Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The popular Nickelodeon. Despite efforts of businessmen to end existence
of the five cent theater, it still lives in Prospers
because of popularity. From Moving Picture World, January eighteenth, nineteen
o eight by Frederick J. Haskin. This is a LibriVox recording.
(00:21):
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. The
efforts of merchants in Philadelphia and other cities to put
a stop to the moving picture shows may find hearty
response among business men, but the great majority is on
(00:44):
the side of the Nickelodeon. Philadelphia uses law processes, Louisville
uses fine regulations. Other cities employ other means to end
the existence of the five cent theater, but it still
lives in prospers financial panics. Notwithstanding, the Nickelodeon came to
(01:06):
answer a demand for short, cheap, wholesome entertainment and passed
quickly from the list of novelties into that of standard amusements.
Its home is a small hall that will see a
few hundred people for if too great a crowd is admitted,
the amusement transcends its privileges and is raised to the
(01:27):
rank of a theater and must pay a theater license
instead of an amusement license. The hall is fitted with
a small stage that supports a screen for the pictures,
while a piano or performalist musical apparatus beats out an
accompaniment to the comedy or tragedy being portrayed by the
moving pictures. A five cent admission invites a patronage that
(01:50):
would not be given anywhere else, and one may leave
as early as one wishes, or stay through the entire performance.
Was born in a little southern town and was the
inspiration of a soda fountain man. This man had bought
an expensive soda fountain and installed it in an old
(02:10):
drug store, and soon found he was losing money. Just
in the midst of the financial straits, his landlord came
and offered him the next door building, also at a
bargain figure. The building he already had did not seem
to be paying, but as nothing could be worse than
that one, he concluded he would take two. He cast
(02:33):
about in his mind for some means of making it
a paying thing, and just then, when a maker of
moving pictures came by, he found his solution. The picture
maker had not been so successful himself. They decided to
open a small theater that would see to a hundred
people and entertain them by throwing moving pictures on a
(02:55):
screen and have a graphophone make music at the same time.
They at first charged ten cents admission. Then they saw
that half as much would be more popular and profitable.
The nickelodeon was a success from the start. At the
end of eight or nine months, the soda fountain man
(03:15):
and the moving picture maker had thirty five thousand dollars
in the bank of the small town and were well
on the highway to success. Their idea was soon flying
far and wide over the country. Big cities and little
ones took it up, until there are five thousand are
over in full swing throughout the country, with many hundred
(03:37):
in New York alone. Some have even gone so far
as to enlarge their houses and take out regular theater
licenses at five hundred dollars a year so they can
accommodate the eight hundred or one thousand people that their
gatemen have showed. Would be possible if the auditoriums were
large enough. Philadelphia alone has one that clears upwards of
(04:01):
thirty thousand dollars a year, and this after one considers
the fact that the average attendance of the smallest ones
must average four thousand a week at least to meet
the running expenses. New York's great trouble has been that
the noise of the Barker's megaphones and phonographs at the
(04:21):
entrances cause annoyance, and formal complaints have been filed against
the Nickelodeons by merchants of their neighborhoods. As a result,
the barker may go, but the phonograph, under one of
its many guises, may remain, for in this age of
machinery that must soon minimize manned services in many ways,
(04:44):
even as a mechanism throws the figures of the actors
and actresses on the canvas in the darkened rooms where
owl eyed ushers skillfully find you a seat, so it
must eventually furnish the entrance calls the urgent invitations to
come and see what inside, and all the gay music
that sets you to wondering what lies beyond the doors.
(05:07):
Children are the best patrons of the Nickelodeon. The five
set piece is easily begged from the parental purse and
thousands of tots go to the tiny moving picture show
who never see any other to meet their demands. Real
fairy tales are often enacted and bits of travel and
history shown in large cities where a new foreign population
(05:31):
helps swell the census rolls. An astonishingly large percentage of
the audience in the Nickelodeon is drawn from the Latin races,
who cannot speak English, who could not understand a word
of an English play, but who can understand and enjoy
a picture pantomime. Romance finds its adherents the world over,
(05:53):
whether one understands the language of a country or not.
And the tragedies of a Watteau shepherdess, posed perhaps in
some modern wood just outside Paris, where real sheep are available,
are quite real to the audience of a New York
east Side Nickelodeon, whether they are mentally interpreted in Yiddish, Italian, Bohemian, Syrian,
(06:17):
or Polish. The blunders of the tipsy man with the
accommodating latch key are understandable in any language when only
a picture portrays them, and the tragic story of the
forsaken wife and the dying child are as real as
real can be. And sympathetic sniffles and visible applications of
(06:37):
handkerchiefs bear flattering tribute to the far away actors in
some moving picture studio who acted out the touching little
drama before the powerful camera. The Nickelodeon, in its demand
for many in varied pictures, has created, in the five
years of its existence, a new class of actors and
(06:59):
a new class of playwrights. Actors who never more see
a real stage, who are ever far away from real footlights,
and who never hear the plottits of the millions they
please by their art play out in pantomime before the cameras.
The hundreds of little dramas that the moving picture machines
under their manifold names present to audiences all over the world.
(07:24):
Men who could not write a line of a play
have become famous at making plots for the actors to interpret.
The Nickelodeons use the majority of the films so prepared,
and talent and ingenuity are busy keeping up the supply.
It is no small task making these little photographic films
(07:44):
of the modest proportions of five eighths by one and
one eighth inches, but so many of them strung together
that the whole is many hundred feet long. Large studios
are fitted up as interiors. Roof gardens and the top
of giant skyscrapers are pressed into service, and often the
homes of the actors and actresses are used to give
(08:07):
better effects when needed. Long excursions into the parks near
Paris or New York are made with actors and actresses
in costume, ready to run automobiles, ride horseback, engage in
some mirth provoking chase, or act out simple tea party scenes,
as the needs of the play may be. When real
(08:29):
pedestrian or disinterested parties of any sort sometimes cross the
line of the camera at the critical minute, so much
the better for the picture. It gives a greater reality.
Busy thoroughfares, shady country lanes, and private gardens are all
being pressed into service today by the enterprising maker of
(08:50):
pictures for the five cent theater, and every device that
science can bring him is pressed into service. Sometimes the
processes slow and the work is expensive. There are freak
pictures where giant knives rush out and slice bread unaided
with a few jerks, and amid much laughter and speculation.
(09:12):
The incident is over in a few seconds, Yet it
took many days to make that film, for the knife
was moved ever so tiny a distance and photographed, then
moved and photographed again, and yet again, until the entire
film has received its impressions, and when rapidly reeled off,
gave the desired effect that a thousand exposures had been
(09:36):
necessary to produce. Sometimes the scenes to be reproduced are
miles apart. The critical audience in the Little Nickelodeon may
discover two crude attempts at deception, and so natural settings
must be procured if possible, cabs hurdle down the Chanze
Lais for the benefit of the cameraman on the sidewalk
(10:00):
occur and people are evidently injured as per schedule. Accommodating
ditchers comforted by substantial money have been found who were
willing to be knocked bodily into the holes they have
dug and then emerge covered with dirt and confusion, for
the benefit of the ready camera. Cowboys who never saw
(10:21):
the planes have charged bravely through the bronx to circumvent
a mail coach robbery by a band of Indian braves
borrowed from the hippodrome, all under the camera Cyclopean eye.
But when real Western scenes were needed to complete the pictures,
the cameraman has bundled up his expensive instruments, his miles
(10:43):
of delicate film, and, with a hurry up order from
the Nickelodeon managers in his pocket, has gone swiftly to
the deserts of Arizona or the maces of New Mexico.
There he has pressed the real cowboy and the real
Indian into service against the real background of endless plain
(11:03):
and sapphire sky that can never be faked. The Nickelodeon
audiences demand travel scenes. They must be had, and they
must be filled with adventure and perhaps have a bit
of romance tucked in between. Forever since time began, all
the world has loved the lover and sympathized with him
(11:25):
in his joys and sorrows. Real alps are climbed, real
deserts are crossed, real dangers encountered, actual conditions of heat
and cold are endured, and more than once, the forefoot
of health or life has been paid that the baby
theater may receive films that tell a good story and
(11:46):
reproduce real conditions. The first moving picture was made in
eighteen ninety seven, the Corbett Fitsimmons fight in Carson City,
when a film seven miles long was used and the
men fought under several hundred powerful arc lights. For the
picture maker's benefit, certain tricks of trade have been learned
(12:08):
that make the pictures better every year. One rather expensive
thing is the use of ground glass. Only when glass
is to be shattered for its edges photograph better. Talcum
powder is always used to simulate smoke, for it does
not dim the picture. With two million people already going
(12:29):
every day to these tiny theaters, and more waiting to go,
the maker of the show must keep a new and
varied selection of pictures. The public has demanded pleasures in
small and attractive packages, and he must continue to meet
the demand. End of the popular nickelodeon. From Moving Picture World,
(12:52):
January eighteenth, nineteen o eight by Frederick J. Haskin, read
by Andrea Kaya
The popular Nickelodeon. Despite efforts of businessmen to end existence
of the five cent theater, it still lives in Prospers
because of popularity. From Moving Picture World, January eighteenth, nineteen
o eight by Frederick J. Haskin. This is a LibriVox recording.
(00:21):
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. The
efforts of merchants in Philadelphia and other cities to put
a stop to the moving picture shows may find hearty
response among business men, but the great majority is on
(00:44):
the side of the Nickelodeon. Philadelphia uses law processes, Louisville
uses fine regulations. Other cities employ other means to end
the existence of the five cent theater, but it still
lives in prospers financial panics. Notwithstanding, the Nickelodeon came to
(01:06):
answer a demand for short, cheap, wholesome entertainment and passed
quickly from the list of novelties into that of standard amusements.
Its home is a small hall that will see a
few hundred people for if too great a crowd is admitted,
the amusement transcends its privileges and is raised to the
(01:27):
rank of a theater and must pay a theater license
instead of an amusement license. The hall is fitted with
a small stage that supports a screen for the pictures,
while a piano or performalist musical apparatus beats out an
accompaniment to the comedy or tragedy being portrayed by the
moving pictures. A five cent admission invites a patronage that
(01:50):
would not be given anywhere else, and one may leave
as early as one wishes, or stay through the entire performance.
Was born in a little southern town and was the
inspiration of a soda fountain man. This man had bought
an expensive soda fountain and installed it in an old
(02:10):
drug store, and soon found he was losing money. Just
in the midst of the financial straits, his landlord came
and offered him the next door building, also at a
bargain figure. The building he already had did not seem
to be paying, but as nothing could be worse than
that one, he concluded he would take two. He cast
(02:33):
about in his mind for some means of making it
a paying thing, and just then, when a maker of
moving pictures came by, he found his solution. The picture
maker had not been so successful himself. They decided to
open a small theater that would see to a hundred
people and entertain them by throwing moving pictures on a
(02:55):
screen and have a graphophone make music at the same time.
They at first charged ten cents admission. Then they saw
that half as much would be more popular and profitable.
The nickelodeon was a success from the start. At the
end of eight or nine months, the soda fountain man
(03:15):
and the moving picture maker had thirty five thousand dollars
in the bank of the small town and were well
on the highway to success. Their idea was soon flying
far and wide over the country. Big cities and little
ones took it up, until there are five thousand are
over in full swing throughout the country, with many hundred
(03:37):
in New York alone. Some have even gone so far
as to enlarge their houses and take out regular theater
licenses at five hundred dollars a year so they can
accommodate the eight hundred or one thousand people that their
gatemen have showed. Would be possible if the auditoriums were
large enough. Philadelphia alone has one that clears upwards of
(04:01):
thirty thousand dollars a year, and this after one considers
the fact that the average attendance of the smallest ones
must average four thousand a week at least to meet
the running expenses. New York's great trouble has been that
the noise of the Barker's megaphones and phonographs at the
(04:21):
entrances cause annoyance, and formal complaints have been filed against
the Nickelodeons by merchants of their neighborhoods. As a result,
the barker may go, but the phonograph, under one of
its many guises, may remain, for in this age of
machinery that must soon minimize manned services in many ways,
(04:44):
even as a mechanism throws the figures of the actors
and actresses on the canvas in the darkened rooms where
owl eyed ushers skillfully find you a seat, so it
must eventually furnish the entrance calls the urgent invitations to
come and see what inside, and all the gay music
that sets you to wondering what lies beyond the doors.
(05:07):
Children are the best patrons of the Nickelodeon. The five
set piece is easily begged from the parental purse and
thousands of tots go to the tiny moving picture show
who never see any other to meet their demands. Real
fairy tales are often enacted and bits of travel and
history shown in large cities where a new foreign population
(05:31):
helps swell the census rolls. An astonishingly large percentage of
the audience in the Nickelodeon is drawn from the Latin races,
who cannot speak English, who could not understand a word
of an English play, but who can understand and enjoy
a picture pantomime. Romance finds its adherents the world over,
(05:53):
whether one understands the language of a country or not.
And the tragedies of a Watteau shepherdess, posed perhaps in
some modern wood just outside Paris, where real sheep are available,
are quite real to the audience of a New York
east Side Nickelodeon, whether they are mentally interpreted in Yiddish, Italian, Bohemian, Syrian,
(06:17):
or Polish. The blunders of the tipsy man with the
accommodating latch key are understandable in any language when only
a picture portrays them, and the tragic story of the
forsaken wife and the dying child are as real as
real can be. And sympathetic sniffles and visible applications of
(06:37):
handkerchiefs bear flattering tribute to the far away actors in
some moving picture studio who acted out the touching little
drama before the powerful camera. The Nickelodeon, in its demand
for many in varied pictures, has created, in the five
years of its existence, a new class of actors and
(06:59):
a new class of playwrights. Actors who never more see
a real stage, who are ever far away from real footlights,
and who never hear the plottits of the millions they
please by their art play out in pantomime before the cameras.
The hundreds of little dramas that the moving picture machines
under their manifold names present to audiences all over the world.
(07:24):
Men who could not write a line of a play
have become famous at making plots for the actors to interpret.
The Nickelodeons use the majority of the films so prepared,
and talent and ingenuity are busy keeping up the supply.
It is no small task making these little photographic films
(07:44):
of the modest proportions of five eighths by one and
one eighth inches, but so many of them strung together
that the whole is many hundred feet long. Large studios
are fitted up as interiors. Roof gardens and the top
of giant skyscrapers are pressed into service, and often the
homes of the actors and actresses are used to give
(08:07):
better effects when needed. Long excursions into the parks near
Paris or New York are made with actors and actresses
in costume, ready to run automobiles, ride horseback, engage in
some mirth provoking chase, or act out simple tea party scenes,
as the needs of the play may be. When real
(08:29):
pedestrian or disinterested parties of any sort sometimes cross the
line of the camera at the critical minute, so much
the better for the picture. It gives a greater reality.
Busy thoroughfares, shady country lanes, and private gardens are all
being pressed into service today by the enterprising maker of
(08:50):
pictures for the five cent theater, and every device that
science can bring him is pressed into service. Sometimes the
processes slow and the work is expensive. There are freak
pictures where giant knives rush out and slice bread unaided
with a few jerks, and amid much laughter and speculation.
(09:12):
The incident is over in a few seconds, Yet it
took many days to make that film, for the knife
was moved ever so tiny a distance and photographed, then
moved and photographed again, and yet again, until the entire
film has received its impressions, and when rapidly reeled off,
gave the desired effect that a thousand exposures had been
(09:36):
necessary to produce. Sometimes the scenes to be reproduced are
miles apart. The critical audience in the Little Nickelodeon may
discover two crude attempts at deception, and so natural settings
must be procured if possible, cabs hurdle down the Chanze
Lais for the benefit of the cameraman on the sidewalk
(10:00):
occur and people are evidently injured as per schedule. Accommodating
ditchers comforted by substantial money have been found who were
willing to be knocked bodily into the holes they have
dug and then emerge covered with dirt and confusion, for
the benefit of the ready camera. Cowboys who never saw
(10:21):
the planes have charged bravely through the bronx to circumvent
a mail coach robbery by a band of Indian braves
borrowed from the hippodrome, all under the camera Cyclopean eye.
But when real Western scenes were needed to complete the pictures,
the cameraman has bundled up his expensive instruments, his miles
(10:43):
of delicate film, and, with a hurry up order from
the Nickelodeon managers in his pocket, has gone swiftly to
the deserts of Arizona or the maces of New Mexico.
There he has pressed the real cowboy and the real
Indian into service against the real background of endless plain
(11:03):
and sapphire sky that can never be faked. The Nickelodeon
audiences demand travel scenes. They must be had, and they
must be filled with adventure and perhaps have a bit
of romance tucked in between. Forever since time began, all
the world has loved the lover and sympathized with him
(11:25):
in his joys and sorrows. Real alps are climbed, real
deserts are crossed, real dangers encountered, actual conditions of heat
and cold are endured, and more than once, the forefoot
of health or life has been paid that the baby
theater may receive films that tell a good story and
(11:46):
reproduce real conditions. The first moving picture was made in
eighteen ninety seven, the Corbett Fitsimmons fight in Carson City,
when a film seven miles long was used and the
men fought under several hundred powerful arc lights. For the
picture maker's benefit, certain tricks of trade have been learned
(12:08):
that make the pictures better every year. One rather expensive
thing is the use of ground glass. Only when glass
is to be shattered for its edges photograph better. Talcum
powder is always used to simulate smoke, for it does
not dim the picture. With two million people already going
(12:29):
every day to these tiny theaters, and more waiting to go,
the maker of the show must keep a new and
varied selection of pictures. The public has demanded pleasures in
small and attractive packages, and he must continue to meet
the demand. End of the popular nickelodeon. From Moving Picture World,
(12:52):
January eighteenth, nineteen o eight by Frederick J. Haskin, read
by Andrea Kaya
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