Drive-ins gained immense popularity 20 years later during the 1950s and '60s with the Baby Boomer generation. There were over 4,000 drive-ins throughout the U.S., and most were in rural areas.
What type of movies gained popularity in the 1950s?
The1950s saw a spike in the popularity of movie genres such as: Film Noir -meaning "black movie" in French (Hollywood's film Noir period spanned the early 1940s to the late 1950s), Comedies, Romantic Dramas, Historical Epics and Sagas, and Westerns. New to the 50s was Science Fiction, Fantasy, and the Teen Drama.
Filmmakers tried new techniques, like CinemaScope and Cinerama, which allowed movies to be shown on large screens and in 3-D. Audiences were drawn to movies not because of gimmicks, however, but because of the stories they told. Dramas and romantic comedies continued to be popular fare for adults.
“There were many theaters throughout the general U.S. that had this kind of beauty,” say Meffre and Marchand. “But in many cases, their most defining features were removed in the 1950s and '60s because they weren't considered modern enough for the time.
Hollywood in the 1950s was an industry in decline, even while it produced some of the strongest films of its history. With the rise of independent productions, the competition of TV, and major shifts in the social fabric, American cinema was dramatically changed during this decade.
Drive-ins & 3D - What were movie theaters like in the 50s? - Going to the Movies - 1950-1960
What two different types of movies were popular during the 1950s?
Psychological thrillers, Shakespeare adaptations, goofy musicals, and the “cast of millions” epic style canonized by Cecil B. deMille are all very much in evidence.
Why were drive-in theaters so popular in the 1950s?
"Drive-ins started to really take off in the '50s," Kopp said. "They offered family entertainment. People could sit in their cars, they could bring their babies, they could smoke. Drive-ins offered more flexibility than indoor theaters."
In 1905, John P. Harris and Harry Davis opened a five-cents-admission movie theater in a Pittsburgh storefront, naming it the Nickelodeon and setting the style for the first common type of movie theater. By 1908 there were thousands of storefront Nickelodeons, Gems and Bijous across North America.
Drive-ins gained immense popularity 20 years later during the 1950s and '60s with the Baby Boomer generation. There were over 4,000 drive-ins throughout the U.S., and most were in rural areas.
TV shows like I Love Lucy, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and Father Knows Best were popular during the original Golden Age of Television era. The 1950s were the true birth of the rock and roll music genre, led by figures such as Chuck Berry (pictured), Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis and others.
In the United States, film established itself as a popular form of entertainment with the nickelodeon theater in the 1910s. The release of The Jazz Singer in 1927 marked the birth of the talking film, and by 1930 silent film was a thing of the past.
But the real “savior” of the industry was the introduction of 3-D, wide screens, and stereophonic sound technologies. Cinerama Corp. showed distribution executives its innovative curved-screen technology for the first time on May 6, 1950, after 13 years of development.
The decade may have been the Golden Age of Television, but it was also great time for Hollywood. The 1950's boasts many of the biggest movie stars of all time including Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Audrey Hepburn.
Stanley renamed Durwood Theatres as American Royal Cinema on October 1, 1968, after the American Royal livestock and horse show, but the latter's producers sought an injunction, and the name was changed to American Multi-Cinema, Inc.
The first plays were performed in the Theatre of Dionysus, built in the shadow of the Acropolis in Athens at the beginning of the 5th century, but theatres proved to be so popular they soon spread all over Greece. Drama was classified according to three different types or genres: comedy, tragedy and satyr plays.
Often associated with teenagers interested in the drive-in as a 'passion pit' or a venue for exploitation films, accounts of the 1950s American drive-in tend to emphasise their popularity with families with young children, downplaying the importance of a film programme apparently limited to old, low-budget or ...
The 18th century saw the flourishing of theatre as a popular pastime and many theatres were enlarged and new playhouses built in London and throughout the country. One of the most successful shows on the London stage in the early part of the 18th century was John Gay's ballad opera The Beggar's Opera.
Combining the Greek word for theatre θέατρο” (odeion), with the word “nickel” (the cost of admission) the name “Nickelodeon” was coined and used to describe small storefront theatres, showing only short films, all across the country.
