Nickelodeons Start America’s Movie Craze
Today's selection -- from The Whole Equation by David Thomson.....MORE
From the very outset, the movie business, which in the earliest days took the form of nickelodeons, took in almost as much money as today's movie business does, after adjusting for inflation. That created an almost instant, ravenous demand for fresh material:
"That heady salary progression [of major silent movie-era stars such as Charlie Chaplin were], ... but how dynamic a medium the cinema was becoming. The history books still ask who went to see the early movies, and they're no more certain of the answer than we know how much money slipped through the cracks. The records were so unreliable. The venues were changing so rapidly. A craze was on, and no one has time to keep proper records during a craze. Still, the best estimates are that in 1907-08, America had about eight thousand nickelodeon outlets -- places where films were projected, often converted kinetoscope arcades, as well as shops and theaters. There were still very few 'cinemas' or movie houses, places constructed specially for the new medium.
"The nickelodeons could seat between 200 and 500 people and they ran a ragbag of one-reel adventures and comedies, with primitive newsreels, sing-alongs (with the words projected on the screen) and live acts such as one might see in vaudeville. Suppose a 'show' ran two hours. Suppose a 'house' ran five shows a day. Suppose it enjoyed an average crowd of 250 per show. That would produce, very roughly, a box office gross of $500,000 a day across the nation-an annual gross figure of about $180 million.
"And, if you're interested in these sums of money, and so much supposing, if you allow a multiplication factor of twenty to approximate today's dollars, that's an annual box office gross of movies in America in 1907-08 of 3.6 billion. The population of the United States in 1907-08 was about 85 million. The annual box office gross for 2001 and 2002 was a little over $8 billion each year, with a population of, say, 280 million....
