When I was little, my parents would take me to the cinema. We’re watching Hud (1963), and there was just a sing-along in the theatre; ‘Follow the bouncing ball’ style. I’ve never experienced sing-alongs in a movie theatre. (Nor cartoons and newsreels, for that matter.) But apparently in 1963, sing-alongs were still a thing. When did they stop?
I don’t know personally, but a bit of googling led me to the following:
Well, around a decade ago there was The Oogieloves in The Big Balloon Adventure.
So the singalong happened within the movie Hud? (I’ve never seen it).
If the movie was supposed to be contemporary to 1963 or so, then I would say that was a very late instance of the practice, possibly because the movie theater was out in the sticks (I assume) and way behind the times. Maybe the theater owner had a bunch of these singalong films and he just kept showing them over and over, just to pad out his programs. Maybe because his audiences liked them.
When I was growing up in the late 50’s my family went to the movies every Friday night, to 2nd or 3rd run houses where we would see a double feature plus cartoon (no newsreels, I don’t think). If singalongs were still going on then (in Portland, Oregon) those are the theaters where they might have been – but I don’t every remember seeing or singing along to one. I was between 8 and 11 years old so I think I would remember.
I found a YouTube video with some useful information, one piece of which is that the Fleischer Studio, which made most of the bouncing ball singalong films, stopped producing them in 1953. After that the phenomenon moved to radio and then especially to TV with Sing Along with Mitch (Mitch Miller, that is), which I do remember on TV in the early 60’s.
Coming attractions, a cartoon, and a newsreel usually preceded first-run movies for us in the mid 60s. The newsreels were gone by the 70s, and the cartoons by the 90s, but i don’t remember ever seeing a singalong. Today we get ads, and sometimes a quiz, along with coming attractions.
I think singalongs must have been considered quaint and old fashioned by the time one was incorporated into The Great Race (1965). The entire film was mostly an homage to films made decades earlier.
They are rare but still happen. You may get them for The Lion King or Grease, and certainly Rocky Horror
But not John Wick 
I’ve never heard of a sing-a-long short in a movie theater until this thread.
Going to movies in mainstream theaters in suburban SoCal as a little kid in the early-mid 1960s we often had advertising shorts and maybe a short cartoon before the main feature. The cartoon would only be run if the main feature was totally kid fare, not a grown-up movie. I knew then from my parents what newsreels were but never actually saw one.
Like @Roderick_Femm I remember “Sing along with Mitch”, but as something on TV, not in theaters.
My thought on seeing the title of this thread - when did cinema sing-along stop happening? When you could buy a home DVD of Rocky Horror Picture Show.
That is one of my two or three all-time favorite movies! I have a picture of Professor Fate and Leslie glaring at eachother in front of the Eiffel Tower… Signed by both Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis.
And as to the OP, sing-alongs still happen infrequently but regularly. They often do them in the summer for kiddie matinees, and they’ll also do them for big musical hits like Moana or Frozen.
That sounds like the audience singing along to the feature film, which is something different from what I assumed the OP was talking about.
I’m not sure I see the distinction - the Frozen sing-along I went to had the lyrics on-screen with the “bouncing ball” and everything.
There’s a theatre in Chicago that occasionally does sing-along nights for adult movies like Sound of Music or Grease. (No, not THOSE kind of adult movies!)
That is correct.
It does sound like you’re talking about singing along to a feature film. What I’m asking about is the sing-along shorts (one song) that were shown before the feature film.
I’m a little confused about the OP. The point of view seems to be jumping around.
Are you @Johnny_L.A saying that within the movie Hud that you recently watched they depicted a 1963 movie theater where the audience of that movie was seeing / doing a short sing-along before that movie-in-a-movie main feature, or are you saying that when you went to see Hud as a first run feature film 60 years ago there was a sing-along short shown in the theater with you there in person?
I suspect the former, but can’t rule out the latter from the words as written.
This. The scene takes place in a theatre, and the audience is following the bouncing ball and singing along to what’s on the screen.
Sorry about the confusion. I always use ‘we’re’ in the present tense (we are) and never in the past tense (we were), so it didn’t occur to me that there would be any confusion. To clarify: When I was little (San Diego) we’d go out to see the occasional movie, and I never experienced a sing-along (or newsreel, or cartoon). The closest thing was the National Anthem at NAS Miramar (or earlier, at the base in Yokosuka). So when we watched Hud the other night, I wondered when sing-alongs before the feature stopped being done.
The board’s being cranky about posting videos, but here’s a link to what I think was the short in Hud
[Bouncing Ball Cartoon - Oh My Darlin' Clementine - YouTube](https://Miners Forty Niners)
It’s from 1951.
See if that works.
Thanks!
Sound of Music sing-a-longs, while more popular in the ‘90’s, are still apparently a thing. And an excuse to dress in costume.