How many Americans went to the movies in the 1940s?
At motion pictures' height of popularity in the mid-1940s, the studios were cranking out a total of about 400 movies a year, seen by an audience of 90 million Americans per week.
How many people attended the movies each week in 1940?
According to the Film Daily Year Book, weekly ticket sales in the United States totaled 80 million in 1940, and 55-60 million Americans went to the movies every week.
After experiencing boom years from 1939 to 1946, the film industry began a long period of decline. Within just seven years, attendance and box receipts fell to half their 1946 levels. Part of the reason was external to the industry.
Within U.S. film history, 1946 holds the distinction of being the peak year of movie attendance, impressively claiming more than 90 million weekly admissions (or 60 percent of the population).
How often did people go to the movies in the 1930s?
Even at the Depression's depths 60 to 80 million Americans attended the movies each week, and, in the face of doubt and despair, films helped sustain national morale. Although the movie industry considered itself Depression- proof, Hollywood was no more immune from the Depression's effects than any other industry.
The golden age of the Hollywood studio era peaked in 1947 with 4.7 billion of yearly admissions. With the advent of TV, the yearly attendance for theatrical screenings dropped by 78% in only 17 years (reaching 1.02 billion in 1964).
Between 1942 and 1945, Page 4 Pautz, The Decline in Average Weekly Cinema Attendance, Issues in Political Economy, 2002, Vol. 11 Americans spent 23% of their total recreation dollar on films (compared to 2% today) (Bohn 223). 3 Weekly attendance in 1946 was more than 90 million (Bohn 236).
Employment had increased during the war, and Americans had few ways to spend their money-gas rationing limited travel, and commodities were scarce. So people turned to the pictures (which then cost an average of 34 cents per ticket) in droves.
How often did Americans go to the movies in the 1920s?
Cinema in the 1920s
People of all ages attended the movies with far more regularity than today, often going more than once per week. By the end of the decade, weekly movie attendance swelled to 90 million people. The silent movies of the early 1920s gave rise to the first generation of movie stars.
In an average week in 1947, 90 million Americans, out of a total population of only 151 million, went to a movie, paying on the average forty cents for a ticket. Nor was this massive outpouring, about two thirds of the ambulatory population, the product of expensive national marketing campaigns.
With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles. In the early 1940s, some of the great dramas of American film reached theaters. Radio was also wildly popular, offering many kinds of programs, from sermons to soap operas.
Hollywood's golden age had reached a peak by 1940. The eight largest studios (Warner Brothers, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer [MGM], RKO Radio, Twentieth Century Fox, United Artists, Paramount, Universal, and Columbia) controlled more than 90 percent of film production and distribution.
Citizen Kane (1941) stood at number 1 for five consecutive polls, with 22 votes in 1962, 32 votes in 1972, 45 votes in 1982, 43 votes in 1992, and 46 votes in 2002.
Roundhay Garden Scene is a short silent motion picture filmed by French inventor Louis Le Prince at Oakwood Grange in Roundhay, Leeds, in northern England on 14 October 1888. It is believed to be the oldest surviving film.
In the case of 1917, the one-shot technique is used to tell a story about two young British privates (George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) who are tasked by their general (Colin Firth) with taking a message from their trenches and across no man's land to Colonel MacKenzie (Benedict Cumberbatch), who's leading his ...
During the Great Depression, the financially bruised and battered everyman could temporarily escape his woes by paying 25 cents to go to the movies. Ironically, some of the most popular movies depicted the superrich, clothed in satin gowns, and top hats and tails.
How many people went to a movie every week in the 1920s?
During the 1920s, movie attendance soared. By the middle of the decade, 50 million people a week went to the movies - the equivalent of half the nation's population. In Chicago, in 1929, theaters had enough seats for half the city's population to attend a movie each day.
How many people went to the movies during the Depression?
60-90 million people went to the movies every week during the Depression, making in one of America's greatest past times. The average movie ticket price during this period was 25 cents, but Americans were willing to spend the money.
In the mid-1940s, 90 million Americans went to the movies each week – by the late 1950s, that figure had dwindled to 16 million. This coincided with the U.S. Federal courts forcing the studios to sell off their nationwide theater chains.
In fact, the years of the 1930s are considered the golden era of Hollywood cinema. Eighty-five million people a week crowded movie theaters across America to escape their sometimes desperate financial situations.
