Kona Theater Kona Theater ADVERTISING Kona was once filled with movie theaters, large and small, built for residents eager for entertainment and social activity. After all, during the 1920s and 1930s, an era of few cars and no electricity in
Kona Theater
Kona was once filled with movie theaters, large and small, built for residents eager for entertainment and social activity. After all, during the 1920s and 1930s, an era of few cars and no electricity in Kona’s rural countryside, going to a movie was pretty darn exciting.
Kona’s first theaters, like Goto’s Kealakekua Theater next to Manago Hotel, were simple affairs with dirt floors and no sound systems (movies were silent) or seats. Moviegoers brought their own cushions or tatami mats to sit on. With such a mixed audience — Hawaiian, European, Japanese, Portuguese and Filipino — a wide variety of movies was always in demand. So popular were movies that the community of Honaunau built its own theater.
Kona Theater, an impressive building for Kona at the time, was built in 1929 by Tamajiro Morimoto, an industrious storekeeper who bought and sold coffee to American Factors. (An interesting fact is that his son, Masaji Morimoto, was Hawaii’s first Japanese Territorial Supreme Court justice.) After years of thrilling Kona residents with samurai films and double features, Kona Theater and Kainaliu’s Aloha Theatre, its chief rival, both closed down in the 1970s. Kailua’s growing population demanded modern facilities near the tourist centers.
Copyright 1998 Kona Historical Society. Reprinted by permission.
