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94 A HISTORY OF THE MOVIES
audiences that many patrons, wearied and disgusted, would cease to visit the theaters. One reel, therefore, continued as the standard length of dramas and melodramas for several years after its introduction, and, when William Selig finally dared to produce a two-reeler, the industry was astonished by the prompt response of a large section of the public to the longer form. The demand for two-reelers was sufficient to cause several producers to advance to this length so quickly that afterwards they claimed to have antedated Selig.
The best of the two-reel films were really adequate mediums of story-telling by play-acting. In twenty-five to twenty-eight minutes, the essentials of a spoken play of three to five acts could be presented effectively, and with convincing delineations of character that were not possible in half this length. Very soon the more important, or more pretentious, themes appeared only in two reels. Westerns and other melodramas and less ambitious stories remained in one reel, and comedies, travels and "novelties" continued in split reels, comedies moving slowly from five hundred feet to a thousand.
However, even after the superior quality of these longer films had raised standards to a definitely higher level, and the more mentally active sections of the movie multitude were welcoming them, there remained the necessity of permitting the slowerminded groups of spectators to adjust themselves to the improvements. The screen theaters had created a democracy of opportunity in entertainment; five and ten-cent admittance fees had leveled the cost so that practically everyone could afford to enjoy pictures; but, as there is never a democracy of mental development, while the quick minds were pushing ahead, the slower ones had to be carried safely from one era to another, or — as I have said before — the screen would have lost them.
The gap between split-reels and one-reel and the "long" pictures of two reels was bridged by a gradual evolution in exhibition methods. Whereas, in the beginning, all store shows had been alike, and nickelodeons had never pretended to be anything but cheap playhouses presenting uniform, standardized