You often hear movie stars (especially ones that have been around a while), as “Stars of the Silver Screen” … how did it get that name?
Thanks,
S.
In the olden days, I think the screen was actually silver. For reflective purposes.
When I worked at a triplex in the 80’s, we had one theathre that had a silver screen and the rest were white. When the 3D fad was revised back then, the only theatre we could show those types of films on was the one with the silver screen. The technology required it.
It’s not because the screens had a metallic coating — they didn’t. The black and white film images themselves were composed of silver nitrate, which gave the projected motion picture image a sparkle that color prints don’t have.
I guess the “Nitrate Screen” didn’t have the same ring to it, huh?
I don’t think B&W movies actually ‘sparkle’. Yesprints then were made from silver nitrate but screens were silver, in color at least.
Early 3D movies really needed the silver screen for their extra reflective properties.
Metal-coated screens were not used until the 3-D era began in 1952. The polarized filters used on the projectors reduced the image brightness enough that more highly reflective screens were used to compensate. Other than that, metal-coated screens were never widely used in the movie theater industry. What you gained in reflectivity, you lost in peripheral viewing areas — the image brightness dropped off considerably when you weren’t sitting directly in front of the screen.
And the term “silver screen” originated long before then.
Some more info. Silver Screen magazine was first published in 1930, so the term dates back at least that far, and probably earlier.
This page discusses different screen surfaces. A matte white screen has a 50-degree viewing angle, while a silver matte screen has only a 30-degree viewing angle.
I can find newspaper cites from 1910 indicating that pictures, both moving and still, were shown on “silver screens.” They knew that the pictures showed up better on a brightly painted surface by then.
The “silver screen as a metaphor for films” shows up about 1918.
Well, they do say that Dennis Hopper will best be remembered as a star of the Nitrous Screen…
It’s just a romantic term. Sounds a lot better than “the big white screen.”
As explained before, the screens aren’t really silver. Could you imagine how often they’d need polishing?
Where were we?
Oh yes, last night I attended a function at the American Museum of the Moving Image for the 100th anniversary of Loews theatres. While there I meet cinema historian Ross Melnick who recently wrote this book called Cinema Treasures.
So I asked him about the Silver Screen. He said that in 1904 Loews had a theatre, and he has seen a photo of this, that advertised “Daylight Pictures on the Silver Sheet”. He said that early projectors didn’t have the power and that in early days some people thought sitting in a dark movie theatre would be bad for your eyes so the house lights were not turned down. So the extra reflectivity of a ‘silver sheet’ was necessary. Later sheet changed to screen but he has ‘silver sheet’ being advertised in1904 and yes it was silver in appearence.
Another citation supporting the early emergence of the term: