The Gloria-Palast was a movie theater in Berlin at the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Kantstrasse, directly across the Marmorhaus theater and very close to other iconic movie palaces like the Ufa Palast am Zoo and the Capitol. It existed from 1925 to 1998. After that, the cinema had to give way to other uses, and it was finally demolished in 2017.
The neo-baroque movie house was built in 1924-1925 by Ernst Lessing and Max Bremer, occupying the first to third floors of the so called First Romanesque House (erste Romanische Haus), built by Franz Schwechten 1896. The cinema was equipped with 1200 seats. In the vicinity there was a second building called Romanische, on the opposte side of the Gedächtniskirche. Its ground-floor was the location of the famous Romanische Café.
The Gloria-Palast opened on January 25, 1926 with Tartuffe (Herr Tartüff), a silent film produced by Erich Pommer for UFA and directed by F. W. Murnau. In later years, two major classics of German film premiered in the Gloria Palace : The Blue Angel by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich (1st April 1930) and Die Buchse der Pandora (Pandora’ s Box), starring Louise Brooks, February 1929, directed by G. W. Pabst.
When the Ufa film Der Sieger (The Victor), starring Hans Albers and directed by Hans Hinrich and Paul Martin 21st March 1932, not less than three orchestras — the Comedian Harmonists, Hans Bund's Jazz Orchestra, and Ufa's symphony orchestra – played the accompaniment.
Other films premiered in Gloria-Palast were :
Geheimnisse einer Seele (Secrets of a Soul), 1925-26) by G. W. Pabst
Der Geiger von Florenz (The Fiddler of Florence), 1925-26, with Elisabeth Bergner, directed by Paul Czinner.
Am Rande der Welt (At the Edge of the World) 1927 directed by Karl Grune
Ihr dunkler Punkt (Her Dark Secret), 1929, with Lilian Harvey and Willy Fritsch directed by Johannes Guter.
"Germany's most elegant premiere theater located in the heart of
west Berlin. The motion-picture theater of good society will premiere
the best films in the most distinguished of settings", read an
advertising text from 1926.
In 1943, the cinema was destroyed by a bomb. In the 1930s there was a Gloria-Palast nightclub in Yorkville, Upper East Side, New York.
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