The Moving-Picture Show and the People

From, Michael M. Davis, Jr, The Exploitation of Pleasure
A Study of Commercial Recreations in New York City
(New York: Department of Child Hygiene of the Russell Sage Foundation, 1911, 33-5.

Davis describes a transformation in movie-theater experiences, by combining vaudeville shows with movies. Listen to his writing as he does not condemn this form of commercial entertainment.

Economic considerations have forced vaudeville upon us, extended it among the high-priced as well as among the people’s theatres, and infused it amid the programme of the moving-picture shows. More’s the pity! The motion-picture was an invention of immense importance to the dramatic recreation of the people. It placed in the hands of the dramatic manager a resource of unimagined economy, and of manifold power to portray the most varied subjects. With the gradual perfecting of the motion-picture mechanical technique, during the nineties of the last century, moving-picture shows began to develop, and in New York City there was a period during which they are said to have doubled in number every year for five or six years. In 1907, when the business was first “discovered” by social students, the number of shows was not much if any less than it is today, 400 in the Greater City. * The proportion of shows of large seating capacity is, however, much greater today than three years ago. A decade’s development appears to have demonstrated that a theatre of large size cannot be continuously filled by the use of moving-pictures alone. The development has been such that the vaudeville theatres, feeling the competition of the film, interspersed moving-pictures between the vaudeville acts; while, on the other hand, the moving-picture shows proper, or many of them, have taken vaudeville as part of their program.

*The first investigation of the cheap popular theatres, in particular of the moving-picture shows, was begun in December, 1907, by a Committee of which the writer was Chairman, organized as a sub-committee of The Peoples’ Institute. A year’s work by this Committee led to the formation of the National Board of Motion-picture Censorship, organized and still sustained under the auspices of the same institution.

When the smaller moving-picture places (those with common-show licenses, seating under 300) attempt vaudeville, this can only be of the cheapest, and consequently, while rarely objectionable from the moral standpoint, extremely crude. Even to the most uncultivated audience it can possess little more value than that of breaking the run of motion-pictures, which, if too long continued, becomes a strain. The illustrated songs, already mentioned as universal at all moving-picture places, contribute in the main a positive element to the entertainment. But the motion-pictures themselves, studied and (therefore) enjoyed with an open mind, offer a really important and humanizing contribution. Two years ago, at the time when the formation of the Board of Motion Picture Censorship was under consideration, a party was formed to visit Manhattan shows for an evening, the group including men well known in the New York’s educational and dramatic circles. The uptown conception of a moving-picture show was then, as to a less extent it still is, a place of darkness, physical and moral. These men came to be shocked: but, after the first disappointment was over, the remained to enjoy.

Now and then, though in proportion extremely few, there are motion-pictures which are morally objectionable. The Board of Censorship has brought about much improvement during the past year and a half. Something still remains to be done: yet it would be unfair to the motion-picture to condemn more than a minute proportion. No section of the work has received more careful attention from as large a number of observers, and their agreement came to be essentially complete. The motion-picture is now offering to the public a more positively desirable form of entertainment than can be found at any other type of indoor commercial recreation provided at popular prices, and at most types of the high-priced as well.

In this connection, the same school children of whom questions were asked as to dancing were also interrogated as to their attendance upon moving-picture shows. Of 1,140 children (aged mostly eleven to fourteen), 713, or 62%, declared that they were accustomed to go to moving-picture shows once a week or oftener. Boys go more often than girls, 502 out of 745 boys (68%), and 211 out of 395 girls (54%) declaring this frequency of attendance. A truly astonishing proportion, 16% of the total avow they go daily. As an influence over the formative mind, these figures evidence that the moving-picture show is certainly to be reckoned with!

As a comparison, the same question was asked the girls in two expensive private schools—fifty-nine children in all. Of these, 44, or 74%, declared they never went to moving-picture shows, 10% went “rarely,” and half of the remainder “often.” The latter were mostly the girls under twelve, few of the older girls declaring attendance. All these children, however, went to high-priced theatres, the elder girls frequently. For the children of the people, however, the moving-picture show is the theatre.