Introduction

Gone are the days when the box office was manually operated: the ticketing clerk needed to handle everything from marking seat, stamping ticket and handling payment to balancing the till at the end of the day. A long queue would often form 30 minutes before the start of a show and the clerk needed to clear the queue at lightning speed. Such ticket buying experience forms one of our collective memories of the old movie theatre. The Archive specially selected box office artefacts donated by Silver Theatre, Yaumati Theatre and Kwun Chung Theatre – all testaments to the golden age of old movie theatres.