 ". . . [I]n 1922, among some 20,000 screens in the United States less than 10 percent could
seat more than 1,000 people. There were close to 7,000 screens still playing to fewer than
250 people. In 1927, there were only seventeen theatres in the country that grossed over
$1 million a year at the box office.
"Many of these venues were marginal or inadequate for polite, middle-class entertainment. They
were "fleapits" or "bug-hutches," and they were dangerous as well as unhealthy. The provision and
servicing of projectiors was uncertain. The film was on flammable nitrate stock -- several disastrous
fires during the early days of exhibition deterred potential filmgoers. In addition, a tradition
still held from the earliest years whereby small movie houses often were close to saloons and
dangerous urban areas. Country theatres often were makeshift, and in 1922 more than 35 percent
of screens in America played four days a week or less. Similarly, in summers, without air conditioning,
there was a drastic falloff in business. . .
"But a movie theatre has fixed costs whatever its size: two projectors (through many places
still had only one, requiring reel-change delays and indicating a fragmented program of shorts and live
acts); a projectionist and an assistant; a cashier; a manager; the overhead; someone to play the piano
or organ. In becoming larger, a theatre needed maybe a second cashier and a few ushers. But the
ratio of costs to revenue ran in the owner's favor as the theaters got bigger. In addition, the larger the audience,
the more a theater could make on selling "refreshments," the range of snacks and drinks on which it
passed on nothing to the distributor.
"Audiences were not necessarily well-behaved or attentive. (Are they now?) If pictures didn't
talk, they did. In all but the smallest outlets there was some musical accompaniment. The biggests
theaters featured small orchestras, sometimes playing scores composed especially for a picture.
At the regular theaters, however, piano players were expected to improvise to films they had never
seen before. Thus the rapid dependence on coded mood music, and the ease with which rowdy audiences
might sing along with a movie. The live music was a throwback to theater, yet it detracted from the
magical impersonality that has so much to do with film's power. The authority was further dissipated
by the frequency of live acts -- singers, comics, jugglers -- on the bill. In addition, in theaters
that played regularly to immigrant audiences with little or no English, there might be a presenter at
the side of the screen, translating the titles and even explaining the action.
"There was already a marked disposition toward youth, and children, in the audience. At the
end of the twenties, one survey found (with alarm) that 64 percent of children in the United
States went to the movies once or twice a week. Already, there was evidence that juvenile delinquents
went more often than "nice" children. Some exhibitors admitted that kids were keeping the business alive,
and they said it rather shamefacedly -- What are you going to do? -- because there were worries already,
being earnestly expressed, from the churches, the academic community, and from the Boy Scouts, that
this exposure to pretty fantasy might not be good for American children. In many cases, it was also
reported that women of all ages made up a disproportionate amount of the audience.
"But, of course, men went, too. "Everyone" went. By 1928, at least 65 million tickets
were sold each week. That was well over half the total population. Subtract the infants and the very elderly,
allow that some people went more than once a week, and still it was clear that virtually everyone
who could get there went many times a year."
pages 124-125
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