theoretical analysis of reflecting their symbolic centrality, even as their economic how amusement and consumption make "being downtown" importance waned. As the conclusion considers the decline of significant in everyday urban life follows. A review of the movie palaces, the implicit context is thus the changing relation social uses of electric lighting and urban amusements of downtown to urban life. Although previous work on the social finds that movie palace marquees become a symbol for geography of film-going has taken up the tension between con• the organization of downtown crowds and consumers into centration downtown and expansion in the suburbs, it has not attentive mass audiences. A brief account of the decline of accounted for the Canadian situation, especially the nationwide the movie palace, from the 1970s to 2000, concludes by re• near-monopoly of one company, Famous Players, from 1923 viewing the outcomes of replacement by multiplex theatres, to 1941. Canadian film histories have, in turn, documented the demolition, or preservation. dominance of Famous Players without considering the social context implied by where and when movie theatres were built. Résumé The association of cinema-going with downtown's main street Les rues Sainte-Catherine à Montréal, Yonge à Toronto et was neither immediate nor obvious when cinema first entered Granville à Vancouver accueillent les premières salles de into the modem mixture of consumption and amusement in cinéma. À partir de 1896, les films sont présentés dans des Canadian cities. The first decade of film shows, 1896 to 1906, lieux de divertissement variés. Lorsque les salles consa• occurred in many places as a peripheral part of pre-existing crées au cinéma apparaissent en 1906, elles sont édifiées spaces, such as suburban amusement parks, exhibition çà et là, avant la délimitation nette au centre-ville d'un fairgrounds, and theatre variety shows. Even as early movie quartier réservé au cinéma. C'est vers 1920 que les théâ• theatres provided a space more prominently showcasing film tres de variétés, avec leurs primeurs cinématographiques, after 1906, they were situated in neighbourhoods throughout occupent une place prédominante quant à la fréquentation Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, without clearly combining du cinéma en milieu urbain, position qu'ils conservent jus• cinema with vaudeville in large "palace" theatres downtown. que dans les années 1950. Après avoir exposé brièvement Movie-going and downtown only became more systematically la manière dont a pris forme la fréquentation des salles and symbolically connected after the First World War, when the de cinéma, l'article traite de la proximité entre les salles film industry became a big business, vertically integrated from du centre-ville et le plus grand magasin de chaque ville. production to theatrical exhibition including vaudeville com• Vient ensuite une analyse théorique portant sur la manière panies, based on a rationalized distribution hierarchy of "runs" dont le divertissement et la consommation donnent un sens and "zones," where downtown movie palaces commanded the au fait d'être au « cœur de la ville » dans le quotidien en highest prices and most recent films. milieu urbain. Les marquises des salles de cinéma renou• vellent l'utilisation sociale de l'éclairage électrique et du The Emergence of the Movie Palace divertissement urbain, et deviennent ainsi un symbole de In the largest Canadian cities, movie palaces on downtown's l'organisation des foules et des consommateurs du centre- main street dominated film-going from about 1920 into the ville en grand public attentif. La conclusion offre un bref 1950s, perhaps because one company, Famous Players, oper• exposé du déclin des salles de cinéma, des années 1970 à ated almost all of them. During these decades when film was l'année 2000, et présente les conséquences de leur rempla• a mass medium, downtown movie palaces were the prestige cement par les complexes cinématographiques, soit leur locations, both for the audience when considering where to démolition ou leur préservation. go out, and for the industry when setting prices and collecting profits. However, the importance of downtown palaces was not immediate when film projection began in Canada. The con• glomerated organization of theatre spaces and film exhibition took at least a decade to emerge after the first nickelodeons opened and not until after movie houses were built throughout 3 Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire Vol XXXII, No. 2 (Spring 2004 printemps) Movie Palaces on Canadian Downtown Streets Figure 1: Vancouver's Granville Street, circa 1936, looking north from Sniithe the cities of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, and even in their film-going in L.A." In comparison to the U.S. experience, film- suburbs. going in the largest Canadian cities of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver was more clearly focused on the movie palaces The history of movie-palace building differs from city to city, along the main downtown shopping street of each city. especially among the larger metropolitan centres.' For example, in the late 1920s, Loew's movie palaces in Brooklyn, Queen's, Beginning around 1906, throughout North America in small the Bronx, and New Jersey were built larger than most of the towns and big cities alike, the moving picture theatre became Times Square theatres in New York City, although film pre• a fixture of the retail mix of shops along downtown and neigh• miere showings and the highest prices remained to distinguish bourhood main streets. Cinema had already existed for a Manhattan's central role.2 In Chicago, the suburban movie decade as a subordinate part of other amusements, as just one palaces of the Balaban and Katz chain, several built before of the many attractions available at variety theatres, amusement their downtown Chicago palace, allowed this regional chain to parks, and exhibition grounds. Three of the earliest public pro• dominate film-going in the city through dogmatically rational jections of film in Canada illustrate how cinema was included management, even though they did not initially have access in various amusement spaces. In what is now accepted as the to the top Hollywood films.3 Downtown movie palaces in Los first film show in Canada, Louis Minier presented films using the Angeles were never built as large as theatres in other cities, and Lumière Cinématographe as part of the variety bill at Montreal's 5 the prominence of Hollywood theatres like Grauman's Chinese Palace theatre on St. Lawrence Street on June 27, 1896. make it debatable how and when downtown was important to Shortly after, in Ottawa's West End Park on July 21, 1896, films 4 Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine Vol. XXXII, No. 2 (Spring 2004 printemps) Movie Palaces on Canadian Downtown Streets Figure 2: Montreal's theatre district emerged west along St. Catherine Street from Bennett's, the Princess, and Imperial playhouses, and each soon became a cinema itself. From 1920 into the 1970s, there were about nine cinemas downtown, a maximum often after the Capitol and Allen opened, but before the Tivoli closed. Although stable in number, names changed with renovations. Multi-screen theatres replaced older cinemas in the 1980s, and the Paramount in 1999 became the largest ever on the strip. were shown using the Vitascope, licensed from Edison by local these early film projections in Canada shows that the character entrepreneurs Andrew and George Holland.6 On August 31, Ed of cinema was initially diverse and its niche in urban culture Houghton brought the Edison Vitascope to Toronto, including it unformulated.