As most of the film sachems here know, American moviegoing used to be a much different experience. A movie ticket would buy the consumer several pieces instead of just one. A typical bill might show a few short pieces (cartoons, newsreels, comedy shorts, serials, etc.) followed by a B movie, culminating with the feature, then starting over again. It was common for people to filter in and out of the theater all the way through, often leaving when they’d gotten to the point where they came in.
When did this format change to the current “trailers and the feature” presentation? I know it must have been somewhere between 1960 (when Psycho premiered and Hitchcock issued strict directives that moviegoers would not be allowed to enter after the film started) and 1975 (which is as far back as I can remember - I was born in 1970, and the current format, more or less, has been the norm for as far as I remember). I realize that this probably didn’t happen overnight, but is there anything close to a date for this change?
I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s and IIRC double-bills were common into the early 1960s. As kids, we would never look up when a showing started but just go to the movies whenever and sit through until the point where we came in came around again. And if it was a movie we really liked, we would stay all afternoon and sit through multiple showings.
My impression is that double bills had become less common by the late 1960s. In any case, as I got older I would try to see a movie from the beginning. Also, I went to see a particular movie, and wasn’t that interested in seeing another just because It was on the same bill.
The transition from double bills to singles didn’t happen to all theaters all at the same time. it was gradual.
When “big” movies started coming out, due to hype, the demand required only showing the feature. I can recall this occurring with “The Exorcist”, “Jaws”, “Star Wars”. But other theaters would continue to show two movies to be more marketable.
My theory is that the true death of the double bill coincided with the growth of the home viewing boom: first video cassettes, then DVDs. Most of those 2nd bill, B-movies now became available through rental. So theaters couldn’t draw people in with the double bills. This led to 1) more theaters leaning toward “big”, first run (single bill), and 2) the older theaters which typically showed the double bills closing down.
So the time frame for this transition would be around “late 70s” into the early 80’s.
I’m pretty sure single features are linked to the rise of the multi-screen theater. Double features were still around when I was going to the movies back in the 60s. I remember seeing “The Blue Max” paired with some “B” movie about affairs among Austrians around 1860.
I think it started well before 1960. When the middle class started moving to the suburbs movie viewing became more of a appointment than a casual drop-in. It was mostly neighborhood movie theaters who depended on continual showings, and they were a major casualty of the emptying out of center cities.
Movie making also changed after WWII. To combat television, major movie studios concentrated more on features while the minor ones ground out cheapies that were favorites in the booming number of drive-ins. The number of b-movies, serials, and shorts fell off drastically. Newsreels were replaced by television news.
Hitchcock’s ploy with Psycho was a publicity stunt. By then most major theaters didn’t expect people to wander in at any time. The audience would have been there from the beginning. It’s like Lucky Strikes cigarettes’ famous slogan, “we’re toasted.” Well, every single cigarette was toasted; they were simply the first to use it as a selling point. Same with Hitchcock.
It certainly didn’t happen everywhere at once. It started with the major downtown movie palaces, many of whom never got into continual runs in the first place, and gradually filtered down to the smaller neighborhood theaters and those in small towns.
Double features weren’t a common thing back under the studio system and were generally limited to B moves and Saturday matinees (and drive-ins later). A movie in the “golden age” would only show one feature a night. It would, however, include a newsreel, a comedy short, a cartoon, a music short, etc. to fill out the entire evening.
By the 50s, theaters began to realize they could run two shows an evening if you cut all that stuff out. Multiple show times brought in the potential for more people in an evening and a bigger box office. When I first started going to movies around 1960, the full show was a thing of the past. You might get a cartoon, but that was about it.
Thanks, Exapno. I didn’t know that about Psycho; that does put a different spin on things.
For what it’s worth, the theatrical Looney Tunes shorts were produced until 1969; Warner Brothers shut down their in-house studio in 1964. That may be as good a bellwether as any.
Also, I’m seizing on some throwaway lines from Midnight Cowboy about going to the movies; from the way the dialogue is handled, it sounds like they’re talking about an old-school program instead of just a feature. That film came out in 1969, supporting that year as a terminal date (more or less) as well, at least in some theaters.
Thanks also, RealityChuck for your recollection.
I do wonder if television might have as much to do with it as suburbia and multiple showtime marketing. By 1960, if someone wanted an evening of mediocre entertainment, they could just flip the switch. Movies, as said above, became more of an event than a drop-in thing.
I am about 60 and remember going to double billed movies with previews (we didn’t call them trailers) and cartoons up to the mid 1960s. Great night out for the entire family for an affordable cost. When I was a teenager in the early '70s most of these had stopped and the more blockbuster movies, like The Godfather and The Exorcist were being played by themselves. I think this transition had more to do with the cost for the theater to get the movie than anything else.
But my local drive-in still played double or even triple features until being shut down because the land became too valuable coastal property to be used only during the summer. Ah, the Sunset Drive In. They couldn’t start until the sun went down. The only legitimate way to take a teenage girl out in your brother’s car on a date and bring her home at 2am. Those were the days.
On a side note. The theater where my parents took me for the double features in my home town, and later I took my friends and dates to, was just a beautiful place. It became run down and closed for years and would have probably been torn down had the theater been a stand alone building. But it was a corner on a city block downtown and was destined to be something else. Sat for years and was finally restored to perfect splendor, just a beautiful example of the sort of theaters that once existed but are mostly gone now. The frescos, the ornate artwork, the chandelier, were just a real work of art. It is now a functioning arts center for concerts, weddings, plays, etc. Even the color of the fabric on the seats is the same as when I was younger.
The Liberty Theater in Astoria, Or. At least take a look at the home page beauty of this place.
I never remember seeing a newsreel in a theater, but then again, I don’t remember seeing a movie in a theater prior to 1968 or so. The most recent mention of newsreels in a “contemporary setting” I can remember is one on The Dick van Dyke Show (Rob misses a knockout in a boxing match on TV and says he’ll have to go to the theater to see it), which would have been no later than 1965.
As for double features, outside of drive-ins, the last time I saw one was around 1982, but it was what might be considered a couple of B-movies (Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl and The Secret Policeman’s Other Ball (the USA version, that includes scenes from at least one of the other Amnesty International shows)). Double features may have ended when “all day admission” ended; the first movie I went to where they cleared the theater between showings was the original release of Star Wars.
I grew up in the 1960s, and my parents (who were born in the 1930s) thought “wandering in” was the standard way to see a movie. I hated it, and continually begged them to look up the showtimes in the newspaper before planning a family movie outing. My mom thought that was the stupidest idea she had ever heard. I have a lot of childhood memories of my family groping around in a dark theater, looking for seats. To add insult to injury, my parents would sometimes decide that the movie wasn’t very good and it wasn’t worth staying to see the part we had missed.
The last double feature I remember attending (at an indoor theater) was in 1970, when a local theater showed Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes on the same bill. But by 1970, that was certainly an anomaly.
It also occurs to me that the advent of multiplex theaters contributed to the demise of double features. There’s no particular appeal in advertising and showing two films on the same program when your theater can show 10 movies at the same time.
We didn’t exactly do that, but by the time my father came home, we ate dinner and got to the theater, we’d usually miss the first 10-15 minutes. The worst was when we arrived at eight pm for a movie that began at seven. That was a documentary – Blue Waters, White Death – about sharks, so there was no plot.
It did teach me a lot about story structure. Coming in 15 minutes late, you have to figure out who was who and what had gone on before.
In the latish 70s we saw Hearts of the West and 2001 as a double feature. 1:42 and 2:29, resp. Throw in intermissions and coming attractions that was just too bleeping much.
And I still count Movie Movie as a triple feature.
Based on my personal experience, that wasn’t true of neighborhood theaters in 1960. (I’m not sure what proportion of all theaters “major theaters” might have been.) As I said, we were accustomed to go to the movies whenever, not according to when they began. I specifically remember that advertising campaign from when the movie first came out. If some part of the audience wasn’t accustomed to come in after the movie began, the campaign (even if it were to enhance publicity) wouldn’t have made much sense.
I was born in 1966. My family didn’t go out to movies very often, but my earliest memories (probably early 1970s) are that there was usually a short cartoon before the main feature. But that stopped before too long.
The only double feature I can recall seeing in a theater (as opposed to a drive-in) was the time my mom and I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey together with Colossus: The Forbin Project, but I can’t recall what year that was - it was more than 40 years ago.