The "Movie Theaters Coming Full Circle" Story

It was an ordinary day!  Just got a message from my grandkids at the Jersey Shore telling me there was going to be a movie on the beach later in the evening.  Didn't know what movie, but they thought it was a neat idea.  Not sure how they were going to project it outside, but I'm certain it wouldn't be like it was back in 1894 when Charles Francis Jenkins projected a motion picture for the first time in the United States.  

Charles Francis Jenkins' Phantoscope.

He used something called a Phanto- scope to project his film which featured a vaudeville dancer performing a Butterfly Dance.  Jenkins and his partner Thomas Armat, who lived in Richmond, Indiana eventually modified the device to project films in a temporary theater at the Cotton States Exposition the following year.  The Phantoscope was purchased by Thomas Edison who changed the name of the device to the Vitascope.  

Edison's Vitascope.

With his new Vitascope he began to show his films in New York City in 1896.  Edison began to sell his Vitascope and on July 26 of the same year the first motion picture theater opened on Canal Street in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Three months later Mitchell Mark, who had purchased a Vitascope from Edison, opened Edison's Vitascope Theater in Buffalo, New York.  Admission to the 72-seat theater was three cents.  

Old-time movie theater.

In 1897 in Washington, Iowa the State Theater opened and still remains open today making it the oldest continuously operating movie theater in the world.  In 1903 The Great Train Robbery, which was 12 minutes in length, was one of the very first famous movies.  In 1905 a movie theater was opened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania named the Nickelodean which set the style for thousands of Nichelodeons, Gems and Bijous across North America.  One of the first feature films, The Birth of a Nation, was shown in 1915 and forced theaters to increase their prices to ten cents.  Movie revenues increased tremendously in the next 10 years with larger theaters that had giant screens and stereophonic sound.  Movie chains developed and air conditioning was placed in theaters.  

Getting ready for a movie on the beach.

Most of the movie chains were connected to movie studios such as Paramount, Warmer, Loews, Fox and RKO.  Then in 1948 the chains were broken up by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in an anti-trust case.  Starting in the 1940s and into the mid-50s when I was a teenager, the job as a movie usher was coveted.  Good wages and a chance to see all the latest movies was a big draw for being an usher.  Today's multi-screen theaters don't employ as many ushers, spending money instead on upgraded seating and equipment.  And now my grandkids tell me about sitting on the beach to watch a movie.  Wow, sounds like the movie theater has come full-circle.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.