It held the record as the oldest purpose-built working cinema in Scotland until only a few years ago.

Now the 100-year-old Picture House in Campbeltown, Argyll, is to raise the curtain on a special celebration to mark its centenary

Sunday's screening of the latest blockbuster of F Scot Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is to be preceded by a silent film from 1913 with piano accompaniment.

Guests at the birthday party later include a former manager and a woman who was born shortly after the cinema originally opened.

The cinema has a proud history. Between the 1930s and 1960s, it was one of two cinemas in the town and currently has 264 seats. But its rival, The Rex, which closed in 1977, had 1200 seats and the Picture House 640, so the latter became known as the "Wee Pictures".

The white bow-fronted cinema building with its distinctive roof and cupola was designed by the celebrated cinema architect Albert V Gardner and is now a listed building.

It is owned as a community-business and chairman Jane Mayo speaks of the local pride in its survival.

She said: "It is still open six nights a week. It is really the only form of family entertainment for about 90 miles. The Phoenix Cinema in Oban has just reopened and, apart from that, you have to go to Glasgow."

She said 100 years ago three local businessmen had got together and set up a company with the support of 38 other businessmen in and around the town or with Campbeltown connections.

She said there had been a hunger for cinema in the town, adding: "People used to go up to Glasgow a lot and go to the cinema. They would leave here by steamer and go to Wemyss Bay or Gourock by steamer to catch a train."

Mary McMillan, who was born a couple of months after it opened, will be one of the guests of honour on Sunday, as will Peter Armour, a former manager and grandson of one of the founders.

The compere will be Willie Crossam, 63, nephew of the former projectionist. The former rector of Campbeltown Grammar School, he was born and raised in the Kintyre town and the cinema was a large part of his life.

"My Uncle George was chief projectionist and my Aunt Isa had been a projectionist during the war. Uncle George had 48 years as operator and chief operator.

"There was never a week went by that you didn't go to the pictures at least once. There used to be three programmes a week. Very occasionally you had a film that, like Ben Hur, would run for six days. Cecil B DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1953) packed out for a fortnight.

"The Rex was barely 100 yards away They would show different films. So, with the programme changes, you could go every night and see a different film at one or the other."

He said both suffered with the arrival of television, but the Picture House had run bingo on Tuesdays and Fridays, at which he had acted as a caller.

He added: "That helped but, by the time we got into the 1980s, things were pretty dire. The Armour family sold it to a Fife company who ran it for a while, but it was losing money.

"It did close briefly before being taken over by the community in the mid-1980s. At one point we were having real difficulty in keeping it going.

"We wrote to Paul McCartney who very kindly gave us £5000 as long as we matched it. But then we did something rather cheeky and wrote back asking him to Gift Aid it so we got the tax as well. He agreed."

In 2009, the Hippodrome in Bo'ness, central Scotland, which opened in 1912, made a comeback after a 30-year intermission.

l The building of a third screen at GFT in Glasgow starts on Monday in the first phase of a major redevelopment to help to cope with demand.