What you did not know about movie theatres and probably don’t care to know.
Within 5 years, the mechanical engineer, Willis Carrier, founder of now Carrier Global, installed 300 units in theaters across the country. Carrier’s innovative technology can be credited for the term “summer blockbuster” because without the A/C there would have been no one in the theaters.
For many, the theater is where they experienced comfort cooling / air conditioning for the first time.
Early movie theaters began as vaudeville palaces. The Lincoln Theatre. Opened in 1916 as a vaudeville theatre. It had a 20ft x 24ft stage, 18 sets of lines and two dressing rooms. By 1921 it was operated as an African-American movie & vaudeville theatre, operated by the Bijou Amusement Company. It went over to screening adult movies as the Texas Art Cinema in its final days. It closed in 1971. It was taken over by McLendon Theatres and reopened as the Majestic Theatre on June 23, 1972 with Gene Hackman in “The French Connection”.
It was demolished in 1977 and the site became a parking lot for the Houston Chronicle.
The Isis Theater was the first small silent movie theater in Houston located at 1012 Prairie in between Main Street and Fannin Street, diagonally across from the Rice Hotel.
The Metropolitan Theater, pictured here in 1935, was one of the grandest movie houses built in downtown Houston and was located at 1018 Main St.
Early on in movie theatre history snacks and drinks were not allowed in the theater. Even before the talkies the theaters went for strict silence in the audience.
“talkies,” or films with dialogue, debuted in 1927 with “The Jazz Singer,” the very first full-length film to include synchronized dialogue (per Britannica). By the 1930s, according to Kodak, silent films were a thing of the past. With dialogue now a part of Hollywood, movie theaters began to ease on their snack ban. Vendors initially sold the traditional cinema fare to movie-goers as they entered before theaters picked up on selling popcorn themselves
River Oaks Theatre 2009 W. Gray Street, Houston, TX 77019 Wait! Is it a theater, theatre, cinema or what?
A movie theater might also be referred to as a movie house, film house, film theater, cinema or picture house. In the US, theater has long been the preferred spelling, while in the UK, Australia, Canada and elsewhere it is theatre.
However, some US theaters opt to use the British spelling in their own names, a practice supported by the National Association of Theatre Owners, while apart from Anglophone North America most English-speaking countries use the term cinema /ˈsɪnɪmə/, alternatively spelled and pronounced kinema /ˈkɪnɪmə/.
The Kirby Theatre at 911 Main St. opened in August 1927.
You ever notice in the old theatres there is always a single light bulb left on during the movie? It is called a ghost bulb or light. The ghost light has many reasons. It is said that every theater has a ghost. The ghost light provides light at night for any spirits to be able to see and even “perform” or dance on the stage. It sounds spooky or creepy, but many have stories to share about it, and sightings of these spirits have allegedly happened. The more logical reason as to why we light this at night is because it’s there in case someone is in the theater working late.
The Fulton Theater at 3310 Fulton St is shown in this photo.
Movie theatres make most of their profit from concessions. According to a recent report, the cost of a movie ticket in the United States has seen an increase over the years. In 2022, the average ticket price reached 10.53 U.S. dollars, Studios take the lion’s share of a flick’s revenue — somewhere between 80% and 100% — for the first two weeks of release. Theaters take more of a cut after those two weeks but it’s not their prime source of revenue. Concessions are. They constitute around 85% of the profits for a theater. Everything from popcorn and soda to candy is marked hundreds of percent. In the case of popcorn specifically, that markup is in the area of 1,275%.
Insiders hint. Do not buy popcorn if you are an early arriver. Many theaters will pop several garbage bags full to fet a start on the work day. Your fresh popcorn just might be 20 hours old.
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