13
Nickels Count: Storefront Theaters, 1905–1907

The rapid proliferation of specialized storefront moving-picture theaters—commonly known as "nickelodeons" (a reference to the customary admission charge of five cents), "electric theaters," and "theatoriums"—created a revolution in screen entertainment.¹ They would alter the nature of spectatorship and precipitate fundamental shifts in representation. Their explosive demand for product would not only increase film production but force its reorganization. It is not too much to say that modern cinema began with the nickelodeons.

In retrospect, the period between 1895 and 1905 witnessed the establishment and finally the saturation of cinema within preexisting venues. By the fall of 1905, nickelodeons were becoming recognized as important outlets for films. Commenting on this new development, George Kleine noted that "many circuits of so-called ten-cent houses are springing up, some of them of pretentious construction and heavy investment. These make motion pictures and illustrated songs the chief, sometimes the only numbers on their program." Nickelodeons transformed and superseded earlier methods of film exhibition. Saloons, particularly around amusement parks, had shown films to customers; now picture houses as inexpensive sources of entertainment and socializing began putting many of them out of business.² Theaters presenting melodramas had shown films between acts; suddenly they saw a falling off of business, and some would eventually be converted into picture houses. Burlesque, penny arcades, vaudeville: each found its circumstances challenged by the nickelodeon craze.

The storefront theater, a minor venue for picture shows since 1895, rapidly became the dominant site of exhibition because changes in motion-picture practice had created new conditions that made it immensely profitable. These new elements included a large and growing audience base, a minimal level of "feature" production, a rental system of exchanges, the conception of the film program as an interchangeable commodity (the reel of film), frequent program changes, a continuous-exhibition format, and cinema's relative independence from more traditional forms of entertainment (except illustrated songs). While such changes were gradual and cumulative, a turning point of sorts was reached after the Miles Brothers began to advertise a semiweekly change of films for their customers in July 1905, and George Spoor's National Film Renting Bureau followed in September.³ This move pointed toward new patterns of exhibition since the previously standard once-a-week program change had been based on vaudeville's weekly rotation of acts. By summer 1905 something new was in the making: the nickelodeon era was getting under way.

Although New York City was the center of the American film industry and the source of many innovative commercial practices, nickelodeons did not appear there first. Rather, the nickelodeon phenomenon began in urban, industrial cities of the Midwest like Pittsburgh and Chicago. (Not only was Harry Davis' picture house in Pittsburgh often called the first nickelodeon, but, according to at least one nearly contemporary source, Eugene Cline's Chicago storefront was the second of its kind in the United States.) As one trade journal remarked in May 1906, "Smaller places could boast of these moving picture shows long before it was ever thought that New York would ever have one." Why Pittsburgh and Chicago as opposed to New York or Boston? The different structures of the entertainment industries in these cities was one key determinant. Sunday was the only full day of the week that working-class people had leisure. In New York and Boston, exhibitors gave "Sunday concerts" in theaters banned from providing their customary forms of entertainment on "God's day." Since there were no blue laws in Chicago, vaudeville and other types of theaters showed the same programs all week long; as a result, they could not respond to the post-1903 rise in the popularity of films by showing them on Sundays. In Pittsburgh, blue laws were so strict that there were no Sunday concerts at all.⁴ Thus, in Chicago and Pittsburgh, the fact that traditional structures were less open to the incorporation of motion pictures and alternate exhibition practices encouraged the early appearance of storefront theaters.

Harry Davis and the "Pittsburgh Idea"

While favorable conditions existed for the appearance of nickelodeons in many Midwestern cities, the nickelodeon boom began in Pittsburgh in June 1905, when Harry Davis opened a storefront theater on Smithfield Street. The significance of this theater is not that it was some official "first" but that it was to some degree responsible for the rapid proliferation of theaters across the United States. But who was this Harry Davis? As we have seen, he was Pittsburgh's leading vaudeville magnate, whose Grand Opera House included a group of films (supplied by the Kinetograph Company) on its vaudeville bill during the 1904–1905 season. By the later part of 1904 the Grand provided Davis with clear evidence of the cinema's popularity. As one reporter noted, "The bill is closed by the realistic bank robbery portrayed by the kinetograph, and very few people left their seats until it was concluded." Even more important, Davis was Pittsburgh's leading purveyor of popular amusements. At his Avenue Theater, the Harry Davis Stock Company offered a different play each week. In October 1904, he opened a third theater, the Gayety, with the Harry Davis Travesty Company. The experiment was not successful but illustrates how Davis operated as a local entrepreneur who was willing to try out a wide range of new entertainments on local citizens.⁵

Davis also faced challenges from potential competitors. The most serious was B. F. Keith, who acquired a downtown theater site and threatened to open a rival vaudeville house. Keith was bought off, but in October 1904 a small-time vaudeville house opened with motion pictures. Clearly, Davis had to rely on his knowledge of the

Pittsburgh market to retain his position. The previous April, he had opened an amusement arcade; by fall, he was using part of it to exhibit films. Located on Diamond Street, just below the Grand Opera House, this arcade theater was run by Howard Royer, a Davis employee. According to Royer, who claimed credit for its introduction:

An idea of the size of the space can be imagined when it is stated that the room only accommodated 32 people standing. If chairs had been installed, there would have been room for only about 15. A picture about 2 × 4 feet was projected from an Edison machine and a reel of film 300 to 400 feet in length was a complete show, lasting four or five minutes. After each show the house was cleared and filled up again while the operator was rewinding (Pittsburgh Moving Picture Bulletin, 23 April 1914, p. 4).

This practice, which was common in other cities, suggests one way in which the penny-arcade business pointed toward the nickelodeon era. In Pittsburgh, this small room was "an instant hit." When a fire burned down the Avenue Theater and destroyed the arcade in June 1905, Davis moved his motion-picture show to a larger storefront on Smithfield Street. He called it the Nickelodeon, a title that had been used for other amusement ventures that cost only a nickel. When Davis' brother-in-law, John P. Harris, was named manager, Royer went into the nickelodeon business on his own.⁶

Two additional factors help to explain the early appearance of nickelodeons in Pittsburgh. First, the Pittsburgh area was enjoying unprecedented prosperity. Men in the steel mills were earning record pay, giving them disposable income that they could spend on cheap amusements. The second factor again involved Davis: like others in that city, he was speculating extensively in real estate. In June 1905 he made a $25,000 profit from the sale of two buildings. At the time one observer of the real-estate market noted, "He has been setting the pace in the downtown realty market this year, and since January he has been the principal in purchases and sales of fully $2,500,000 worth of downtown property, on which he has made many thousands of dollars and he is still the leading factor in the market." In July he was offered $525,000 for property on Fifth Avenue and Olive Street but declined, explaining that the property was worth at least $600,000 and that he planned to put an amusement hall on the first floor. When offered $600,000 a few months later, he again declined. "Davis says the property is not on the market," one journalist reported. "He is spending money liberally in remodeling the first floor of the building into an amusement hall and is going to put the entire building in good condition."⁷ Davis' commercial property, some of it temporarily vacant storefronts, gave him space to try out the nickelodeon idea. When it succeeded, he had the ability to increase quickly the number of picture houses.

The success of his first nickelodeon theater not only led to Davis opening similar theaters but was emulated by other Pittsburghers, many of whom had no experience in the field. On 18 November, the Grand Moving Picture Machine Company opened a theater on Penn Avenue. When owner Sol Leight sent the regular operator out for dinner and tried to run the projector himself, the film caught fire; it quickly spread, injuring thirty people. This was one of the first fires in the new nickelodeons and sparked a formal inspection of several downtown picture houses by city officials. According to the press account, the inspectors "made many recommendations and ordered changes in the buildings. All places were ordered to use magazine boxes and take-off reels instead of allowing the celluloid films to fall upon the floor, and oil lamps kept lighted near the door, so that people might see to get out in case the electric lights failed." Once the officers made their reports, regulations were to be issued for the conduct of these places, which the news report generically called nickelodeons after Davis' Smithfield Street house.⁸

By the new year, the proliferating nickelodeons were causing complaints in the business district. According to one local paper,

Brokers and property owners in the downtown district especially are complaining because so many places are springing up where moving pictures are on exhibition at an admission of five cents. The places are becoming so numerous as to be nuisances. Of themselves they are not objectionable except that each is equipped with a noisy phonograph that annoys everybody within hearing of it. The latest place of the kind to open is at 409 Fourth Avenue. The rooms used were formerly occupied by a real estate firm and are certainly not well suited as a place of amusement. Offices in the vicinity lose much of their desirability by the constant noise. An amusement place such as the one next to the Park building on Fifth Avenue is legitimate, but if landlords and property owners keep up the agitation recently started the makeshift amusement parlors will not last long (Pittsburgh Dispatch, 5 January 1906, p. 8).

In fact the agitation was not successful, and the nickelodeons continued to multiply, increasing at the rate of five to eight a month during the first six months of 1906. By June of that year, forty-two nickelodeons were paying a two-dollar-per-month license fee to the city.⁹

Davis understood how he could combine motion pictures and real-estate speculation to make a fortune: they were two sides of the same coin. He also took the "Pittsburgh idea" to other cities. Late in 1905 he opened the first motion-picture theater in Philadelphia and had four in that city by 1907. Another Bijou Dream (while his first theater was called the Nickelodeon, most Davis houses were named Bijou Dream) was the first such theater in Rochester, New York, opening during the early part of 1906. Other Davis theaters appeared in Toledo, Buffalo, and Cleveland, and by the later part of 1907, he had a total of fifteen in Pittsburgh alone. His strategy for rapid expansion depended on leveraging his theaters. In Philadelphia, Moving Picture World reported, "he made $35,000 within a few weeks on the property at the southeast corner of Eighth and Market streets. The store and basement had been bringing $6,000 a year rental. Davis bought the building for one of his Bijou Dreams. After executing a lease to himself for the store and basement at $15,000 a year, he sold the property at a profit of $35,000."¹⁰ When a sharp depression hit toward the later part of 1907, the danger of this aggressive activity came back to haunt him as a drop in patronage made it impossible to pay costly leases. Nonetheless, this method of financing enabled Davis to build a large chain of theaters speedily.

His nickelodeons were quickly copied by other entrepreneurs. In Philadelphia, moving pictures accompanied by illustrated songs had become "a big fad" by January 1906. By mid 1908 over two hundred Philadelphia nickelodeons were in operation. Moving pictures also did well in Rochester; by August 1907, the Bijou Dream had been joined by eight others, with two more in the course of construction.¹¹ In a number of instances, fellow Pittsburghers moved to new cities and became the first to open a storefront picture house:

• Josiah Pearce and his sons, J. Eugene and Frederick W., moved to New Orleans in late 1905 and opened the 250-seat Electric Theater. Their 125-seat Theatorium opened in Birmingham, Alabama, in January 1906. Within the year, "the Pittsburgh of the South," had eight to ten houses.¹²
• W. C. Quimby left Pittsburgh for Zanesville, Ohio, and opened the Pictorium on 1 February. "Shortly after the advent of the original place," Billboard reported, "it could not accommodate the crowds, so another one, known as the Electric Theatre, was opened in the Signal Building on Main Street. Added interest and larger crowds encouraged a third one, known as the Nickelodeon in the Merrick Block, all under one management." Quimby had several other motion-picture theaters in neighboring towns.¹³
• The first nickelodeon in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, was opened by C. R. Jones of Pittsburgh in March 1906.¹⁴

Apostles of "the Pittsburgh Idea" did not always have to travel to other cities to spread the moving-picture craze, for the news of quick money spread in other ways. When Chicago's second nickelodeon opened on State Street on 26 November 1905, Billboard credited Pittsburgh, explaining,

As a matter of record, it is but fair to state that nearly all of the films used in Pittsburgh are rented by a certain leading Chicago firm. They call these shows "Nickelodeons"—by reason of the fact that five cents is the price of admission. Continuous shows are given from early in the morning to late at night. Now we are to have them in Chicago, and soon they will be sprinkled all over our business districts wherever suitable locations can be secured" ("Adopts Pittsburgh Idea," Billboard, 2 December 1905, p. 30).

Eugene Cline, who was almost certainly the person renting films to the Pittsburgh theaters, probably opened the first nickelodeon in Chicago. The next theater, referred to above, was called the Electric and was owned by either Davis or his protégés, the Riley brothers.¹⁵

By the time Carl Laemmle visited Chicago in January 1906, a handful of small five-cent theaters were in operation. Laemmle paid his nickel and entered a small converted storefront on State and Polk streets, where, he later recalled, "Not only was every seat occupied, but the right and left sides were jammed with standing patrons. The rear was also filled and after waiting ten minutes, the duration of the performance, at which time people trickled out, I was finally able to secure a seat." Laemmle, the future president of the Universal Film Company, quickly convinced himself that starting his own moving-picture theater was preferable to the five-and-ten-cent store he had originally planned. (With a background in mass-market retailing, Laemmle is the appropriate symbol of this new era of exhibition.) He opened the 214-seat White Front Theater in Chicago on Saturday, 24 February 1906, and followed it with a second two months later.¹⁶

In April 1906, the proliferation of storefront theaters had advanced sufficiently to be noted by the Chicago Sunday Tribune:

NICKEL THEATRE PAYS WELL; SMALL COST AND BIG PROFIT

Nickels count. They have to, if the so-called vaudeville theaters where the entertainment provided consists of moving pictures, with sometimes an illustrated song or two thrown in, are to pay. That the ventures are profitable is evidenced by their multiplication, and there hardly is a section of the city that is without this class of show houses. From the theater in the heart of the shopping district on State street, where the rental is $2100 a month and the daily expenses $110, to the more modest establishment well up North Clark street, where $200 satisfies the land-lord and other expenses are proportionately lower, is a far cry, but all along the line comes the cheering note that nickels count, and profits are regular.

… [At the shopping-district theater], they must gather 2,200 5 cent coins before profit begins. The house seats 399 people, and two shows an hour are given, except Saturday and Sundays when the crowds are largest and an extra performance is wedged into every sixty minutes.

The hours are from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., and during this time there is no cessation. It is the genuine continuous. The rush hours of the theater's day are from 12 to 2, and from 6 to 8 p.m., when the capacity of the house is taxed as a rule (8 April 1906, p. 3).

The nickelodeon boom produced its own trade paper, Views and Film Index, which was first published on 25 April 1906. It was owned by Vitagraph and Pathé—the two production companies that took best advantage of the initial nickelodeon craze.

By this time, the boom was also under way in New York. Views and Film Index remarked, "These enterprises are practically new to this city but are now springing up in all the boroughs." Six months later, New York was assumed to have more shows than any city in the nation. The Miles Brothers and J. Austin Fynes, who had left Proctor's in November 1905, were among the first to open moving-picture houses in Manhattan.¹⁷ The largest concentration was on Park Row and the Bowery, where at least two dozen picture shows and as many arcades were scattered along a mile-long strip. Reporting on the burgeoning phenomenon, Views and Film Index commented:

They all do business. This is evident at any hour during the day and up to 12 o'clock at night. Places are continually opening. East of the Bowery lies the great East Side section of New York, with its great tenements and the countless humanity living in it. The character of the people who use the Bowery as a thoroughfare and who may be classed as transient is not of such a nature that they would attend these shows: therefore the logical conclusion, and what is now the established fact, is that these moving picture shows and arcades are supported by the residents of the vicinity, the great Italian settlement on the one side and the great Jewish settlement on the other. Proof of this is that on Saturdays, which is the Jewish Sabbath, great holiday crowds from the East Side throng the Bowery, peeking into the slot machines, looking at the pictures and testing their powers on other devices, and this is the best day of the week (6 October 1906, p. 3).

While Jewish, Italian, and other working-class groups were hard-core filmgoers, middle-class shoppers from the Upper East Side and Upper West Side helped support the theaters along Fourteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. The attendance of this wealthier clientele was incidental to the main purpose of their daily trips, however; when New York's middle classes went to an amusement in the evening, it was to a play or a vaudeville show, not to motion pictures.¹⁸

The "nickel madness" of motion pictures spread outward from its Midwestern, urban base in an uneven pattern; almost two years passed before all areas of the United States experienced its presence. Although the five-cent theater had "at last gotten into Kansas" by May 1906, Topeka's first picture house, the Oddity, did not open until early December. (Two more were opened by March 1907.) Likewise, Dallas, Texas, did not have its first picture house until that fall. By October 1906, the "gold rush" was on. As Billboard informed its readers, many of whom worked for carnivals or in summer parks, "Excellent opportunities are presented to the summer show people who are about to retire without definite plans for the investment of small capital for the winter. There is an abundance of new territory to be opened up for the five-cent theater, or nickelodeon, and the vogue of this institution promises a great future."¹⁹

Cities and towns in New England and upstate New York generally did not begin to have specialized motion-picture theaters until the later part of 1906:

• The Theater Comique, owned by Mitchell H. Mark, was Boston's first motion-picture house, opening 30 August with a ten-cent admission. Mark and the Automatic Vaudeville Company added the city's second picture house, the 400-seat Theater Premier, on 2 April 1907.²⁰
• In Worcester, the Palace Museum was reopened as a film house, the 890-seat Nickel, on 24 September 1906.²¹
• In Haverhill, Massachusetts, Archie L. Shepard opened the town's first nickelodeon on 19 January 1907. Later that year, his Bijou Theater was transformed from a simple storefront into an ornate 500-seat house. Competition came from the Orpheum, which had opened by early December. Owned and managed by twenty-four-year-old Louis Burt Mayer, it featured Miles Brothers Moving Pictures.
• In Middletown, Connecticut, the first picture house did not appear until 25 February 1907, when the McDonough Opera House reopened as the 850-seat Nickel Theater.²²
• Oswego, New York, had a regular Sunday motion-picture show during 1906, and a grocery store was converted into a nickelodeon by 3 December.²³
• In Troy, New York, a small penny arcade reopened as the Nickolet Theater on 20 December. Two other Troy picture houses were opened the following March.²⁴

Typically, the first picture show in a large town or small city lost its local monopoly within a few months.

The Keith organization, under E. F. Albee's guidance, became an important operator of motion-picture theaters in New England and Canada. Most were called the Nickel and charged five cents admission. Keith's first picture house was also the first in Providence, Rhode Island, opening on 19 April 1906. From opening day, the

thousand-seat former Park Theater was well attended, clearing eight hundred to one thousand dollars a week. When Keith's nearby Pawtucket Theater ended its regular season, motion pictures took over for the summer on 28 May and, according to the local press, "caught the fancy of Pawtucket people like Wild Fire." On 20 August, when the theater prepared to reopen with a stock company of actors, Keith executives shifted their moving-picture enterprise to the nearby music hall.²⁵

The success of motion pictures gave the Keith organization greater flexibility. In Lewiston, Maine, for example, it acquired and revamped a 1,254-seat theater during November 1906 and reopened with vaudeville and a turn of films. When the theater lost money, management switched to motion pictures and illustrated songs for the week before Christmas. After another week of vaudeville, Keith switched permanently

to motion pictures, renaming its Lewiston theater the Nickel. The "Lewiston policy" was also instituted in Manchester, New Hampshire, where vaudeville had been marginally profitable at best, even prior to the opening of the 250-seat Orpheum picture house in November 1906. On 1 April 1907, Keith's 1,700-seat Manchester theater became the Nickel, with moving pictures and illustrated songs.²⁶ Motion pictures, it was said, turned unprofitable theaters into veritable "klondikes" (i.e., gold mines).

In December 1906, Billboard published a list of 313 nickelodeons in thirty-five states (including Oklahoma, which was then "Indian Territory") and three Canadian provinces. The thirteen unrepresented states included Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Arkansas in the South; Connecticut and Vermont in the Northeast; and the Rocky Mountain states of Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, and Nebraska, but at least one state, Connecticut, had motion-picture theaters by this date. Denver did not have its first nickelodeons until mid 1907; Gastonia, North Carolina, acquired its first on 13 June. Many middle-sized towns in the South and Northwest did not have a picture house until 1908.²⁷ In many parts of the country, however, the number of nickelodeons had saturated the market by the first part of 1907:

• By 1 February 1907, Chicago had 158 theaters showing films.²⁸
• Seven new theatoriums opened in Akron, Ohio, during one ten-day period in February.
• Austin, Texas, had at least four electric theaters in early March; by May it had nine.
• Youngstown, Ohio, had twenty nickelodeons by April.
• Downtown Nashville, Tennessee, had sixteen picture shows in June.
• According to Police Commissioner Theodore Alfred Bingham, New York City had over four hundred picture houses and arcades by June.²⁹

Diverse patterns of early motion-picture exhibition emerged. New England, with its many large converted theaters, differed from the Midwest with its small storefronts. The Northwest, with its numerous small-time vaudeville houses, did not experience a rapid boom of specialized motion-picture theaters like the Midwest or Northeast. San Francisco did not have its seventh nickelodeon until June 1907. The South also differed, for vaudeville was a comparative rarity and economic underdevelopment often delayed the appearance of picture houses.

Exhibition Practices in the Early Nickelodeons

The 1906 storefront theaters were generally small: rarely more, but often less, than two hundred seats. The number of seats, however, did not indicate a nickelodeon's true capacity since the shows were short enough for patrons to stand.

• Nine Pittsburgh nickelodeons listed in Billboard ranged in size from 70 to 200 seats. Four had 100 seats, three had 200, and the other two 70 and 90 seats. These Pittsburgh venues gave between fifteen and forty shows a day, although twenty-five was the standard.
• Five Baltimore theaters reported having 60, 75, 84, 108, and 110 seats, respectively, and giving between forty and fifty-two shows a day, with fifty the mean.
• In Birmingham, Alabama, Pearce's 125-seat Theatorium gave forty-five shows a day, while a rival nickelodeon, one block away, seated 100 and gave sixty shows. A third seated 200 and turned the house over forty times a day.
• Rochester's Bijou Dream seated 250 and gave twenty shows a day.
• In Chicago, Laemmle allowed ten minutes for the film to be projected and another ten minutes for customers to enter and exit. On his second day, the former clothing store manager took in $200 (50 × 20 shows × 200 seats), thus coming within $20 of his weekly expenses. Box office receipts usually ran about $180 a day. Laemmle subsequently claimed to have made $15,000 at his first theater during its first year of operation.³¹

Not all theaters were so small or so rapid in their turnover, however.

• Four Jersey City theaters reported seating capacity/shows per day as 425/12, 200/10, 200/14, and 450/?
• Six Iowa houses reported 200/2, 200/3, 300/continuous, 500/15, 400/8, and 400/3.
• Sigmund Lubin's Bon Ton Theater in Philadelphia had 1,000 seats and thirty-five shows a day.
• Two houses in Newark, New Jersey, seated 500 each.³²

The New England houses, with seating capacities already mentioned, were even larger.

Another form of specialized motion-picture exhibition that developed simultaneously with the nickelodeons took the viewer-as-passenger convention characterizing many travel programs to its logical conclusion.³³ Hale's Tours and Scenes of the World initiated the craze with a theater that looked like a railway car from the outside. Spectators boarded the "train," paid their dime to a "conductor," and sat in a theater that resembled the interior of a carriage. With rear-screen projection, the film was projected onto a screen at the front of the space—the equivalent of an observation car. In some of the more elaborate shows, the pictures were accompanied by the rocking of the car and the sound of railway clatter. The novelty was simply a refinement of efforts made by previous showmen: "Le Ballon Cineorama," for example, had used film in a similar way at the 1900 Paris Exposition, where Hale had presented his exhibition of American firefighting.³⁴ In another popular nineteenth-century entertainment, the spectator sat in a mock railway carriage and watched the scenery—painted on a moving canvas—pass by; this technique was subsequently used in the production of such films as Lubin's The Great Train Robbery and Biograph's Holdup of the Rocky Mountain Express.

George C. Hale, a former Kansas City fire chief, opened his first touring cars at Kansas City's Electric Park on 28 May 1905, showing films from a train going over a rocky gorge and another going down Broadway. Even as it opened, entrepreneurs in other summer parks sought a Hale concession for themselves. That summer the craze was introduced at Coney Island. When the annual exposition opened in Pittsburgh on 30 August, it included "In and Around New York," a variation of Hale's Tour. By early September, Hale had joined forces with Fred W. Gifford and sold licenses and territory. The Brady-Grossman Company, incorporated by William A. Brady of New York and Edward B. Grossman of Chicago on 26 January 1906, owned rights to ten Eastern states. Their Hale's Tour on Fourteenth Street east of Union Square included among its offerings Biograph's Holdup of the Rocky Mountain Express,

a trip to California where "passengers" saw the devastating effects of the San Francisco earthquake, and The Great Train Robbery.³⁵

By the following summer, Hale's Tours and its many imitators were popular features at the nation's amusement parks. Claude L. Hagen's "Le Voyage en l'Air," which simulated a balloon voyage, was shown at Coney Island and Happyland on Staten Island, while Tim Hurst's Auto Tours had three cars at Coney Island. Other imitators included the Trolley Car Tours Company and the Trip to California Amusement Company.³⁶ Such specialized theaters proved to be a fad in the way that the nickelodeons were not. After the 1906 summer season, their impact on film practice receded, although in at least a few situations they continued to operate into the 1910s.

Electric theaters, theatoriums, and nickelodeons created a new kind of specialized spectator, the moviegoer, who did not view films within the variety format of vaudeville, as part of a visit to a summer amusement park, or as one of an opera house's diverse offerings over the course of a theatrical season. Over several years, this transformation would stimulate the evolution of new methods of cinematic representation

and audience reception. Nickelodeons often integrated theatrical amusement into people's daily lives (particularly the daily lives of the working class) in ways that previously had not been possible. Going to vaudeville or the theater took an entire evening and commonly cost ten to twenty-five cents. Summer parks were a day's outing, a special occasion. But picture houses were almost everywhere: on the major thoroughfares, in shopping districts, and in many working-class neighborhoods. Shows lasted from ten minutes to an hour; they could be taken in during lunch, on the way home from work, or in the evening, without constituting a major expenditure.

Moviegoing was generally seen as a working-class activity. In this respect it was different from other theatrical forms of entertainment. Scaled admission fees gave most classes access to vaudeville and melodrama, but once inside, the classes were segregated by ticket price. The single price at nickelodeons not only gave the working class ready access to the theater but, once they were inside, annihilated class distinctions on that class's terms. Those who had known only the gallery suddenly sat in the orchestra. Such economic democracy had social and political implications that the custodians of conservative middle-class values found unsettling. Members of the upper-middle and upper classes (the cultivated or leisure classes, often called the "better" classes) generally were not part of the moviegoing public, at least in large cities. Although the "better" classes saw films, they did so at illustrated lectures like those given by Burton Holmes or at vaudeville performances, not in dingy storefronts. As newspaper editorials soon made clear, these classes usually viewed the nickelodeons with condescension, if not alarm.

In smaller locales where there was a more homogeneous population, nickelodeons were not always seen as the preserve of the working class. Yet even there, cultural distinctions remained in effect. Conservative religious leaders, whose churches might sponsor film exhibitions in their halls under proper supervision, continued to oppose popular culture in general and focused their strongest condemnations on this emerging form of mass entertainment in particular. In large cities or small towns, this opprobrium surely discouraged committed Methodists and other religious conservatives from attending.

The nickelodeons offered not only a kind of economic democracy but greater sexual egalitarianism, as women were encouraged to attend and did so in large numbers. Kathy Peiss has observed that immigrant parents were more willing to let their daughters attend the picture show than any other form of amusement, and the price also was low enough so that working-class women, with their lower wages, could scrape together the admission fee. Even many married women were able to integrate moviegoing into their constant round of household responsibilities. As the nickelodeons opened, almost every one emphasized that it catered "especially to the ladies and children." In Dallas, women and children established themselves as loyal customers before men began to attend in significant numbers. Promotional material for Keith's Lewiston house emphasized that "Everything is clean and neat, the attendants are polite and the best of order is maintained, and the ladies and children can enjoy the pictures in comfort and peace." At the rival Bijou, the manager was soon dispensing Teddy Bear souvenirs to female patrons, in acknowledgment of women's increasingly important role as consumers. When a third Lewiston theater opened in June, it announced that "baby carriages will be taken care of while parents are seeing the show." The emphasis was not only on women patrons but on cultivating mixedsex patterns of social interaction.³⁷

Picture houses also provided children with unprecedented access to popular

amusements. Over two-thirds of the people seriously injured in Pittsburgh's first nickelodeon fire were children between the ages of seven and sixteen (with twelve being the average age). Keith's Lewiston Nickel encouraged parents to send their children after school; unaccompanied children were seated in the balcony so they would not disrupt the adults' enjoyment.³⁸ This type of encouragement often turned theaters into centers around which local communities built much of their socializing. Perhaps not seeing these community ties so clearly, reformers would soon find this easy access for children and unaccompanied young women deeply disturbing.

Moviegoing was a casual activity that made frequent viewing practical and seductive. Sigmund Lubin was one of many who recognized that moving pictures were becoming part of everyday life and would soon be as common as the ice cream parlor or soda fountain. Extrapolating on this trend, he predicted that "the time will come when the life moving picture machine will be part and parcel of every up-to-date home" and "the moving picture will be delivered at home as is the morning newspaper of today." To attract the avid moviegoer, nickelodeons found it profitable to change their offerings with increasing frequency. While new programs were being offered twice a week in July 1905, three changes a week were becoming common by November 1906. By May 1907, nickelodeons were beginning to change programs every day but Sunday.³⁹ The cinema was rapidly becoming a site of mass entertainment and mass consumption. Although this process was not complete, the lateral expansion of motion-picture houses across the country and the vertical increase of program change caused a tremendous demand for films.

A New Generation of Film Exchanges

Nickelodeons created immense opportunities not only for exhibitors and producers but for film renters, who operated at the interface of production and exhibition. Chicago became the first and largest center for these new film exchanges. The early

and rapid proliferation of nickelodeons in the Midwest and the city's traditional role as a distribution center helped this group to dominate the field. By March 1907 approximately fifteen Chicago exchanges controlled as much as 80 percent of the rental business in the United States. George K. Spoor's National Film Renting Company, Eugene Cline & Company, Max Lewis' Chicago Film Exchange, and Robert Bachman's 20th Century Optiscope were all active film renters by 1905. Cline, who had been earning a $6 a week salary in 1900, claimed to be making in excess of $100,000 a year by 1907, when he was twenty-five years old. Max Lewis was the same age. He had come to the United States from Russia in 1901, entered the carnival business, and had two hundred customers and thirty employees by July 1907. They were joined by the Inter-Ocean Film Exchange, which first advertised in April 1906. William Swanson became a renter in the spring of 1906. Swanson, who had been a traveling exhibitor showing Lubin's filmed reenactment of the Britt-Nelson fight in late 1905, settled in Chicago, where he worked briefly as an operator/projectionist in one of the city's first nickelodeons (the Electric). Aided by William Selig, who did not enter the rental business himself, and a partner, James H. Maher, Swanson started William H. Swanson & Company. It prospered and by November had purchased half a dozen storefront theaters.⁴⁰ The Temple Film Company began to offer films for rent in June.

Renting films for his two Chicago theaters during mid 1906, Carl Laemmle felt dissatisfied with the high-handed treatment he received. The exchanges, he later recalled, were "enthroned as 'czars.'" Pictures were promised but not always delivered; sometimes an exchange would take back a film and rent it to a nearby competitor who offered to pay a higher fee:

You paid your money and you had no choice. More often than not, the prints were fit for the scrap heap. It must be explained that the distributor owned these prints outright, having purchased them from the manufacturer at an average price of ten cents per linear foot, and his only interest was to squeeze as much revenue as possible out of its rental. For example, a subject of eight hundred feet cost eighty dollars and would be rented and rerented until the characters became blurred to the naked eye (Laemmle, "The Business of Motion Pictures," p. 41).

The only way that Laemmle was assured of good-quality prints and fresh subjects was by renting new pictures for $35 a week, compared with an earlier $27.50 a week for one reel and a semiweekly change. He soon discovered that nearby nickelodeons were doing the same. Such problems were severe enough, and the commercial opportunities large enough, for Laemmle to start his own exchange rather than develop a chain of theaters.

Setting out to attract customers by offering them "service" as well as a reel of film, Laemmle found an office, bought some secondhand films from George Spoor, contracted for films with two local film agents, and began to advertise. He was fortunate to have ties to a local advertising firm, the Cochrane Advertising Agency. The ads, which changed each week, were folksy in style and contributed significantly to his success. His first advertisement, appearing in Billboard on 6 October, announced:

Absolutely disgusted with our inability in recent months to rent good, clean, clear, lively and strikingly new films, we have gone into business ourselves with the grim determination to supply ourselves and a few select others with

THE BEST FILM SERVICE THAT CAN POSSIBLY BE MAINTAINED

Not a single old or time-worn subject on our list!
Not a single film that is disappointing!
Not a single film that blurs or skips or dazzles!
Everything you want and nothing you don't want! (p. 22).

A few weeks later, Laemmle further individualized his service with ads in the first person. He assured potential customers that "I know your film troubles. I've had them myself…. During the brief time I have been advertising my film service and furnishing managers with the kind of film service they want, I've received dozens and scores of letters—AND NOT A COMPLAINT IN THE LOT." Emphasizing his identification with fellow exhibitors and encouraging the same exhibitors to identify with him, Laemmle's advertisements soon featured the exchange man's portrait. Many of these methods would be used again in 1909–1910, when he promoted his films by featuring their leading actors. Certainly his promotional techniques hit a responsive chord in 1906. Three years later, the Laemmle Film Service would be known as "the largest in the world."⁴¹

Fred C. Aiken and Alvah C. Roebuck, partners in the Amusement Supply Company, were operating the Theater Film Service Company with Samuel S. Hutchinson by the end of 1906. The resources required to start such an enterprise are suggested by the exchange's January 1907 incorporation papers, whereby the three equal partners each received stock valued at $4,000. This stock was given in exchange for:

Though the trio were equal partners, Hutchinson and Aiken were to become major figures in the industry.

By March 1907 other Chicago film exchanges included the Globe Film Exchange, American Film Company, General Film Exchange, New Era Film Exchange, United States Film Exchange, Grand Film Rental Bureau, and Mutual Film Exchange. Competition intensified. As one Chicago correspondent remarked, "Some people in the trade here, who are very humorous, say, 'there will soon be more renters than store shows.' This remark, although a little exaggerated, should, however, be given serious consideration. Some people in the trade predict that a number of new renters will eventually come to a survival of the fittest." Laemmle revealed that many of these exchanges were part of a "Film Trust" operating under different names but controlled by the same person, Eugene Cline. The number of Chicago-based film exchanges continued to increase through 1907 and 1908, although their control over national distribution gradually waned.⁴³

The New York film rental business was at least six months behind Chicago's. Although Eberhard Schneider had started a rental business by November 1906, and L. Hertz by February, neither they nor Harstn & Company and Paley became important renters. William Fox, who operated a group of theaters in Brooklyn, did not open his Greater New York Film Rental Company until March 1907. To William Selig he wrote, "You can put my name on your books for one print of every subject you make in the future and if my business grows, which we trust it will, we will increase our order accordingly." Soon he was advertising in Moving Picture World.

Charles Dressier and Isaac W. Ullman formed the Consolidated Film Company of New York at about the same time.⁴⁴

Increasingly exchanges appeared in cities outside the traditional centers: New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia. Many were started by exhibitors who wanted to be guaranteed a steady supply of films for their theaters. Some were agents for film producers and found their customers wanting to rent films rather than buy them; others had previously supplied exhibitors with equipment and supplies.

• In Pittsburgh, the owner of the Pittsburgh Calcium Light Company died and was succeeded by his son, Richard A. Rowland, who formed a partnership with James B. Clark. In April 1906 the company was renamed the Pittsburgh Calcium Light and Film Company and became a prominent exchange.
• Harry Davis had entered the rental business by March 1907, by which time he controlled "twenty-five of the largest and most successful picture shows in America."
• Harry Warner, who operated a circuit of nickelodeons with his brothers in western Pennsylvania, began to buy films for his Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement Supply Company in April 1907.
• In St. Louis, O. T. Crawford, manager of the Gaiety Burlesque House and owner of ten nickelodeons, opened an exchange at the end of 1906. Initially he kept a small supply of films (fifteen or twenty reels) that he used and rented to others. "We just went into Crawford's place and looked over his subjects and took what we wanted," recalled one nickelodeon manager. By mid February 1907, however, his exchange was renting to twenty-five of twenty-seven motion-picture venues in St. Louis and one hundred in all.
• In Kansas City, A. D. Plimton and several partners operated two small-time vaudeville houses. Tired of renting films from Eugene Cline in Chicago, they opened the Yale Film Exchange sometime in 1906.
• Josiah Pearce and Sons, owners of a circuit of nickelodeons in the South, started an exchange in Birmingham, Alabama, by March 1907.
• Marcus Loew, owner of several theaters in Cincinnati and New York, placed a standing order with William Selig at about the same time. Loew was apologetic, yet confident: "It is impossible for us to buy two of a copy at the present time but we are branching very extensively in this business and no doubt by next fall we may be able to buy ten of a copy."⁴⁵

Similar moves into distribution were made by entrepreneurs in other cities.

Implications of the Nickelodeon Era for Those Involved in Exhibition

The nickelodeons transformed exhibition practices. With theaters changing programs between three and six times a week, the relationship between the exhibitor and what he showed became more and more attenuated. The theater manager, however, continued to exercise control over the sound component of the audiovisual screen experience, even though the economics of the nickelodeon restricted the range of possibilities. Musical accompaniment of some sort was standard, with options including a phonograph, player piano, piano player, or small orchestra. In larger theaters a sound-effects person was often employed. In August 1907 Lyman H. Howe began to promote his use of actors behind the screen as "Moving Pictures That Talk."⁴⁶ The dialogue dubbed synchronously with the image was not only enjoyed but soon imitated. It became extremely popular in 1908–1909, although the expense generally made it impractical for small nickelodeons. The lecture also enjoyed a revival as an accompaniment to films in amusement venues.

Nickelodeon exhibitors did not simply cease to play an editorial role, as had many of their predecessors: even their opportunities to act as film programmers were circumscribed. During the early nickelodeon era, there was a general shortage of product. One of the chief criteria for a desirable exchange was its ability to supply films not previously shown in that town or neighborhood or, at the very least, to avoid "repeaters"—films that had already been shown in the same theater. Through early 1908 nickelodeons that changed films three or more times a week showed virtually everything made by the major American and European producers. Some managers urged their exchange to satisfy patrons' interest in actualities, while others pleaded for sensational melodramas, but the range of possibilities was severely limited. Keith's circuit of theaters was one of the few customers with sufficient economic clout to receive individual attention. To keep them satisfied, Percival Waters' Kinetograph Company periodically arranged for the Edison Company to make special news films (e.g., Auto Climbing Contest, which showed a race at Crawford Notch, New Hampshire, on 31 July 1906). Since most nickelodeon owners and managers were new to the film business, they were relatively unaware of this loss of creative responsibility, considering their theaters instead simply another business venture.

To be sure, exhibitors hired singers and were involved in the selection of illustrated songs, but in 1906–1907 their programming choices were circumscribed.⁴⁷ Showmanship of a more entrepreneurial kind offered these exhibitors increasing opportunities for individual activity. As early as March 1907 the owner and manager of a Philadelphia nickelodeon "had souvenir postal cards made of the beautiful snow white front of their theatre and the cards are in all the novelty stores. It has helped popularize the place." A California proprietor gave a watch away to a lucky ticket bearer. To gain maximum return on the gimmick, the promotion was spread over several screenings.⁴⁸

Exchanges, while specializing in distribution, continued to practice residual activities that reflected their earlier role as old-line exhibition services. They still acted as programmers, usually by adding a few shorts to a longer story film in order to fill out a thousand-foot reel. They also determined the range and mix of films available to an exhibitor via their purchases. Exchanges associated with certain producers predictably favored their works, though here again the shortage of pictures meant that most large exchanges acquired at least one print of virtually every available fiction film. A few exchanges (again usually those associated with producers) had the capability to take films of some news events, which they could supply as specials to their customers. Some, notably the Miles Brothers, arranged to acquire exclusive films from European sources.⁴⁹ A few also created their own "head titles" to place on films, a residual strategy for claiming authorship. Thus the main title on a surviving print of Vitagraph's Automobile Thieves (1906) reads "Bold Bank Robbery" and displays the logo of J. W. Morgan, a film renter in Kansas City.⁵⁰

The Projection Booth Becomes a Sweatshop

The individuals whose work, status, and economic opportunities suffered the greatest damage as a result of the nickelodeon era were the motion-picture operators, who ran the projectors. Once they had handled complicated machines that required dexterity, wide-ranging mechanical expertise, and experience. In the late 1890s and early 1900s many operators (including Edwin Hadley and Ben Huntley) headed their own exhibition companies. Others (G. W. Bitzer and C. Fred Ackerman) doubled as cameramen. A few (Edwin S. Porter and Nicholas Power) were equipment manufacturers. Many were skilled mechanics. The early 1900s saw not only a shift in creative and editorial responsibilities to the production company but a simplification of the projection process. Much less skill was required of the operators to give a minimally competent show.

The rapid proliferation of nickelodeons put downward pressure on operators' wages; novices were frequently hired at ten to twelve dollars a week, and by early 1907 many veterans accustomed to salaries ranging from twenty to twenty-five dollars a week found themselves looking for jobs.⁵¹ Many of them complained loudly about their new circumstances. J. A. Shackelford, an experienced but unhappy operator in Florida, wrote in a letter to the editor of Moving Picture World:

I have operated machines for eleven years and know my business; can give a good show, know what light I can get, how to wire my machines, and take care of films.

A lot of dissatisfaction is caused by not having [films] properly spliced and in running order. I believe that if the film-renting agencies would take the matter up, and require a registered operator, and one who knows how to handle a film properly, half the damage now caused could be avoided and a longer lease given to the life of the films. They could then reduce the cost of renting to about one-third and be a large saving to the theater people. I shall be pleased to give my views on the requirements of an operator to give a good exhibition (6 April 1907, p. 73).

In a letter to the same publication, an Indiana operator remarked, "The managers in this locality are inclined to hire some boy to handle the machine, at a salary that no one but a boy can exist on."⁵²

Working conditions deteriorated for operators. Most nickelodeons had only one operator and were in active operation twelve hours a day, six and often seven days a week. The same reel or two of film was screened on hand-cranked projectors over and over again at the many houses with continuous shows. While rewinding, the projectionist was showing illustrated songs. The pace was so unrelenting for one poor operator that "the habit had grown upon him so that it is said he often while asleep goes through the motions of turning a crank." The manager or someone else might spell the operator briefly on his breaks, but these people had their own responsibilities and lunch or dinner time must have been brief. As if this was not enough, operators often had to sweep out the theater and put up advertisements before their real task began. Some were even expected to explain the pictures and turn the crank at the same time.⁵³

Nickelodeon operators faced not only unprecedented tedium and long hours but physically uncomfortable, sometimes dangerous, and finally unhealthy working conditions. The projection booth became a furnace from the immense heat generated by the arc light and rheostat. City and state legislatures frequently passed fire laws requiring operating booths made of steel, with very limited openings for ventilation. Temperatures of 113 degrees Fahrenheit were typical. "The effect of the continuous high temperature in which the operator is compelled to work will be the general weakening of the entire system," remarked Willis Elliot Reynolds of Philadelphia. The carbon dust from the arc lamps used for projection also filled the booth and with it, the operator's lungs. "It may not matter for a few months; perhaps a year, but in time the tiny particles of dust will produce irritation of the mucous membrane. It is therefore highly injurious to the lungs, throat and membrane of the nose," warned Reynolds. "From this irritation may result pneumonia, pleurisy, tonsillitis and chronic catarrh of the nose. It also produces weakness of the brain, excites the nervous system and impoverishes the blood." A further health hazard unknown to Reynolds was created by the asbestos that lined many projection booths, often at the insistence of fire marshals and insurance underwriters. Furthermore fires in the projection booth posed the risk of serious burns, injury, or in a few cases, death.⁵⁴

The projection booths in nickelodeons became small, individualized sweatshops. "What is an operator?" asked one experienced projectionist. "A machine, a slave, a dog to be kicked or a man to whom some consideration should be shown?" Suffering a falling wage scale, loss of status, and deteriorating working conditions, operators began to organize by early 1907. Some attempts were made to limit the labor pool through an operators' league and certification of operators by the state, but this tactic proved cumbersome and ultimately ineffective since it depended on local and state governments to take action. At the same time, operators were being organized by established unions. In Philadelphia, a series of preliminary meetings in late 1906 led to the formation of the Moving Picture Operators Union on 6 January 1907 with thirty-five members. The group met each week on Sunday afternoons. In New York City the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers organized a local in February with almost seventy-five members after its first month of meetings. By August the American Federation of Labor and the International Association of Theatrical and Stage Employees (IATSE) were fighting over who should organize and represent the picture operators.⁵⁵

Although unions often set some standards for accepting new members, their main goal was to organize operators whatever their skill and experience and then form them into a cohesive body. As F. H. Richardson, who would subsequently become Moving Picture World's correspondent on projection, argued in a letter to that publication:

What is needed is a bona fide union of operators, affiliated with the electrical workers' union, whose avowed and only purpose is to protect the operator. There is one thing and one thing only [that] will ever eliminate the incompetent man, and that is establishment of a uniform wage scale. When the employer has to pay the same for the incompetent as for the good man he will naturally employ the latter, but so long as he is allowed to put on an incompetent because he can get him cheap the incompetent will be with us. You may attempt his elimination by means of "examining boards." That would probably help some, but only in a very measurable degree. An operators' union by itself would be able to accomplish little, but by the aid of the electrical workers it could do much. An operator should receive 50 cents per hour on long hauls with time and a half for "evening only" shows but he will never again get that wage except through a fight (11 January 1908, pp. 25–26).

The diversity of the operators' backgrounds, the low level of skill needed to present some kind of image on the screen, the elitism of some veterans, and the tenuousness of unionism in the United States prevented these efforts at organization from being immediately effective.

Film Fires in the Nickelodeon Era

Film fires were a highly controversial subject in the motion-picture, theatrical, and amusement industries. Views and Film Index had a policy of not reporting them, considering this kind of publicity bad for business. While Billboard provided occasional mentions, Moving Picture World was the only trade journal to cover the issue extensively. As we have seen, such fires had been a problem since the beginning of cinema, but the nickelodeon boom turned it into a crisis. (Nitrate film has a combustion point of only 284 degrees Fahrenheit.) Theater owners often lacked the expertise or financial resources to make their theaters safe, and the large number of inexperienced operators created by the rapid spread of nickelodeons further increased the likelihood of disaster. By the summer of 1907 two to three film fires were occurring each week in the state of Ohio, where the press reported "75 disastrous fires within the past year." Although Akron had only three picture houses in December 1906, it suffered two minor film fires in a single week. By the following August, Birmingham, Alabama, had experienced three fires in its picture houses.⁵⁶ The total by late 1907 was perhaps a thousand. And although the vast majority were minor, were confined to the projection booth, and frequently involved only the loss of a reel of film, the possibility of something much more serious—the death of a large number of moviegoers—always existed.

This risk to society quickly led to the intervention of state and local governments. In early 1905, even prior to the nickelodeon boom, the Massachusetts legislature passed a law requiring certain safety standards for motion-picture projection. Film reels had to be mounted in enclosed metal cases, a rail placed around the machine, and the machines inspected by the district police; the operator, meanwhile, was required to have at least six months of experience or show sufficient evidence of his abilities. More often, however, local ordinances and police inspectors came in the wake of a fire in a local nickelodeon. Although Akron's mayor and fire chief closed all three picture houses after its two fires, these theaters were quickly reopened once the owners made small changes. Following the fires in Birmingham, electricity was cut off in all but one of the city's nickelodeons until they conformed to newly adopted fire laws. In some cases, the regulations were severe and even unreasonable. Thus, after repeatedly complying with a series of escalating demands—the final one required the use of asbestos wiring that was manufactured only by a French firm—Houston's nickelodeon owners had to sue the city to get an injunction that would allow them to reopen their houses. The rash of fires also proved of great concern to insurance underwriters, who often encouraged draconian measures in an attempt to reduce the risks. In many cases, they raised their premiums $1 per $100 of insurance on buildings that housed picture theaters, with some reductions for those that conformed to the rules of the National Board of Fire Underwriters and the National Electric Code. Problems involved not only standards for machines and licensing of operators but fire exits, wiring, and even locations (in New York, nickelodeons were not allowed in tenement buildings).⁵⁷ Fires and the issues surrounding their prevention continued to be of great concern through the first five years of the nickelodeon era.

Traveling Exhibition as the Nickelodeon Era Begins

The growing popularity of motion pictures, which made the nickelodeon system of exhibition possible, at first benefited the traveling exhibitors. Lyman Howe not only added a third company in the fall of 1904 but purchased a camera and began to take some local views for inclusion in his programs. By early 1906 D. W. Robertson had five units, one based in New York City and four traveling around the country and playing primarily to religious groups.⁵⁸ For many traveling picture men, however, prosperity soon gave way to poverty as the nickelodeons destroyed their business wherever these new venues were established.

It would be wrong to say that traveling exhibition was more expensive for patrons. Nickelodeons' ten-to-thirty-minute shows for five cents were no less costly per minute than the traveling exhibitors' two-hour entertainments for ten to twenty-five cents. Yet, unlike the traveling shows, nickelodeons targeted their local audiences on a daily basis. Sometimes they arranged to screen the same films as the itinerant showman but before his arrival. And because they operated continuously, the storefronts were also more convenient. As the spread of nickelodeons increasingly restricted the territory within which traveling exhibitors could profitably operate, they were forced to rely on smaller and smaller communities—those that did not yet boast their own picture show.

If by mid 1908 a whole generation of traveling showmen had lost their calling as a result of the nickelodeons, many had already made a successful transition into this new exhibition era. Archie Shepard, for example, opened the first picture house in Meriden, Connecticut, on 20 October 1906. Then, after a competing theater appeared by the following April, the showman opened a second theater in the same town. By the end of April, the former projectionist had picture houses in New York and a number of other cities, including Lewiston, Maine, where his traveling companies had provided regular doses of motion-picture entertainment between 1904 and 1906. Elsewhere Shepard continued to ply his specialty of Sunday concerts, and during the summer of 1907 he enjoyed substantial profits giving regular picture shows at legitimate theaters in various Eastern cities. Thomas L. Tally was another traveling exhibitor who shifted easily to nickelodeon exhibition. He opened the five-hundred-seat New Broadway Theater at 554 South Broadway in Los Angeles on 3 March 1906 and by November was operating a film exchange. J. A. Le Roy, meanwhile, who would later make a bogus claim to have been the first to project motion pictures, shifted from traveling exhibition to equipment manufacture (the acmegraph projector) and operated a modest film exchange.⁵⁹

Many showmen, however, suffered the fate of Max Hollander, who toured a circuit of small towns in northern New York and gave picture shows during the summer of 1906. By the following year, he found that the same localities were supporting nickelodeons. As a result, he became a projectionist for one of the very few individuals who continued to prosper as a traveling showman in the nickelodeon era: Lyman Howe.⁶⁰

Howe and his general manager, Samuel Maxwell Walkinshaw, took advantage of cinemas growing popularity by making their first tentative moves into the big cities—Detroit and Cleveland—during the spring of 1905 and added Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Boston the following theatrical season. Howe's picture shows offered an alternative to the type of film entertainment presented in either the new picture houses or vaudeville. For the 1905-1906 season, films of the Russo-Japanese War provided him with an unusual headline attraction. They were acquired on a semi-exclusive basis from Charles Urban, whose cameraman Joseph Rosenthal had been at Port Arthur during the siege. With President Roosevelt sponsoring a peace conference that brought the war to a close in August 1905, Americans found these films of tremendous interest. In addition, Howe filmed Roosevelt's visit to his hometown of Wilkes-Barre immediately after the successful conclusion of the president's diplomatic mission. These subjects enabled one Howe company to gross almost six thousand dollars in eight consecutive play dates. He also enjoyed a highly successful week-long engagement at Ford's Opera House in Baltimore during May 1906. (Before this, Howe's companies stayed in a theater for a few days at most.) The following May, Howe returned and generated 21,477 paid admissions—more than seven thousand dollars—in six days. This was so successful that one of his companies revisited Baltimore in August 1907 to play a four-week summer season with program changes at the beginning of each week. For the next twelve years, Howe's companies were to present summer seasons of motion pictures in prominent, big-city theaters.

Howe's shows appealed to people who often felt out of place in the nickelodeons. Admission fees of twenty-five, thirty-five, and fifty cents (fifteen cents for children at matinees) as well as his mixture of actualities (rarely shown in the nickelodeons) and sanitized comedy distinguished these exhibitions from the storefronts. The showman drew audiences from middle-class amusement goers (or those aspiring to the middle class), from conservative Protestants who wanted to be entertained even though they needed to feel they were receiving some instruction, and from consumers of refined entertainment. As a Howe employee would later explain to a prominent theater manager, "Each of the programs is so assembled to appeal to all classes. In subject matter they are just heavy enough to attract the serious minded and yet light enough for those seeking amusement only."⁶¹

In many respects, Howe had continued to refine and rework the types of subject matter evident in the earlier Lumière programs, though from a pro-British perspective. Military subjects were always an important part of his show (England's Naval Display, Servia and Its Army, etc.), with England favorably portrayed as the dominant world power and the military buildup that led to World War I glorified. Many films, such as Teak Forest in India and Picturesque Java, showed the exoticism and economic value of distant colonies. Such display of foreign military and colonial spectacle supported the interventionist, imperialist policies of President Roosevelt. Other scenes showed royalty and the wealthy enjoying leisure activities. These programs, like Howe's earlier exhibitions, lacked a critical stance toward their subject matter. They offered a cinema of reassurance, albeit by excluding large areas of reality from their view. A few other exhibitors, such as Edwin Hadley, survived by following Howe's programming lead.

The growing popularity of motion pictures finally affected the illustrated lecturers. With the 1906-1907 season, a number of these men joined Burton Holmes and Dwight Elmendorf in incorporating films into their programs. Frederick Monsen's four lectures on California and the Southwest, including "The San Francisco Earthquake" and "Arizona: The Egypt of the New World," used slides tinted by the speaker and motion pictures he acquired from commercial sources. Edward Howe, editor of the Atchison (Kansas) Globe, gave a travel lecture, "Around the World," featuring stereopticon slides taken by himself and his daughter with a Kodak. The evening concluded, however, with moving pictures of the 1906 Atchison Corn Carnival, shot by William Selig especially for Howe. Edward S. Curtis, who had earlier given illustrated lectures on the American Indian, added motion pictures to his talks by 1907, the year that his first volume of The North American Indian (1907-1930) appeared. Topics included "The Apaches and the Navahoes," "The Northwestern Plains Tribes," and "The Alaskan People and Eskimo Life," with photographs and films taken by Curtis and his assistants.⁶² During 1906 and 1907 Robert K. Bonine, the Edison cameraman, traveled to Hawaii, Yellowstone Park, and the Panama Canal to take both stills (which he owned) and films (which were the property of the Edison Company). He then used some of the slides and films to give his own illustrated talks on Hawaii. All the films were placed on the market, however, and purchased by a variety of lecturers for their own programs.

The growing popularity of motion pictures meant that Americans of all classes and cultural backgrounds were likely to see more and more of them. This expansion, however, was not uniform, nor did it have the same impact on all groups or types of film practice. Elites saw motion pictures within the illustrated-lecture format that had been well established by the 1870s and 1880s. If D. W. Robertson's success is any indication, church-sponsored film entertainment continued to be popular and may even have expanded. But it was the nickelodeons that spread like wildfire. When people thought of picture shows they increasingly thought of storefront theaters. These offered amusement and a regular theatrical experience to many working-class people who never before could afford it. It was something new in American life. Outside of the large cities, theaters had traditionally been built and controlled by local elites. Now they were started by an ex-saloon keeper, the owner of a dry-goods store, a furrier, car dealer, or someone who had recently left the carnival. Nickelodeon managers were often immigrants, often Jewish, and often from out of town. Established community leaders didn't know what to think about the change except to know that they did not control it. Some thought it should be abolished, others were more laissez-faire. A few embraced it, but many thought it needed to be reformed. Film fires proved they were dangerous, but there was even more concern with the way the collective though intimate experience of the screen could change—and from a certain viewpoint corrupt—the consciousness of its devotees. The nickelodeons inaugurated an era in which the "movies," as they came to be called, were seen in a new light.