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.

How often did people go to the movies in the 1940s?

During the 1930s and 1940s, cinema was the principal form of popular entertainment, with people often attending cinemas twice a week.

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 went to the movies in the 1940s?

The strict censorship in Hollywood was meant to protect the nearly eighty million Americans who went to the movies each 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.

How to Be Popular - 1940's High School Dating Guide

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.

What happened to movie attendance in the 1940s?

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 many Americans went to the movies in 1946?

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).

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.

How much did it cost to go to the movies in 1940?

In 1940, a movie ticket cost a quarter.

Why were movies so popular during the 1940s?

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.

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.

Why did so many Americans go to the movies in the 1930s?

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.

How much did it cost to go to the movies in 1947?

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.

How many people went to the movies in 1946 and how many went in 1950?

The most widely quoted source, the U.S. Census Bureau, shows that weekly attendance dropped from 80 million in 1940 and 90 million in 1946 to 60 million in 1950 and 40 million in 1960.

Could people watch movies at home in the 1950s?

1950s–1970s

Dedicated home cinemas were called screening rooms at the time and were outfitted with 16 mm or even 35 mm projectors for showing commercial films. These were found almost exclusively in the homes of the very wealthy, especially those in the movie industry.

What percentage of Americans attended the movies in the 1920's?

In just eight years, from 1922 to 1930, weekly U.S. movie attendance soared from about forty percent to over ninety percent of the population.

When was the Golden Age of Hollywood?

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 long were movies in the 1930s?

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.

Was there a general decline in movie attendance after ww2?

After its post-war success, attendance rates dropped rapidly. The film industry introduced 3-D films to gain popularity over television programs which were stealing audiences away from theatres.

How much were movie tickets in 1946?

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.

What year did movie attendance peak?

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).

What ended Old Hollywood?

Movie palaces shuttered, once mighty studios closed down and some of Hollywood's greatest actors, directors and screenwriters stopped making films. It was the end of an era and television was to blame: the new technology effectively killed Hollywood's Golden Age.

When did Hollywood decline?

Even in comparison to major releases seen today, hundreds of more films were made and released in the 1930s. Genre films were big hits, especially westerns, gangster and crime movies, and musicals. The Golden Age of Hollywood began to falter by 1948 and fully came to an end by the 1960s.