Monday, March 14, 2005

They Move, They Talk, They Flicker

 

   Thomas Edison figured out how to make slides projected on a screen move. Imagine that. The wonder. By showing twelve different slides per second, the image seemed to move. The image flickered a lot, but moved. Viewers called them the flickers. The flickering moving slides were called movies. . Establishments opened that showed movies. It cost a nickel to get in. They were called nickelodeons.

   Then movies went legitimate and were shown in theaters. Like the a Broadway theater, you went to an evening’s entertainment, and there was no popcorn nor refreshment served. In fact, you were prohibited from eating in the theater.

   I started going to movies about this time. I remember seeing only one silent film. I don’t remember the movie and I can recall only the last scene: the hero dying.

   The hero dying? What kind of a movie is that? Heroes are supposed to survive so they can appear next week in a new film.

   Sound-on-film was invented and movies became talkies. I can’t remember the first talkie I saw, but it was probably Wings with Jean Harlow, Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers.

   Talkies were still an “evening out”, dress up affairs in theaters. There were a newsreel, a travelogue, an animated cartoon, and the feature attraction. Since it was evening, kids did not get taken.

   For kids, the Saturday Matinee was started. Movies, talkies I mean, have not been the same since. Kids are kids. They brought pop corn and candy and sneaked it in. The screamed, they shouted, they made cat calls at the kissing scenes. Adventure thrillers took the place of romances, and were shown as serials, one chapter each week. Each chapter ended with the hero or heroine in peril, such as hanging off a cliff, and you had to come back the following week to see how he or she could possibly escape.

    The theater owners gave up any semblance to legitimate theater. “If kids are gonna eat pop corn and candy, we might as well make money by selling it to them.” I remember my shock the first time I saw a refreshment stand in a theater….right there in the lobby. My parents were shocked too. Now they had to add a dime for pop corn to the quarter they gave me for admission.

   Then, in a price war, the double-feature was invented. To the newsreel, travelogue, cartoon, feature, was added a second feature. The second film was usually a low budget film. They were called B-movies, as opposed the main feature, the A-movie. Double bills drew more patrons than single features.

   Then shows began to show continuously. You could go to a show at any time. You often walked in in the middle of a feature. You watched it until it finished, viewed the short subjects, saw a second feature, and then, starting over, the first part of the movie you walked in on. When you came to the part you had already seen you were free to go. The term “This is where we came in” became common parlance. If you remembered the end of the movie you had seen, you added it mentally to the first part you were viewing, and through mental gymnastics made a compete story. If the intervening second feature made compiling the story in your head difficult, you could sit through the ending again.

   Finally after three or four hours, head reeling, you would stagger to your car and drive home muttering, “Now what was the second film we saw?”

   Unless you have been living in Nyrobe or Uganda, you know what happened next. The corner theater became the Multiplex with a whole bunch of theaters in the same building, with a refreshment stand with pop corn, ice cream, hot dogs, and hot meals, video games, and coin operated rides.

   The movie house has become an amusement park, a home away from home.

   That’s the history of the flickers, as related by one bleary-eyed movie buff who has lived through most of it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

How cool!  Thanks for the first-person historical perspective!
--Karen, ex-film major

Anonymous said...

FUN STUFF!  Kate

Anonymous said...

When I was a kid, in the 50's, we always talked about going to the "flicks" and our local cinema was given the dubious nickname of "The fleapit"!

Anonymous said...

Thanks you for sharing the history...we younguns forget how things camer to be...I remember only having black and white tv...getting a color tv was a big deal
Donna In TEXAS

Anonymous said...

So Cool to hear history from a first hand account and memory instead of a book....
http://journals.aol.com/astaryth/AdventuresofanEclecticMind

Anonymous said...

The first movies I saw where held in the high school auditorium. A man who owned a small movie theatre in San Antonio came out to our town on Saturday night to show one movie, one cartoon and a serial, usually Flash Gordon. He would have an intermission to sell popcorn and yell poppity poppity pop corn. That was the only entertainment we had other then skating on cement on metal skates with the keys around our necks. Thanks for flicking my memory, Paula

Anonymous said...

Great entry! All that's missing is the Drive-In. Nothing better than a car full of teens at a drive-in on a hot summer night. :-)

Anonymous said...

Yes and then there was the Saturday morning flickers at the local school.  I remember them well even if I don't remember the silent films, etc.  Loved this trip down memory lane.  Penny

Anonymous said...

Boy did you bring back memories of Saturday matinees in the local theater packed with kids. Mom would drop us off for 4 hours of great fun! But the biggest treat was going to the drive-in. My sister & I would get in our "jammies" and go with our parents and fall asleep in the back seat during the second feature. But as a teenager I got to know the drive-in from a whole new perspective - as "The Passion Pit", steamed up windows & all. I miss those days and I miss drive-in's. That's when you could afford to take the family to the flicks, now you practically need to take out a second mortgage to get in!
For a really cool poem about Drive-In's check out my website for "Bring Back Drive-In's" at http://journals.aol.com/wings2try/PoemsPoetryMusings