Cinema's Golden Age During the 1930s and 1940s, cinema was the principal form of popular entertainment, with people often attending cinemas twice a week.
How often were Americans going to the movies in the 1940s?
Back in the Golden Age of the cinema (1930-1945), most Americans went to the movie theater every week. In the early 1940s households averaged over two trips to the movie theater per week. Things have changed drastically since then.
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.
How to Be Popular - 1940's High School Dating Guide
How many people did go to the movies a week in 1940 in the US?
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 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.
How often did people 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.
The advent of sound secured the dominant role of the American industry and gave rise to the so-called 'Golden Age of Hollywood'. During the 1930s and 1940s, cinema was the principal form of popular entertainment, with people often attending cinemas twice a week.
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.
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).
The American people in the 1930s and 1940s were no exception. They enjoyed many forms of entertainment, particularly if they could do so inexpensively. With the addition of sound, movies became increasingly popular. Comedies, gangster movies, and musicals helped people forget their troubles.
In 1930 (the earliest year from which accurate and credible data exists), weekly cinema attendance was 80 million people, approximately 65% of the resident U.S. population (Koszarski 25, Finler 288, U.S. Statistical Abstract).
It then became characteristic of American cinema during the Golden Age of Hollywood, between roughly 1927 (with the advent of sound film) to 1969. It eventually became the most powerful and pervasive style of filmmaking worldwide.
How often did many Americans go to the movies by 1929?
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.
It's true that in the first decades of cinema movies were shorter, they were on average 90 minutes long in early 1930s and reached 100–110 minutes in mid-'50s.
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.
At an average price of $. 27 a ticket, movies offered a relatively inexpensive way to vacation from reality. Always popular, this sort of diversion was especially sought-after during the Great Depression. Audiences gloried in spectacular fantasies of high society and easy living that they would never know.
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.
Check out the evolution of the price of a single movie ticket, according to the National Association of Theatre Owners: 1948: $0.36. 1958: $0.68. 1967: $1.22.
In 1950, a person could purchase a movie ticket for a mere 46 cents on average. By 2016, the average ticket price had increased to $8.65 -- and the increase in ticket prices shows no signs of slowing down.
