No LAPERAL Building Yet (913x591)Session Rd., 1940s.
Session Road in the foreground overlooking Burnham Park, 1940s. At the left background, you can discern the old Cariño houses along Kisad Road, which were built on a place called Apdi by the Ibalois. Wow, walang Laperal Building! It seems like that building was around forever.
 | Hello, is that the old Session Theater? |
 |  Wasn't Pines Theater the coldest? Nasa lobby ka pa lang, you could already feel it. And that scent coming from somewhere inside...a mix of pine scent and toilet deodorant, if memory serves. Memorable movies at Pines Theater: Ten Commandments, Sound of Music, most major films of the period. Plaza Theater: Rank Organisation British war films (mostly about desert warfare), Sylvana Mangano heart-thumpers, Tagalog dramas, Zatoichi, Horror of Dracula, soft porn (Tokyo Honeymoon, Underwater Romance). Aurora Theater: chipipay Japanese scifi (Mysterians et al.); Session Theater: Westerns. War films (The Fighting Sullivans, Anchors Away). When we were in St. Louis Grade School in the early 50s -- grade two or three kami noon -- tatambay kami sa kanto ng Session Road where there was grassy space and some war ruins (future site of Skyworld). Mag-aabang kami ng adult moviegoers at sasabayan namin pagpasok sa Session theater, because children accompanied by adults went in free. After some time, nabuwisit na ang mga employees ni Nassr at nakahalata nang iba-iba ang "kamag-anak" na kasabay namin sa panonood, and we were banned. |
 | i remember session theater from the very first 007 movie i watched, 'from russia with love' with - of course - the original mr. bond, sean connery. at the old SLU girls' high, which overlooked the theater, we would smell garlic peanuts roasted fresh from a kiosk at the theater entrance. the scent would send us on a dizzyingly dangerous scramble down the baguio cathedral steps to get a smaller-than-a-cigarette-pack 'supot' of peanuts for 10 centavos. - jo (ed's cousin) |
| Jo, that small supot of garlic-enhanced peanuts now sells for at least 5 pesos--vended in baskets carried by tinderos who climb into buses on Manila's roads or on the expressway to Baguio...incidentally, we Louisians used to know the exact number of steps from Cathedral to Session Road -- 120 or something. Peanuts lang ang akyat-baba noon, even taking two or three steps with one bound, the whole distance within minutes kahit paakyat. I don't think I can do it now in less than half an hour. And i remember that grassy cliff overlooking Session Road, from where, on the Cathedral grounds, we had a panoramic view of Baguio! (The whole previous cliffside is now occupied by the Puso ng Baguio building, even obscuring the cathedral steps.) Doon kami tumatambay bago mag-bell sa boys elementary school, "spotting" the girls on the other side of St. Louis School. Can you begin to imagine the place as it looked like in the 1940s, before we came up to Baguio, or even before the war? What vistas to behold, what a skyline, what purer air there must have been... |
 | The first movie I ever watched in a theatre was in Session Theatre. We went with my brother and sisters, together with our cousins, we would fit into our old Chevrolet Carry-All, to watch-- guess what -- a Beatles movie. I was just 5 or 6 years old then and the memory is kinda fuzzy. I think the movie was "Help" if I remember right. |
Comment deleted at the request of the author.
| edmar67 wrote on May 23, edited on May 23 I failed to mention the cheapest cinema in Baguio once upon a time and forever: Patria de Baguio! It was actually the small dark hall inside this building at the top of Session Road, below the Cathedral, managed by the CICM order. The cinema consisted of this small space and a white screen that rolled down for special showings of cartoons and religious or "miracle" films like "Marcelino Pan Y Vino". Entrance fee was 19 centavos. The one-centavo-less-twenty was for tax exemption purposes, or so someone averred. For regular showings---such as the original "Peter Pan"--I think there was a handful of batibot chairs (wrought-iron back and wooden seat), but most of the time we had to content ourselves with seating on our haunches and suffering a stiff neck from looking up at the screen. Patria, then run by the CICM, had a posted notice of FILM CLASSIFICATION as one entered the building: films showing in other Baguio cinemas were rated according to degree of sinfulness, with the "worst" of the lot being marked as CENSORED. (By whom, was never made clear. Perhaps by some benighted Belgian brother?) Being God- and CICM-fearing, I missed many of the classics of my generation, all because of that dreaded C-word. |
| Oooww...can't believe that. That's a real chunk of Baguio history that's never been heard of before. Thanks for that. |
 | arfbee wrote on Jul 31, edited on Jul 31  Wasn't Pines Theater the coldest? Nasa lobby ka pa lang, you could already feel it. And that scent coming from somewhere inside...a mix of pine scent and toilet deodorant, if memory serves. Memorable movies at Pines Theater: Ten Commandments, Sound of Music, most major films of the period. Plaza Theater: Rank Organisation British war films (mostly about desert warfare), Sylvana Mangano heart-thumpers, Tagalog dramas, Zatoichi, Horror of Dracula, soft porn (Tokyo Honeymoon, Underwater Romance). Aurora Theater: chipipay Japanese scifi (Mysterians et al.); Session Theater: Westerns. War films (The Fighting Sullivans, Anchors Away). When we were in St. Louis Grade School in the early 50s -- grade two or three kami noon -- tatambay kami sa kanto ng Session Road where there was grassy space and some war ruins (future site of Skyworld). Mag-aabang kami ng adult moviegoers at sasabayan namin pagpasok sa Session theater, because children accompanied by adults went in free. After some time, nabuwisit na ang mga employees ni Nassr at nakahalata nang iba-iba ang "kamag-anak" na kasabay namin sa panonood, and we were banned.  OMG. Is this THE Ed Maranan I knew at SLU in the 60s???!! Is that really you? Hmm... |
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