Palace Amusement Co (1921) - Kingston, Jamaica

The Company started prior to 1921 as Palace Wilcox Sanger, chaired by Ansell Hart and managed by Audley Morais. They operated a cinema on East Queen Street known as Rose Garden. In 1921, they sold shares in the company, reformed it as the Palace Amusement Co. (1921) Ltd. to finance the building of the Palace Cinema, which was partly open air and was silent; sound on film had not yet been developed. They operated other theatres in Kingston like Gaiety, Majestic and some out-of-town places like Morant Bay, Savannah-la-Mar, Spanish Town and Mandeville as cinema operators and motion picture distributors.

In 1946, the J. Arthur Rank Organization (JRO) purchased the controlling interest in Palace and merged it with Cinema Company of Jamaica, the owners of the Carib Cinema in Cross Roads, the  

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first A/C building in the English-speaking West Indies. In the forties, patrons wore suits when attending the cinema and staff wore white gloves.