Continuing with the history of the entertainment venues on Calle Floridablanca in Barcelona, ??today we will focus on Cine Bohemia – Gran Cine Bohemia and Cine Florida.
The owners of the Modernist Bohemia, seeing the acceptance that the new cinematograph entertainment is having, decide to prepare an area of ??the land to build a barracks in which they install the Bohemia Cinema, inaugurating it on Monday, March 22, 1909.
They appear in an advertisement in La Vanguardia in which they only comment on the projection of a series of first-run films and, later, they went on to announce the programming by the meter, which was supposed to be the longer the film, the better it had to be.
Given the success, the businessmen decided to carry out a comprehensive reform, to convert the old Cine Bohemia into the elegant and conditioned Gran Cine Bohemia, in which, apart from the audience room, there is a large lobby to avoid crowds of people at the entry and exit of sessions. They built an external projection booth, preventing the operator from having to be located at the end of the room in full view of the public.
The venue was inaugurated on Sunday, April 3 with a series of films, such as Raised and tutor, Don Risadir has the lonely, Sewing machine Calrai municipal, Metallurgical establishments and others of real success.
Sin pena ni gloria continues its programming and during the civil war, after being intervened by the CNT/FAI, it began to program with the same as the Padró cinema, until at the end of 1938, when it closed, like most shows.
With the end of the war and after repairing the major damage, it resumed its programming again, on Saturday, December 23, 1939, with the screening of Miguel Strogoff, Morena clara, Drawings and Documentary.
It began its last stage, which would continue to animate the billboard until May 17, 1942, the date on which it closed its doors, projecting María Estuardo, La Indómita, Noticiario and documentary.
It opened its doors on July 11, 1943. Its owner Luis Cabezas Puzo had contacted the architect Pere Ricart to carry out a comprehensive reform of the interior of the old building of the Cine Bohemia.
Ricart carried out a comprehensive reform of the entire interior to correct the many damages suffered during the period of the civil war, carrying out a new distribution.
It replaced the old seats with much more comfortable ones, achieving a capacity of 1,517 spectators. He removed the old cinematographic equipment and installed the latest projection and sound models from the accredited Supersond brand.
For its inauguration, Luis Cabezas held a private session dedicated to the press, critics and friends on Thursday, September 16, 1943, showing: End of the day, performed by Louis Jouvet and Madeleine Ozeray and Recuerdo de una noche, starring Bárbara Stanwyck, Fred McMurray. Once the program finished, all the guests were presented with a lunch by Luis Cabezas.
The following day in the afternoon the public inauguration of the new cinema was held with the projection of the films released the day before.
In 1954, he changed the screen by installing a Miracle Mirror, which, according to experts, improved vision thanks to its metallic surface, both panoramic and in relief, and produced Cinemascope effects by involving the viewer in the action.
In 1955 it was the Cervantes, Alondra, Íntimo, Proyecciones and Mundial cinemas. On December 29, 1957, the Montecarlo Company announced that the Florida and Chile cinemas had started the new modality of “following the premiere”, with an exclusive character in Barcelona and expanded its circuit with the annexation of the Aristos cinema which, from the following Monday, they would project: Holidays in Italy and Blood on the street.
On Sunday, May 11, 1958, he again announced a new schedule for the following Monday, but this time the traveling companions were: Aristos, Cervantes, Projections and Chile and the films were: Ellos y Ellas, with Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra and Vivian Blaine; and The Valley of the Maoris. In June 1959, he had already changed his travel friends and was programming together with the Palacio del Cinema Mambo, by Silvana Mangano and Vittorio Gassman, and El Capitán Kopenick.
On Saturday, November 11, 1961, in the morning, a first-aid course was held by Dr. Rius Badía dedicated to preparing the Armed Police.
On March 26, 1962, he was programming Music in the Blood and Youth outdoors with the Atenas and Ramblas cinemas. On November 5 of the same year, its programming union had changed again, this time it was with the cinemas, Eden and ABC Cinema, programming The Hill of Steel Devils and Natalia, Secret Agent.
The end of the cinema came on Sunday, May 10, 1964, with the screening of The Power of the Mafia and The Black Duke. It closed its doors to build a new building to install the second Cinerama in the city.
One of the projection operators, Pere Saflent Suchet, who had started working in 1935, in an interview at the end of 1988, on the occasion of his retirement, commented: “I had in my hands the first copy of Gone with the Wind, It was given to me by the son of the United States consul in Barcelona”.
He also commented that he had begun his career as an operator in 1929 at the Catalunya theater in Poblenou and that the Florida cinema could have been his, when one day after the war he met the owner of the cinema in the Kursaal bar and he told him He said, “I’ll sell you the Bohemia.” And I answered: “Are you right in the head?” And he answered me: “Yes, perfectly.” “And how much do you want?”, “I’ll give it to you for fifteen thousand pesetas.” I started looking for them like crazy, but, logically, nobody lent them to me.
While the Gran Price would replace the Modernist Bohemia, the Florida cinema and, later, the Florida Cinerama, replaced the primitive Bohemia Cinema.