Exhibition History

1. Exhibition History • What is the nature of movie-going, and the movie-going experience? • Under what conditions do people encounter motion pictures, and what is significant about these conditions? • Do people go to a movie or do they go to the movies?

2. “Public movie performances are occasions for eating, for disregarding one’s usual dietary strictures, for knowingly overpaying too much for food, for sneaking snacks and drinks, for both planned and impromptu socializing, for working, for flirting, for sexual play, for gossiping, for staking out territory in theatre seats, for threatening noisy spectators, for being threatened, for arguments, for reading, for talking about future moviegoing, for relaxing, for sharing in the experience of the screening with other audience members, for fleeting glimpses at possible allegiances and alliances of taste, for being too close to strangers, for being crowded in your winter clothes, for being frozen by over-active air-conditioning, for being bored, for sleeping, for disappointment, for joy, for arousal, for disgust, for slouching, for hand-holding, for drug taking, for standing in lines, for making phone calls, for the evaluation of trailers, and for both remembering and forgetting oneself.”Charles Acland, Screen Traffic (Durham: Duke UP 2003), p. 58.

3. The Movie Palace (exteriors) • Grand design often with an exotic name and decorative motifs including Egyptian, Chinese, baroque, renaissance, and classical elements built into every facet structure and creating an impression of awesome grandeur and exoticism.

4. The Movie Palace (Interiors) Features included enormous lobbys, huge and opulent bathrooms, on-site nurses and nurseries for kids, with sandboxes and toys and free child minding, armies of uniformed staff, and very significantly, air conditioning

5. The Movie Palace (Auditoria) • Very grand auditoria seating thousands of patrons, with painted ceilings, plasterwork details, heavy drapery and opulent textures and colours in upholstery fittings, furniture etc.

6. Selling the movie-going experience “People want primarily to feel that it is their theatre…One cannot overemphasize the importance of “atmosphere”…Fresh flowers are placed daily in the lobbies and promenades of the theatre, on which one item alone are spent several thousands dollars a year…By creating this atmosphere, and making the patron feel he is our special guest and that nothing for his comfort and convenience has been overlooked, we have won the first battle; after this, everything is much easier.” Samuel L. “Roxy” Rothafel, proprietor of the 6214-seat Roxy Theatre, New York, in Architectural Forum, June 1925.

7. Be King for a Day No palace of Prince or Princess, no mansion of millionaire could offer the same pleasure, delight, and relaxation to those who seek escape from the work-a-day world, than this, the Arcady where delicate dreams of youth are spun...Here in this Fox dreamcastle, dedicated to the entertainment of all California, is the Utopian Symphony of the Beautiful, attuned to the Cultural and Practical...No King...No Queen...had ever such luxury, such varied array of singing, dancing, talking magic, such complete fulfillment of joy. The power of this Purple we give to you...for your entertainment. You are the monarch while the play is on!" Ad from the San Francisco Call, June 30 1929 promoting the opening of San Francisco Fox movie palace

8. Consumer Society:The movie palace and the department store • Both are public spaces in which grandeur and leisure are available to a large section of the population. • Both spaces exhibit a sense of exoticism and ‘classiness’, transporting people from their quotidian lives to more interesting, more comfortable places. • There is recognition of something called the ‘mass audience’, which in many important ways crossed class boundaries