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The Film's the Thing: Moviegoing in Philadelphia, 1935–36

2014; Indiana University Press; Volume: 26; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/filmhistory.26.4.58

1553-3905

Jurca, Sedgwick,

Shakespeare, Adaptation, and Literary Criticism

This essay explores what a trove of daily box-office reports from the Stanley-Warner theater chain exhibition records can tell us about moviegoing in a major American metropolis in the mid-1930s. By tracing films’ movements and earnings systematically and relationally across twenty-three theaters, it shows how important the feature film, and a number of specific films, were to moviegoers, and that distribution and exhibition responded to their film preferences. The findings also indicate that even theaters within the same run demonstrated significant variety in the audience needs and desires they served.