Just a note that if you are ever in Viborg South Dakota they have a throwback theater called the Lund, which looks and feels and has prices just like the old theaters. LINK
a lot of this has been covered but…
60’s before the cheapening began.
The theaters were generally very nice ritzy looking affairs.
Big lighted fancy marquee outside, centered ticket booth on a lot of them, just like you see in old movies.
2 screens was the most i remember seeing, and most were single screen.
Double Features were not uncommon, especially with B movies.
Cartoons, news reels etc played before the main feature.
Advertisements too. Oh yes ads for the new dodge sedan or what ever you can imagine.
The theater itself was nicer inside, like it was a special event (and i kind of was) they had staff to help seat you, and the place got cleaned after each showing.
Seat arms had ashtrays like airplane seats did, because YES, you could smoke in the theater.
People found movies in the newspaper, but there were TV ads too, and there were ads in the movies themselves for what ever was up and coming.
Like someone said, it was real film being played, and getting that film on screen went like this.
Movies arrived at theater in sealed cans.
Cans go up to booth for assembly.
leader cartoons ads etc get all spliced up and attached to the 1st main reel.
wind all this mess up, splice in next reel, depending on movie length.
Some movies you could not fit on a single supply reel, so you spliced in an intermission trailer.
Then you swapped reels, fast but make sure you leave enough concession stand spending time.
When the movie shipped back you had to take the entire mess back apart.
If you ran a good projection booth the projectors got cleaned, a lot.
Great job as a kid, and see every movie free.
Fast forward to 1980, the movie projectors run like big 8 track players, with cue tags spliced into the film to run the whole show.
20 screens per theater and the place looks like it was made out of plastic
Funny. When I was a kid in the 70s and 80s there were no commercials. In fact i recall when I saw my first commercial in a theater in 1994 and I booed.
Clean the projectors? Heh, now they don’t even bother to change the bulbs. I’ve complained several times about dark screens. And I’ve gotten free passes when they checked and said yeah you’re right. I think if no one complains they just leave it until it’s completely dark.
I definitely remember the little reel change signals and the skip when the change happened.
Lots of people have covered the main things. My memories go back to the first film I remember seeing in a theater, Sink The Bismark. Still a favorite; even at age five, I fell in love with Dana Wynter.
The business model for theater owners was different. The age when the theaters were owned by the studios was over, but the theater chains had to negotiate who got the best films to run. We’d hear about a film a long while before it reached our town.
Everything did change gradually, but I remember that the biggest and most dramatic changes all happened as VHS became readily available. Until then, theaters and studios could rerun older blockbusters and bring people in all over again. There was always more people who wanted to see films than there were films to see, so lesser films still got to be listed on the marquee. After it was possible to rent tapes, all that went away. Star Wars was the last film I remember seeing re-released to any significant degree, and that was in 1977-1979.
The biggest disappointment to me, was the breaking up of the large screens into multiple smaller ones. I almost stopped going to films entirely in the late 1980's, because there was only ONE full size screen anywhere in the area, and it was always packed. No fun paying ten bucks or more a piece to watch something that was not much bigger than a TV screen.
The only other thing I can think to mention, is that in the “olden days” the studios did a lot more to promote the films than I ever see done now. When Crack In The World came out in 1965, the theaters were sent special marquee materials , so that they could put the title up with a big red crack running through it. When Star Wars came out, in addition to the posters and so on, there was a guy outside after each showing, selling buttons with May The Force Be With You on them, and sometimes action figures that were only available at the theaters. Wish I’d bought a few, I had no idea they’d be worth big bucks to collectors now.
My earliest movie memories were about 1962 in suburban SoCal.
I agree that commercials for ordinary products were not part of the experience until the 1980s. A trailer for a different movie, and maybe some 30 second thing about remembering to buy popcorn at the concession stand was about it. I too recall being appalled the first time I was subjected to an ad for cars or a furniture store or some such. How dare they; I paid for this show! Advertisements are only tolerated with freebies!
How the world has changed. And not for the good.
I was too late to ever see a true newsreel. But I did see a bunch of shorts, maybe 5-10 minute documentary films which typically preceded the lead title of the double feature.
I distinctly remember seeing one which was telling the story of Buzzard Day – Hinckley OH Chamber of Commerce. They were quite proud of their special holiday. As a kid from SoCal I was amazed at the idea of leaden gray skies, leafless trees, brown dead ground and people willingly standing around outside in freezing weather in heavy coats. It was my first glimpse into an alien world.
For some odd reason I’ve always wanted to find that short. YouTube has several items on the buzzard festival, but not that ancient short. At least not that I could find.
I recall when the first 2-screen cinema appeared, probably between '68 and '70. We were all saying “Why? What use is that?”
I last attended a movie in 1993: the original release of the original Jurassic Park. It was loud enough and overblown enough that I haven’t had the desire to return to a movie since. ISTM they’d already turned the knob past 11 in 1993. I can’t imagine how far up past eleventy-thirteen it’s turned today. No thanks; not interested.
We would be seated with onions tied to our belts, which was the style at the time.
In my movie going experience in Wisconsin in the late 60s through the 70s, every town had a small theater. Maybe seated 200. All but one are gone, but that one is still thriving.
Mostly, it’s exactly like it was as far as I can remember. For all I know it doesn’t have a digital projector, because that probably costs more than the entire town. Still got a itsy-bitsy lobby. In the 70s as far as I remember it has two showings a week (not a day - a week). Not a lot of nite life in Montello.
But it is still there, still making money. I think they put new seats in, which is good. They weren’t that great when I saw Yellow Submarine first run, and probably would be a bit…worse by now.
It’s a real throwback. The theater in one town became a Ben Franklin, in another town, a mini mall. The drive in has reverted to a farm field.
I think it varied by locale. I moved from Pittsburgh to NorCal in 1974 and was amazed that smoking was allowed in theaters. It was banned in Pittsburgh (or PA?).
Side question since most everything else I would say has been said -------- my memory of the first five is that the audience was mostly teens and 20s. I don’t remember seeing a lot of people my parents age (a little younger than your grandfather but not by much) until “Live and Let Die”. I was a big fan of the Bond films back then; FWIW I can’t name a single person who admits to having seen “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” first-run. I did -------- I just won’t admit it.
Depended on the theater. The McKee and one whose name escapes me at the present in McKeesport asked you not to smoke during the movie but smoking was allowed at all times in the lobby. It was “by order of the fire department” and not for any health reasons. Some other varied as well from smoking allowed in the balconies to what film was being shown. I saw “Tommy” when it first came out at the theater near Rainbow Gardens (where it had been) and between pot and cigarette smoke it was almost tough to see the screen.
As to audience ages:
I remember there was a lot more of kids going alone or being dropped off by a parent then picked up later. This was true for 5 year olds and for 15 year olds. So in a movie appropriate for either end of that age group, there’d be very few adults in the building.
OTOH, real adults (>30) went to their own movies and left the kids at home. People A) didn’t drag the kids with them everywhere, and B) were more thoughtful about exposing little kids to grown-up entertainment.
I think we have one of those buttons at my parents place. I don’t remember them selling the buttons. I remember them being given away. They were in a big box in the lobby as you left the theater.
The Will Rogers Theater in Chicago, IL - Cinema Treasures]Will Rogers was 2 blocks from where I grew up on the NW side of Chicago, with any number of others a short bus ride away. Couldn’t begin to say the first movie I saw, because we were there all the time - either as a family, or the 4 of us kids and our friends.
One thing I remember, is our parents giving us a dime to spend on candy to bring in to the show. As I recall it, there was no prohibition against bringing in food. I have a clear memory of one of my sisters’ friends bringing in a huge clear bag of popcorn he popped at home…
Don’t think anyone mentioned the sticky floors yet. FOlk just dropped their trash, and your shoes would stick to the floors. As a kid, pretty much was my idea of the dirtiest thing imaginable.
Born in 1960. For some reason I remember most clearly all those Don Knotts movies, The Love Bug, The Nutty Professor, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, etc. They were preceded by cartoons or shorts.
And yeah - I remember getting there late and staying until the next one started, leaving when someone said, “This is where we came in.”
Exorcist was the first R-rated movie I saw. First nudity I remember was in Billy Jack. I remember Mary Poppins being a REALLY big deal - went up to the Gateway for that one.
During the summer, the local business district sponsored some morning variety shows for kids. I remember we would get tickets at a local clothes store. There would be cartoons, entertainment such as the Duncan yoyo wizards, I don’t really recall what else.
From listening to a lot of people, you’d get the impression that there were no big movies before Jaws and no merchandising before Star Wars.
It ain’t true. There were plenty of highly-grossing movies before 1975, with people waiting in lines that stretched around the block. 2001 was the highest-grossing movie of 1968, making (in inflation-adjusted dollars) about half what Jaws sis. Next year, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid did about 3/4 as well as Jaws. The significance of Jaws was that it ushered in the era of the Summer Blockbuster that the studios came to rely on.
And Disney had been merchandising the hell out of their movies since they started making movies. Toys, records, figures, books. Tie-ins go back much farther than that – there were movie novelizations back in the silent era, and toys based on movie characters just as far back. When I was growing up in the 1960s there was no shortage of comic books, golden books, and novelizations, as well as plenty of toys – there were James Bond Toys, Planet of the Apes Toys, etc. The difference, again, was scale – for some reason , nobody in Hollywood seemed to notice how much revenue this was pulling in, despite Disney’s example, and they let Lucas have the tie-in concession. When that (combined with the Summer Blockbuster status of Star Wars) turned out generating a huge pile of cash for Lucas, people suddenly noticed.
Nobody else did either, which is why they’re worth big bucks now.
You’re showing your youth. Splicing reels together was something that was introduced when multiplex theaters started so one projectionist could take care of more than one theater. Before that, in a holdover from the nitrate stock days, projector reels were limited to about twenty minutes which is what those cans you’d open held. Projectors came in pairs and, guided by cue marks, the projectionist would switch to the other projector in synchrony, then load the next reel on the projector just finished. Before xenon lamp heads were introduced, the carbon arc heads required constant fussing and the rods had to be replaced after less than an hour anyway, so one theater per projectionist would have been the limit even without reel changeovers.
DesertRoomie worked as the concession sup in a 25-theater multiplex for a while during the platter days and once during Family Day I toured the projection “booth.” In reality it was one continuous H shaped room. The two uprights were where the theaters were, so there were projectors on either side, still in pairs to have a spare handy in case something broke. The center bar had the work area where all the pasting together and cutting apart you mentioned took place, and the whole thing was carpeted so a loaded platter could be trundled from one theater to another without any noise.
Your mother is a cruel person.
A lucky few of the movie palaces have been restored. Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto is one of them. Opened in 1925 at a cost of $300,000 it was restored in 1989 by David Packard, of Hewlett/Packard fame, for $6-million. Appropiately enough, it specializes in showing films from 1910 through 1970.
One suspects Lucas watched what was happening with the Planet of the Apes some 5-8 years after the original movie had its run.
Definitely. Big movies would be held over for weeks. When studios controlled the theaters this was common. Gone with the Wind was an early blockbuster and I’m sure not the first.
ETA: And this site indicates the usage of ‘blockbuster’ for movies refers to people lined up around the block to get tickets.
I don’t remember this, even back in the early 1960s. Maybe it was a regional thing.
AFAICT, it was a lot easier (and cheaper) back then for parents to find a girl in HS to babysit the kids for an evening. Babysitting wages were typically a fraction of minimum wage in that era.
Wasn’t the timing of the cue marks in a movie a clue in a Columbo episode, or a similar show? I’m having a flashback, but I can’t remember the details. I think it is where I learned about them. From then on, I couldn’t not see them.
Now they’re gone. Good riddance.