A retrospective of the Chalerm Sin - Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand

Over the past few weeks I've had the good fortune of corresponding with two American veterans, Gene Ponce and Randy Roberts, who where stationed in Thailand during the Vietnam/American War. Gene Ponce was an Engines and Propeller Systems technician, working on EC 121R Constellation Recon aircraft at the Korat air-base from 1970-71. From 1971-72 he was stationed at Ubon, where he worked on AC 130/E Spectre Gunships.

Randy Roberts was stationed at Ubon from 1969-1970, serving as an F4 Radar technician and Airman 1st Class.

Gene and Randy have each amassed collections of photos taken in Thailand by American soldiers based here during the war years. Among the images are a hand full of old theater depictions. The two veterans have very kindly given me permission to use them on the SEA Theater Project, where I'll be posting them over the course of the next few weeks.

The most well-documented of the theaters is the Chalerm Sin in downtown Ubon. Below are a series of shots depicting the old classic in it's various appearances though the years.

I have no date for when the Chalerm Sin was built, but I'm guessing it was no later than the 1950's. Noting location at the first major intersection into the city, with a public works fountain forming a traffic circle in front of it, there's a chance that it's from the era of Phibun Songkram, Thailand's fascist-leaning military dictator from 1938-1944 and again from 1948-1957. Prime Minister Phibun was a fan of public works projects and a few of the theaters I've come across during this research were commissioned by his government. Phibul project or not, the Chalerm Sin in it's original guise was a nice looking theater, with an angular, concave facade looking out from its street corner domain.

The above photo was taken by Warren Lieberman, a US Army engineer based in Warin Chamrap from 1965-66 (photo courtesy of Gene Ponce)

Color invigorates the above photo, as security policeman Edward F. Roberts poses in front of the Chalerm Sin Theater sometime in 1965-66. This and the photo above are the only two I've seen depicting the theater's original facade. Notice the free-standing sign letters were of a smaller make than they were later on. (Photo courtesy of Edward F. Roberts).

By the time the above photo was taken, some architectural adjustments had been made to the theater’s façade. Most strikingly, a beige and white, metal paneled exterior wall was added to shield the building from direct sun-light – a heat-reducing feature common on Thai buildings constructed in the 1960’s and 70’s. In some cases these fixtures visually enhance the structures they adorn, with horizontal and vertical lines criss-crossing in various patterns. In other instances they ruin a good looking building. As for the Chalerm Sin, I think it was a downgrade from the original look, but not too shabby, either. This photo was probably taken around 1967-68 judging by the movie playing – “The Way West” starring Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum. Though foreign made movies in Thailand didn't necessarily screen the same year they were made, so it could have been later. (Photo courtesy of Gene Ponce).

Here’s the Chalerm Sin in its next new look, in a photo taken by Jim Foanio, circa 1971. A new set of bigger, bolder free-standing letters have replaced the smaller ones. “70 mm Projection System,” is announced in the sign below the name. Since the advent of multiplex theaters in the 1980’s, 70mm movie projection has largely become a thing of the past, much like the larger stand-alone theaters that screened them. (Photo courtesy of Gene Ponce).

The following three photos were taken by Gene Ponce himself circa 1971-72.

I love this picture!

Happy New Year 1972

Randy remembers the Chalerm Sin Theater as follows:

"General seating was on the main floor. The balcony was a little pricier and mostly used by GIs, as I recall, with female companions. But the premier seating was in the enclosed air-conditioned room on the balcony. This had the original sound and dialogue. It may have had ear phones for the GIs and Thai piped in [over speakers], I can't recall. Regardless, this was the only place to hear the original English sound track. Otherwise, the mostly-Chinese films shown were subbed and dubbed. English language films were dubbed for the rest of the theater. Two voices, one male and one female, did it all. You appreciate what a terse language English is when the dialogue continues as John Wayne rides off on his horse, or the horse is pictured as one voice or another continues, or the faraway hills echo with several lines of dialogue between scenes. Not to mention the timing between two or more characters. That could be a blast in itself. Especially if you'd already seen the flick. Anyway, it was an interesting time. Always fun at the movies! Lots of Chinese/Oriental swash- buckling stuff. Dialogue was unnecessary for those movies. Thai subtitles, Chinese dialogue, or Thai dubbing. It was crazy for us GIs used to MGM!!!

Here's the Chalerm Sin Theater as it looks now. The building is home to a Bata shoe store and features none of its former architectural pomp. What a dull way to go out! (Both photos courtesy of Gene Ponce).

The Yasothon Pappayon - Yasothon, Thailand

Wise are the old when they're not senile. Without them we'd have to depend solely on the young, who don't care much for things that are old. Finding this little theater was made possible by an older gentleman with his faculties as full as the young are full of shite. Prior to him, a dozen questioned people still in the prime of life could offer no clues, only misinformation about a cinema scene that's slipped through the cracks of memory. Drenched behind the ears, those young 'uns are. And let me tell ya, it takes one to know one. Low and behold, on the dingier side of town, stands about the most unassuming theater that I've come across to date - the Yasothon Pappayon.

The Yasothon Pappayon - an old neighborhood theater

My keen minded friend dated the old theater to the early 1960's, when as a strapping lad he himself would cram in with hundreds of his Yasothonian kin to catch the latest moving picture. 16 mm with live dubbing, in those days. These days it's a private residence, and a fading memory in the town it's named for.

Fading name

Adding to the Yasothon Pappayon's worn mystique is the neighborhood it's in. This is the older part of town, two-thirds wooden shack, looking on the verge of collapse, to one-third sino-colonial shop house. It's the section of the city that was born from riparian trade, a near extinct means of commerce which, in Isan, was once oriented to the east, towards the Mekong and the domain of the Lao. Before roads and trains redirected Isan's economy towards Bangkok, river trade along the west-to-east-flowing Chi and Mun rivers meant that the region's cultural affinity was stronger with the Lao principalities than with the Thai capitol. In more recent times, Bangkok has devoured the resources of Isan without giving much in return besides some nationalist rhetoric.

And that, in a nutshell, is my own abridged take on the origins of the Bangkok bloodshed this past weekend; grievances which go back much farther than the overthrow of Thaksin and his cronies. Take it or leave it.

Streetscape perspective

Peddicab driver stopped for a moment in front of the old Yasothon Pappayon to pick some herbs from a nearby potted plant.

A Peep Presentation of The Chalermphan (AKA Chicago) Theater - Bangkok, Thailand

Thanks to the foresight and due diligence of Mr. Peep, we are once again privy to a piece of Bangkok movie theater history which is no more. Today's feature stood on Pracharat Road Soi 2, in Bangkok's Bang Sue neighborhood. The Chalermphan Theater opened in 1968, at the height of Thailand's movie theater construction boom. From the start it was a second-run theater, showing movies which had already come and gone through the downtown cinema palaces, though with a seating capacity of 1,032, the Chalermphan must have been fairly palatial, itself. Huge, if nothing else.

Photo of the Chalermphan/Chicago Theater while still in operation

A rendezvous with the wrecking crew

At some point the Chalermphan was purchased by the Pyramid (Apex) Theater Company and had its name Anglicized (or Americanized) to "Chicago," a naming practice the theater magnate was apparently quite fond of. Besides movie exhibition, you see, Apex also used to be one of Bangkok's largest movie distributors. By buying up many of the second-run theaters around the city, Apex could then circulate its film stock without having to divide the profits with independent owners.

Decapitated

The Chalermphan/Chicago Theater operated until 2000. It crossed the River Styx in 2005.

The Charoen Nakorn Theater - Korat, Thailand

I blame it on the street beasts, those alley-dwelling howlers with their mange and their bilious notions of territory. The mongrels! Without them I'd have spent much more time exploring the dilapidated depths of the Charoen Nakorn Theater and its environs. Dispensing with angry street dogs is not my forte, however. Flight over fight is my favored option, though a pocket full of stones can come in handy at times. too. Ah, street dogs! It's a shame that I wasn't welcomed, because the Charoen Nakorn had some big-80's appeal worthy of closer inspection.

A banner covers the entrance sign to the Charoen Nakorn Theater. It's now a multi-use entertainment center featuring karaoke, snooker, Muay Thai and a restaurant, but no movie theater.

Like many of the more ambitious movie theater designs of the 1970's and 80's, the Charoen Nakorn Theater was devised as the anchor business to a fairly extensive commercial/residential plaza. Ambitious it was! The surrounding plaza contains several different thoroughfares, each one densely packed with rows of commercial-front row houses, three stories tall. Most of them are vacant today, giving it a dead zone feel even during day-light hours.

Architecturally, the entire complex looks like a 1980's vision of the future. The surrounding row houses typify the times by loosely resembling giant arcade game consoles - Pac-Man for Paul Bunyan and Tron for the 40 Foot Woman. But this future was a failed one, as are similar models throughout the country. Who would have thought that the 1980's would have been so prosperous for Thailand, and that relaxed policy on auto imports would drive private car sales through the roof? Sure, the Charoen Nakorn is just off the Mittraphap Highway, but a lack of secure parking made it lose favor to the car-friendly shopping malls that opened later. After succumbing to the profits of pornography for a few years, it finally shut down in the the early 2000's.

In the foreground, Five-Star Network's traveling cinema truck is parked down the alley, with the Charoen Nakorn Theater at the far end. The local movie distribution company keeps its offices in Charoen Nakorn plaza.

Theater at the end of a dog-infested alley

Snarling dogs kept me from getting much closer to the Charoen Nakorn than depicted above, but as luck would have it, Five-Star Network has their offices in the exact same plaza, providing me the opportunity to meet to their Assistant Director. Five-Star Network is Isan's biggest movie distributor, but not the only one - a fact which differs from the other regions of the country, each of which is presided over by a single distributor (the others in Isan are Nevada and Mongkol Major). Besides listing all of Isan's operating stand-alone theaters for me, Five-Star's Assistant Director helped clarify a few things about the distribution system in Thailand.

The three Isan distributors seem to practice a pretty fair revenue-sharing policy with the theaters they supply. They do not charge a fixed rate for the films they rent out to theaters, but rather split the revenue down the middle with the theater owners. In some cases, that probably hurts the distributors. For instance, if a small-market theater in a far-out district only has 20 customers for a two day film allotment, it's probable that the transportation costs of getting the reels to and from the theater out-weigh the revenue. Distributors take a loss, but they allow the little guys to stay in business by continuing their services. How do they make a profit then? Two ways! First, their bread and butter comes from running their own movie theaters. All the profits they collect from their own venues are theirs to keep. No need to share it with anybody except their employees. Five-Star Network makes the most of that by running a three-screen multiplex in Nong Khai and a six-screener in Korat.

Second, there are a few big shopping mall-based chains in Isan, like Major, EGV and SF, which have control over the larger movie-going markets. They provide the distributors with a steady stream of revenue. Five-Star has worked out partnerships with EGV in Korat and Major in Udon to ensure their exclusive distribution rights to those heavyweights, both of which are under the same corporate ownership. In addition, Five-Star Network has an open-air movie division which contributes yet another revenue stream.

From what I've been able to gather, distributors in other regions of the country are much tougher towards the little guys than in Isan. Northern Thailand's distributor, for example - Thana - charges a flat fee of 1000 baht every time they rent a film to a theater. So if the theater only makes 500 baht in revenue, they have to give that plus an additional 500 hundred baht from their own pocket to the distributor. In the North, there's not a single stand-alone theater that's not owned by Thana left in operation because of this nickle and dime policy. In the words of one Isan theater owner, "that's just bad business, all around."

For those remaining independent theater owners in Isan, local distributors genuinely seem to have their interests' in mind. Maybe not as much as the big money multiplexes, but more so than anywhere else in the country. That's one reason why in smaller towns like Pak Chong and Det Udom you can still see a movie on the silver screen.

Update from the Capitol [Cinema]

Somebody has a sense of history, apparently. On a recent trip to Bangkok I happened to walk past Klong Thomland Market, former home of the Capitol Cinema, and to my pleasant surprise found a new sign bolted to the building's facade. "Capitol Plaza" its now called, an homage to its glory days as the Capitol Cinema. This tickled me in a fundamentally nerdy way, and caused a slightly touched grin to stretch across my mug.

New signage harkens back its days as the Capitol Cinema

Old sign with the name Klong Thomland

Built sometime in the 1930's, the Capitol Cinema was once a beloved movie institution in Bangkok's Chinatown. In the years surrounding World War Two, it served as one of the city's finest first-run theaters. About 10 years ago it was converted into an electronics retail center called Klong Thomland. Now it at least has its original name back.

The Chalerm P. Theater - Pak Chong, Korat, Thailand

The best part of doing this work in Isan is the relatively high rate of operating stand-alone theaters found throughout. Operationalism makes this task all the more rewarding. From a photography perspective, shooting an operating movie theater versus a closed one is the difference between life and death. On a personal note, working stand-alones symbolize the world still having a bit of soul left. But even more to the point, they provide chances for me to do my little project and take in a movie the traditional way at the same time.

The lion's share of Thailand's operating stand-alone theaters are in Isan, with Pak Chong's Chalerm P. Theater among them.

Chalerm P. Theater with ad truck parked in front

Small and inviting

It was noon when I arrived at the Chalerm P. Theater, and Pak Chong's narrow streets were already sufficiently cooked. Within the little theater's lobby, brightly painted signs and coming attraction posters welcomed sun weary travelers to a shady refuge. The Isan sun is not a joking matter this time of year. It's best avoided, if possible.

3 showings per day

Lobby

A theater employee paints over an old movie poster, in preparation for a new one

Small town theaters like the Chalerm P. are only given short runs on most of the movies they show. For instance, in the above photo, Jackie Chan's latest "Little Big Soldier" is allotted only two days by the distribution company. A minimal amount of regular customers make a longer showing period superfluous. It's more practical for distributors to get the film reels back and then resell them to traveling theater companies for out-door showings and private affairs.

Sun drying the latest hand painted sings

Father and son at the ticket booth

Ticket seller

Nui, the ladyboy ticket-taker, and her dog

In years gone by, almost every district in all of Thailand could boast of at least one silver screen. Not so anymore. Movie-going is now a luxury largely reserved for people in the provincial capitols, if they're so fortunate. But Pak Chong's Chalerm P. Theater hangs on, one of the Last of the Mohicans of small town movie theaters.

Ads and atriums

Theater interior

Row E

Here's some fun facts about the Chalerm P. Theater. It opened 1957, the same year that the Mittraphap Highway linking Isan with central Thailand opened. Originally it was a Likay (Thai opera) theater, but switched over to showing film by the early 1960's. At 53 years old, it is very likely that it's the oldest operating movie theater in the country, but that is not confirmed. Either way, it would be nice if the Chalerm P. Theater were able to stay in business for many years to come.

The Sala Phaya Yen - Pak Chong, Korat, Thailand

Situated at the southwesterly tip of Korat province, Pak Chong district has the unofficial distinction of being the unofficial entrance to Isan. The name Pak Chong has its roots in the early twentieth century, during construction of the railroad's Isan branch. Two nearby mountains had channels blasted through them to make way for the train line and the new economic opportunities it would bring. Pak Chong, or "mouth of the channel,"was thus dubbed so in honor of this infrastructural achievement. As time passed and the town grew, it became the domain of two stand-alone movie theaters, the latter or which was the Sala Phaya Yen.

The etymology of the name Sala Phaya Yen can be attributed to the nearby Dong Phaya Yen mountain range, which transects Khao Yai Nation Park and comprises a portion of Pak Chong district. In prior times much of this area was itself known as Dong Phaya Fai, or "Jungle of the Fire Lord," a malarial swath of forest which killed most travelers who dared to venture through it. Subsequent deforestation helped eliminate malarial mosquitoes and make parts of the region suitable for settlement, so the area was renamed Dong Phaya Yen, or "Jungle of the Cool Lord," implying a taming of the wilds. "Sala" translates to pavilion or public rest place. Sala Phaya Yen then means "pavilion of the cool lord." Nice name for a movie theater!

Lifeless lobby, alive with color

The sign posted on the door explicitly announces that "meetballs, smoothies and food are absolutely forbidden to be brought into the theater." It goes on to state that there is a "mid-night screening when available."

Chinese characters adorn the facade, while a pigeon oversees its domain.

By far Pak Chong's most noteworthy feature is that it contains a portion of Khao Yai Nation Park - the first national park to get established in Thailand and by all accounts a breathtaking example of what the Thai countryside was like before 90 percent of its forests were cut down. But not to be completely overshadowed by natural wonders, Pak Chong also had two movie theaters, giving it the balanced combination of healthy environment and escapism.

Built only about 30 years ago, the Sala Phaya Yen was the newer of the two. My next post will feature Pak Chong's older and still operating theater. So stay tuned for that excitement.

The Sala Phaya Yen closed down 4 or 5 years ago.