Another data point from the Wall St. Journal, Feb. 15th 1941.
This is beyond the argument, but it’s something I happen to be interested in, so I’m going to potter on for a bit.
Fandango is not the best source for the total number of theaters in a metro area. It has several drawbacks. One is that is doesn’t cover metro areas very well. As I said with New York, half the metropolitan area (more if you include most of Long Island) is simply missing. (BTW, the figures I gave were for theaters showing Inglourious Basterds. The total number of theaters would be much higher, even for the areas covered.) It also concentrates on first run theaters. Second run theaters, drive-ins, and the like are not listed. These account for a small percentage today in times when blockbusters can get 1/3 to 1/2 their total grosses on an opening weekend, but in the past they were a huge back end of income that allowed films to live on for a surprising amount of time.
As for Phoenix, I see by my Wiki that it is 12th in metropolitan population. You left out Philadelphia, Atlanta, Washington, Boston, and Detroit. San Francisco is listed as 13th, but the whole San Jose area has been subtracted out. Riverside, split out of L.A. is next, so let’s ignore that. Then comes Seattle at 15. Fandango lists 53 theaters for Seattle. My suspicion is that Phoenix has grown so fast that it lacks the service industries that older metro areas of equal size have.
By the 1930 census, which I happen to have at hand (yes, I own the hardback population summary of the 1930 census: doesn’t everybody?), 93 cities had populations of 100,000 or more. (Today there are 383 metro areas of over 100,000. In 1930 city and metro area were nearly synonymous, something that is unimaginable today with a handful of exceptions where city and county have merged.) Phoenix was at 48,000. The list of cities in Samclem’s quote (Cleveland, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Albany, Youngstown and Akron) are an odd lot. They ranked 6, 21, 8, 64, 45, and 35. Cleveland was as large as Baltimore, Albany, Youngstown, and Akron combined, so it would be expected to draw a heck of a lot more than any individual one.
This is all interesting, to me at least, but I need to re-emphasize that it is the number of screens that a modern movie plays on, not the number of theaters that books it, that is the important number when grosses are tabulated.
Great post, Sampiro.
Don’t forget: In the online game, it can really slow down your Quest To Burn Down Atlanta, if you forget to ask Butterfly McQueen if she knows anything about birthin’ any babies…
[QUOTE=Exapno Mapcase;11477050
GWTW made [$189 million]
(http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=releases&id=gonewiththewind.htm) in its first release. The re-releases are negligible.
[/QUOTE]
Just by the by, this is categorically not true. Week by week listings of box office figures don’t really exist until The Godfather, and up until around 1982 or so aren’t really to be trusted. As shady as studio accounting is now, it was even worse back in the day. Figuring out what films actually made back in the day is kind of a forensic black art.
But furthermore - look at the data presented to you there - do you think it’s only been re-released twice since 1939? Nonsense. This is the trouble with inflation adjusted figures - people are just lumping in numbers at the most convenient place.
By way of supporting that: under Legacy:
Gone with the Wind was given theatrical re-releases in 1947, 1954 and 1961. It was re-released in 1967 in a 70 mm stereophonic version, which is best known today for its iconic poster. It was further rereleased in 1971, 1989, and by New Line Cinema in 1998.
These are good points. There have been more than 2 re-releases, as Raygun99 notes. TCM, however, lists only four of these as major.
Hollywood grosses are also more fiction than the plots of the films.
Still, given what we know of two recent releases in the link I gave earlier, that the film grossed under $10 million total in the 1989 and 1998 releases, the ones with with the highest ticket prices, the total of all the re-releases can’t be that significant. The film played for three or four years almost continually across the U.S. in its original release. The bulk of its earnings surely came during that time.
We can’t know the exact amount. The current figure that is given was compiled by *Screen Digest *in 2005 and seemed to be a serious look at the past rather than pulled out of their ass.
I have no problem saying that GWTW is the all-time champion and all-time outlier.
Exapno Your demographic data stuff is definitely interesting. I am not at your level where I have census data on my shelves but it’s the sort of thing I can geek out on for an hour or two from time to time.
Your point about screens is valid, but your point about secondary screens is not. Really as it goes the studio makes less money per screening after the first week. They go for huge blockbuster events to gross heavily in the first weekend because that’s where they get the bulk of their revenue with the percentage that goes to the theaters increasing incrementally over time. By the time it gets to those secondary markets the payment to the studio is a pittance.
Definitely Gone With the Wind has sold the most tickets, and that’s impressive, but I think it’s a poor argument to dismiss modern films that don’t have the same kind of culture that GWTW came about in. There is just a much greater competition for a consumer’s dollar. As has been pointed out in this thread over and over again, people used to go see movies once or twice a week. They no longer do that because they have miniature movie screens in their living rooms. We watch more movies, but fewer of them in the theaters.
It’d be interesting if the studios would release ticket sales data, but of course they need to release it as monetary figures so that it seems like Hollywood is just getting bigger and bigger.
I can’t disagree with anything you say about the relative paucity of entertainment choices in the 1930s. It’s just that GWTW was so ridiculously far ahead of anything else that happened in that movie-loving decade that it remains sui generis.
Here’s boxofficemojo’s list of all-time inflation adjusted grosses. The next non-Disney film is 1945’s The Bells of St. Mary’s. GWTW made 3.2 times as much money. The top Disney film is Snow White. GWTW made 1.8 times as much, even though for that film the re-releases comprise over 60% of the total. Those are the only films from the decade of the 1930s that make the top 100. Only 4 live action films from the 1940s do. Despite the lack of options, movie going produced low grosses until recently.
Except for GWTW. It is the Mons Olympus of movies. You can’t diminish it.
That is just not true. Plugging in zip codes and towns into Fandango for the Rochester metro area (our backyard) produces every theater within 20 miles. All of the chains, independant operators, second-run theaters and drive-ins are accounted for.
It only looks incomplete because of the mileage cutoff. But if you input a zip code closer to one of the far flung theaters, it will still be listed with the rest.
Wow it’s amazing how complicated the money side of things is. Is number of tickets sold as hard to determine?
I agree, and that’s part of why I think it’s silly to compare modern movies to it. But regardless I think this has been one of the best and most interesting threads I’ve ever started. So thanks for participating and bringing all your good info. 
a few things.
Movies theaters of the past had a lot more seats than present day ones do. A film today would have to have 5 or 6 houses to be able to sell as many seats as a film of the past.
I went to fandango and counted the screens for Inglorious Basterds and came up with 37 in New York City. When you do that in Fandango they start including screens in New Jersey, and far out in Long Island. I only counted the Five Boroughs. I may have missed a few so I’ll say there are 40 screens of IB in NYC right now. BUT being an R rated film, you get a few ‘extra’ runs in this market, so that number would be higher than normal.
Gone with the Wind is a huge abberation in the business. No doubt. Just like Titanic was. Staying number one for about 3 months in 1997 is so freaking weird that there is nothing that compares to it.
To keep things consistent I just plugged in the name of the city. When I do that with Rochester, NY I see 12 theaters. That’s obviously low. I have to assume that the same would be true for every other city. You may be able to get more theaters if you know how to manipulate Fandango. But the even comparison gives a minimum of major first-run theaters and that was the number I wanted to go for. If that number hits 50 theaters, or even 50 screens, that made my point.
And I always use metro areas for comparison today. City limits no longer have any meaning unless you’re talking about local politics.
The only conclusion I ever really draw from inflation adjusted numbers is “damn, that’s an impressive amount of money” (assuming it’s so). It’s a bit like comparing the win totals of Tom Glavine to Cy Young. The eras and conditions they existed under are so different as to make the figures totally abstract.
samclem said:
I don’t think anyone was arguing they were on simultaneously, so they were competing directly. Rather, that in a year with several movies that are still well known, GWTW has such impressive sales stands out.
NDP said:
FWIW, my sister went to college in 1990 in [del]Deadrat[/del] - I mean Durant - Oklahoma, population 13,500 (in 2000, not sure 1990), and they didn’t have a movie theater then, even with a college located in town (Southeast Oklahoma State University). They had to drive 70 miles to Texas to see a movie.
An anecdote about a movie theater from 1990 is worth literally nothing when talking about the distribution of movie theaters in 1940. It’s like comparing the number of computers the two towns had.