PENNY SHOWMEN

Southland Times, Issue 23297, 6 September 1937, Page 16

PENNY SHOWMEN

GROWTH OF CINEMA LOOKING BACK TO THE NINETIES When the new Oreon Theatre opened in Leicester Square recently, boxing in the square on its third side with picture houses, its steel and concrete formed a tablet to an historic spot in film history—the site of one of the first picture shows given in England, writes C.A.L., in The Observer, London. There, at the old Alhambra music hall, in the middle ’ninties, Robert Paul exhibited his new machine, the theatreograph, lately introduced with vast success at Olympia. Almost next door, at the Empire music hall, the new Lumiere cinematograph© was nightly attracting audiences. Leicester Square was already, before 1900, the hub of London’s picture-going world. The old music halls were the first cinemas; the space of a variety turn the usual length of a film programme. In time the novelty of the short living picture” turn faded, and came to be used as what the Americans called a “chaser” to empty the house periodically during the continuous vaudeville performances. But outside the music halls the habit grew. Enterprising showmen began to hire local assembly rooms, clubs, and empty shops for their performances, paying their rental with a percentage of the takings. In America the “penny arcade” men, led by an enterprising young fellow named Adolph Zukor, gave a fillip to the business by leasing adjoining rooms to their arcades, knocking holes in the wall or ceiling, fitting up an impoverished screen, and gradually weaning their patrons away from peepshow to picture. Other pioneers of the peepshow were a certain Carl Laemie, a certain Jesse Lasky, and a family of young cycle salesmen called Warner. In London the crowds were flocking into a converted shop to ride through the Rocky Mountains for sixpence a trip in a new enterprise known as Hales Tours. NO RESTRICTIONS Until the Cinematograph Act of 1906 there were no safety restrictions at film shows. The halls, often built of wood, were lit by uncovered gas jets; the seats were wooden benches; a single door usually provided the exit. The film, as it ran through the projector, unwound loosely on to the floor, or in better-class houses into a sack or open basket. It took two serious fires, following the terrible Paris bazaar fire of the ’nineties, to convince the Home Office that some form of regulation and licensing was necessary to keep this new entertainment under control. ■ Step by step, in the years before and during the war, the “bioscope,” as it was first called, “the pictures” as they became later, developed as a social institution. The rules demanding extra exit space suggested the purchase of adjoining properties, and cinemas automatically grew larger. Wise managers advertised that their house was aired between each performance.” Wooden benches gave way to armchairs screwed to the ground, and presently ' “one thousand tip-up seats” was an announcement of enormous charm. The film lecturer, who leamt up his comments on Monday morning to accompany the action of Monday nights film, became a rarity. The single pianist was supported by a fiddler, then by a multiple keyboard combining 10 or 11 other instruments, and presently by a small orchestra. Programmes, instead of changing daily, were changed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and presently, with exclusive dignity, on Mondays and Thursdays. By 1919 enterprising managers were serving tea and a biscuit with every seat. By 1913 for a penny “anywhere in the house” you could see a six-reel picture in a theatre housing 1500 people with attendants dressed in “de luxe uniforms. Not long afterwards the price went up to twopence, and even threepence. By 1914 they were advertising “the largest screen in Stratford, or Birmingham, or London. In 1915 D. W. Griffith put the hall-mark of gentility on picture showing with “The Birth of a Nation,” which might only be exhibited in large specialized halls, with a special musical score to accompany every show. The national development in cinemabuilding in America during the war years led to a vast impetus in this country after 1918, when the restrictions on building were removed. Picture houses sprang up like mushrooms often on the site of converted music halls. Electric signs blazed above these new “palaces”; every cinema was a “super” cinema; every programme was a “de luxe” programme; organs began to rise out of the ground, colour floor lights bathed them in blue and rose and amber; stage “presentations” ushered in the film. Then, in 1929, the talkies came, and overnight the picture houses must be “wired for sound” or perish. A totally new style of architecture was the order of the day. NEW THEATRES All over the world new talkie theatres sprang up; old silent halls were gutted, their vitals cut out, remodelled. The tendency in silent days was for cinemas to be long and narrow, with ground-floor seats. The sound engineers found that the echo from the back wall reached the front seats after a time lapse of seconds. They tackled the problem in two ways, treating the walls with acoustic absorbing material, and breaking up the back wall with a balcony—using the audience, in fact, as an absorbing medium. Their cinemas became wider, lower, with heavy carpets and upholstery to absorb echoes. The operating box for the first tune was treated as the key to the theatre. The old boxes, “absolute death-traps as they were called, were scrapped in favour of lighter, airier, more ample conditions. Sound, projection, lighting, ventilation became a thorough engineering job. Every cinema is a miniature power station today. Meanwhile, in the last eight years another enormous impetus to cinema development has been .found in the increase of road transport, and in particular the growth of the motor bus services. A country town like Maidstone is served today by 17 separate bus routes. Sidney Bernstein, who has built a theatre there as big and costly as any of his London houses, reckons that he draws his audience from a 15-mile radius. In most cases, in country districts, arrangements are made with the omnibus companies to meet the times of the cinema programmes. On market days the picture house cloakrooms will be stacked with parcels—free storage for fowls, fruit, groceries, shoes, shrubs, tortoises, and all the odd products of a country shopping day. The modern tendency of picturegoers is to regard the cinema as an exclusive kind of club, where they can get free garage, free cloakroom space, warm, cushioned seats on cold days, air-conditioned freshness on hot days. Thanks to the stringent regulations of the L.C.C. an dother local authorities, they can see their films today in comfort and safety. There is no danger of light failure. The regulations demand emergency lighting, generated from an independent source of supply. There is no danger of fire panic. The rules for emergency exits are strict,

and Mr Bernstein reckons that he can get 3000 children out of a modern theatre in something just under two minutes. The house lights are brighter than they used to be; with a tendency to be thrown down on the feet to prevent stumbling. For half a crown the most exigent picture-goer can buy three hours of rest and comfort; soft carpets to walk on, soft chairs to sleep in; warmth, opulence, and variety. Thirty years ago a young lady rejected her fiance because she heard he was going into the “living picture” business. Twenty years ago a penny arcade salesman refused to join Zukor in the cinema because he “had seen pictures put out penny arcades and was not going to be twice caught napping.” Ten years ago the leaders of the industry declared that talkies, if they came, would only be an overnight novelty, in less i.han naif a century we have seen this illusion of moving images grow from a top peep-show into the most fashionable of luxury entertainments.

Today, in 1937, comfort has almost reached saturation point in the cinema. We have arrived at the stage where we can no longer be lured here or there by an extra girl in the stage show or an extra goldfish in the foyer. The public of 1937 shops for pictures, more than ever before, according to the quality of the entertainment. The screen matters more than the soft furnishings; the images are more persuasive than the usherettes. As Charles Raymond, the manager of the Empire, once phrased it with characteristic American economy, “The seats all face one way.”