Tag: Movies
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The Child, the Book and the Movie
In 1921, as the nascent medium of film had recently soared in popularity, New York Times Magazine commissioned a debate: would movies decrease or increase children’s love of reading books? Alexander Black predicted it would increase, though his argument was in no small based on how movies of the time required considerable reading with title cards…
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Renaissance of the Masher and Swashbuckler
As life tamped down in 1921 under Prohibition, people sought to live vicariously through the uninhibited characters of stage and screen, characters this New York Times Magazine article called “the masher and swashbuckler.” “The leaden lid of ‘Thou Shalt Not’ has been hammered down on us so tightly that the explosion of our suppressed healthy animality…
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Wall Street’s Heel on the Prodigal Movies
A 1921 article predicted that the era of large movie budgets was over. Let’s just say that didn’t turn out to be the case. The final hour of profligate spending draws near — of million-dollar salaries and two-hundred-thousand-dollar sets. For the motion-picture-producing companies are putting their houses in order for the inspection of the bankers.…
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Mortal Actors and Immortal Film Faces
In theater, if a cast member dies, every actor or actress has an understudy who can substitute in the next night. In the early years of the movie business, though, a new concern emerged: what if a cast member dies in the middle of filming? That exact situation happened for the 1922 movie Foolish Wives,…
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Sunless Temples of New York’s Movies
In 1920, electric lighting was starting to become more popular than natural sunlight for shooting movies. See, sunlight had a few problems. The trouble with the sun, as viewed by the efficiency experts of New York’s many picture studios, is not only that its illumination is of an inferior quality, but also that it is…
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Brand of the Movies on Babies’ Names
As motion pictures gained popularity in the 1910s and 1920s, baby names changed based on the most popular characters and stars. The Social Security Administration (SSA) tracks the popularity of baby names over time, starting in 1900. After this quote, I track the the trajectories of some of the names which proved popular around 1920.…
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Lo, the Movies Have Achieved “Revivals”!
Tired of sequels, remakes, and reboots at the movies? By 1919, the movie business was already old enough that they were bringing back “classic” movies. Hugo Riesenfeld, managing director of the Rivoli and Rialto Theatres, has started to show a series of the first Chaplin comedies, and Mr. Griffith [D.W. Griffith who most famously directed 1915’s…
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Millions of Feet of Movie Films for Soldiers
Nearly a century before the release of — and subsequent suspected bomb scare related to — 2007’s Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theaters, this 1918 article also contained the phrase “movie films.” But in this case, it referred to physical film, 7 to 8 million feet of which were shown to soldiers during World…
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Three Film Stars Get $1,000,000 a Year Each
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks were earning a then- staggering $1 million per year in 1917. $1 million in May 1917 would be worth $17.5 million today. How does that compare to the highest-grossing movie stars now? That would only make Chaplin the 24th-highest paid movie star in the world last year. Forbes ranked…
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Is The Moving Picture To Be The Play Of The Future?
In 1911, the motion picture industry was just beginning to boom. Movies were still silent, and black-and-white, but this article predicts how the industry will change once color and sound are added. Is it too much to say that the moving picture is the theatrical show of the future? Yes, if we have got always…
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