Tribute to the Metropole

By Godfrey Chin On In Daily Features |
The Metropole cinema in 1938, when it first opened. It showed The Merry Widow starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette Macdonald, as can be seen from the marquee. (Photo courtesy of the Guyana Heritage Museum, Meten-Meer-Zorg)
The Metropole cinema in 1938, when it first opened. It showed The Merry Widow starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette Macdonald, as can be seen from the marquee. (Photo courtesy of the Guyana Heritage Museum, Meten-Meer-Zorg)

On Tuesday, Septem-ber 7, 2004, my favourite cinema, the Metropole, in Georgetown was destroyed by fire. This is the fourth cinema to be lost in this fashion: the Gaiety by the Brickdam Cathedral in 1926; the Doren (refurbished Rialto) in the late sixties(?) and Ho-A-Yun’s Gaiety in New Amsterdam off the Ferry Stelling.

I hasten to record my memories of the Metropole, purely because of the social impact the cinema and movies had on the entertainment and the maturation of every Guyanese at home or abroad  yesteryear.

The Metropole would be in the same class as the Empire on Middle St – a similar design, and both built in the mid-thirties before