While volunteering at the PAHRC I went through parish monthly calendars (essentially church bulletins) for hundreds of parishes. While I didn't go through each page of these calendars, there was one parish that stood out. Church of the Holy Infancy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania showed "motion pictures" each Sunday in a parish building. Here is the first article announcing the showing of these movies from October, 1926.
The Catholic Church has had an interesting relationship with cinema over the last century so I find it fascinating that this Church was showing movies every week, and on a Sunday no less! Over the course of several years, most issues of this calendar list the movies shown each month. So for my next installments of Tales from the Archives I'll put up these listings of movies and do a little research on those films. What movies were they watching at this Church? Did these films feature any famous actors? Do any of these motion pictures survive or are they lost? Find out starting next Thursday! Sunday is the weekly wrap-up as usual.
A condensed version of my Tales from the Archives series has been posted at the Archives official blog! Check it out here: PAHRC
These are the greatest updates EVER!
ReplyDeleteThanks! The first follow-up to this post will be next Thursday and it will be pretty interesting as I'll be getting into the movies shown at this parish.
ReplyDelete