This is the third chapter 3 of my previously unpublished book on the birth of the American popular culture, From This Twisted Root: The Silent Movie Era and the Birth of the American Popular Culture.
CHAPTER 3 – THE NICKELODEON AGE
Gradually, the movies began to move out of the vaudeville halls into homes of their own. In small town America empty stores were turned into makeshift theaters. They called them, “store shows”. They were family owned and operated and they proved immediately popular, very profitable. In some cases they even gained a measure of respectability.
In the cities, such as Chicago and New York, the movies found a home in cheap theaters know as “nickelodeons” (named for the nickels the theater operators charged for admission). Many of these nickelodeons were nothing more than converted penny arcades. Writing of these early movie houses, Griffith and Mayer describe them as “dank, noisome places, repulsive to the elect.”
The proprietors of the nickelodeons were generally as seedy as the establishments they operated. They have been referred to as “gypsies and bunco artists.” Often they were first generation immigrants and just as often Jewish. Whatever they were, or wherever they came from, they all shared one thing in common; they were more than happy to take the nickels from the willing hands of their shabby patrons, and in the process many of them became wealthy.
Within a few years movies had established themselves as the preferred entertainment of the common man. Benjamin B. Hampton offers an explanation for the early acceptance of movies by those on the lower end of the social ladder:
“The telegraph, the telephone, the electric light, had created a sensation but they had not entered into the lives of millions of people. The common man and his family still used kerosene lamps; not but the well-to-do had telephones: and the telegram was a form of communication seldom known in the average household except to announce serious illness or death. But this new thing – this ‘living picture’ affair – was not a prosaic tool to reduce labor or to save time; it was not an instrument to create more comfort and luxury for the well-to-do. It was a romantic device to bring entertainment to common people.”
While this is true, it should also be noted that perhaps the main reasons for the popularity of movies was that they were often the most affordable entertainment available to the urban poor.
Looking back, it is no wonder that the respectable folk, who, as we have noted, had many more entertainment options, began to consider Nickelodeons a social problem. They referred to them as “cheap show for cheap people.” Some were saying that they ought to be shut down. Others were calling for their regulation. The church joined the battle, adding “movie going” to its list of “worldly amusements.” But, while the respectable and religious moralized, complained and censored, the urban poor and the simple people in the small towns of America continued to go to the movies. The elect might find them repulsive, but as Griffith and Mayer point out, “there were plenty of the unelected, and they kept coming.”
As for the films, even with the improvements, spurred by the creativity of Melies and others, the motion pictures of the early 1900s were still not “movies” in the modern sense of the word. It was left to movie pioneer, Edwin S. Porter to invent the “modern” motion picture.
Porter began his film making career as a cameraman for the Edison Company. He rose to become the foremost director of the Nickelodeon age and continued to enjoy prominence in the industry until his retirement in 1915.
Porter’s films, like those of Melies before him, told stories. But unlike Melies, who told his stories as though they were stage plays, Porter introduced cinematic devices such as “cross-cutting,” which enabled him to string the various scenes of his productions into continuing narratives.
The first film he produced using these new methods was “The Life of an American Fireman”; but it was his second effort, “The Great Train Robbery” (1903), that arrested the attention of the movie going public.
“The Great Train Robbery” has sometimes been referred to as “The first real movie.
” Filmed in New Jersey, it was a saga of crime in the old West. As the movie reached its climax, for no apparent reason, one of the actors stared into the camera, raised his gun, and fired it at the audience. This unusual ending was probably an attempt to thrill the viewers. It achieved its purpose. When the gun was fired girls screamed, hearts skipped a beat, people jumped — then — the relieved audience breathed a collective sigh of relief and let out a few nervous laughs as they realized that the bullet had not connected.” (Griffith and Mayer)
But they were wrong — the bullet had made an impact and the reaction of the audience proved it.
Perhaps the reason “The Great Train Robbery” has been hailed as the first real movie is that through its fast moving story and unusual ending it drew the audience into the movie going experience as never before. For the first time the audience was invited to became a part of the fantasy, and once drawn in they were uniquely impacted.
Though he had not intended to do so, Edwin Porter’s creative conclusion to “The Great Train Robbery” has created a fitting symbol for the motion picture industry itself. Porter and all of the others who would follow him, would constantly fire loaded guns at their audiences. Their guns were the movies they produced, their bullets were the ideas and values which they wrapped in the images they projected. The better the images, the more powerful the impact. It would soon become apparent that ideas communicated in this fashion were more powerful than anyone could have anticipated.
