North Bridge Road - Jubilee Theatre (Images from the Past)

Interestingly you can see that the two photos of Jubilee Theatre (光华戏院) located at 340 North Bridge Road close to the junction of Bras Basah from the Harrison Forman collection were not taken on the same day, although on a quick glance one might think so. The biggest give away was of the course the billboards showing what's screening are obviously different. Fortunately from the newspaper archives i can estimate that the second photo was taken around August to September 1941 from the billboard that is showing Confucius. (see advertorial below).

 

Jubilee Theatre
 (source: Harrison Forman Collection, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries)

Jubilee Theatre
 (source: Harrison Forman Collection, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries)

28 August 1941 

In 1966, the cinema suspended operations after its employees went on strike. Hong Kong film magnate , Mr. Kwan Chee Kin, managing director of Kin Shin Film Company flew in from Hong Kong and bought the Jubilee Theatre and the land on which it stands in North Bridge Road for $1.465 million in a 19 minute public auction. The property with an area of 18,826 sq ft previously belonged to Malaya, Hong Kong Theatres Ltd before it was auctioned off. 6 years later in 28th June 1972 it was once again put out for auction. 

1966 auction

1972 auction

source: Lee Kip Lin Collection, PictureSG

Location of Jubilee Theatre at North Bridge Road 

Goodbye Jubilee Theatre 

In 1982, there was an announced that the Jubilee Theatre was offered by the Government to the Raffles Hotel owners as land incentive to preserve this historic landmark as part of Raffles Hotel extension plans. I am not sure how it panned out but in 1988, Raffles Hotels owners won a site tender for development of the 10,066 sq-m site next to Raffles Hotel. URA awarded the site ot Raffles Centre (Private) Ltd and Raffles Hotel Ltd for $30 million. The successful tender design by Raffles called for the tearing down of the old Jubilee Theatre and Medical Hall along North Bridge Road. Faux-historic Jubilee Hall and the shopping arcade was the outcome of that expansion. Jubilee Hall was a theatre with 33 plush read seats on the third story and some of the sold out shows in the early 2000 included sold out shows by Wild Rice, including Emily of Emerald Hill (2000), the first staging of Boeing Boeing in 2002 (i happen to watch this one !), Animal Farm (2002) , Aladdin (2004).

URA Tendered site 1988

See also: Images from the Past - North Bridge Road after a Japanese air raid

[research on-going, will add when i have more information] 

References

Harrison Forman Collection of the American Geographical Society Library of the University Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries
NewspaperSG. (website). National Library Board, Singapore.

About Harrison Forman and his Collection

Harrison Forman (1904-1978) was an American photographer and journalist. He wrote for The New York Times and National Geographic. During World War II he reported from China and interviewed Mao Zedong. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in Oriental Philosophy. His collection of diaries and fifty thousand photographs are now at American Geographical Society Library at University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. The Harrison Forman Photo Collection contains over 3,800 prints and over 300 negatives. This is a fraction of the total Forman collection, sized at 98,000 images, most of which are in 35mm slide format. While the geographical coverage between the slides and photo collections is similar, the photo collection contains Forman’s early work including his Tibet imagery, the Sino-Japanese War, Chinese Civil War, the Henan Famine, and the Blitzkrieg of Poland.