A history of the movies (1931)

44 A HISTORY OF THE MOVIES and profits were computed on a linear basis, and for a decade no one was ever bothered with the idea that perhaps audience intelligence might be moving toward an appreciation of something better. Superlatives are needed to describe the success of the screen when films reached the story-telling length of a thousand feet. Living pictures had been eagerly accepted as a marvelous novelty, and now they had gone far beyond the bounds of novelty. An exhilarating form of entertainment had grown out of a mechanical plaything. Romance, adventure, comedy, thrills, and laughs, presented by living people in life size — this was fulfilment of the mysterious promise glimpsed by the populace when the first movies flickered blotchily on the screen. Their vague, indefinite dreams were coming true. To the hundreds of thousands who had become screen enthusiasts in the years of episodes and storyettes, the story-telling motion pictures added millions. In every city and large town in the country so many customers appeared at ticket windows that there were not enough halls or upstairs rooms to seat them, and a new type of playhouse had to be created to accommodate the newcomers. In the spring of 1902, Thomas L. Tally had opened the Electric Theater in Los Angeles, for moving pictures, the price of admittance being ten cents. Although the Electric was a success from the start, and other ten-cent "electric" theaters soon appeared in various parts of the country, it was merely the forerunner of a new, unique system of retailing popular entertainment. Far away from the Pacific Coast, in the industrial districts of Pennsylvania, John P. Harris, trained in theater operation by his father, was managing a musee, curio hall, and variety show of his own in McKeesport, and was associated with his brother-inlaw, Harry Davis of Pittsburgh, in various theatrical enterprises, when living pictures appeared. In April, 1897, they obtained a