ARTICLE American Movie Audiences of the 1930s1 Richard Butsch Rider University Abstract The Depression and movies with sound changed movie audiences of the 1930s from those of the 1920s and earlier. Sound silenced audiences, discouraging the sociabili- ty that had marked working-class audiences before. The Depression led movie com- panies to change marketing strategies and construction plans. They stopped selling luxury and building movie palaces. Instead, they expanded their operation of neigh- borhood theaters, displacing independents that had been more worker friendly, and instituted centrally controlled show bills and policies. Audiences also appear to have become more heterogeneous. All this, too, discouraged the voluble behavior of working-class people. Ironically, in this era of labor activism, workers and their fam- ilies seem to have become quieter in movie theaters, satisfied with the convenience of chain-operated movie houses. The 1930s were an exciting decade for labor activism in the United States and a high point for the growth of unions. Workers in steel, automobile, and other heavy industries organized industrial unions. The Committee on Industrial Or- ganization (later Congress of Industrial Organizations or CIO) was formed with a membership of more than a million workers. Factory workers initiated new tactics in struggles with employers, such as sit-down strikes. In politics, they ad- vanced legislation and programs in the New Deal to help employed and unem- ployed workers. Ironically, at the same time that workers’ collective action and class con- sciousness were at a high point, movie audiences became quiet. They did not act collectively to control their experience in the theater. How did this happen? Two major factors shaped the 1930s movie house: sound movies and the Depression. Entertainment audiences have not always been quiet.2 Working class audi- ences, in particular, have exhibited a good deal of “class” consciousness and ac- tivism in theaters. The highpoint of audience activism was the Jacksonian era, when young workers filled the theaters of large industrializing cities. The pro- totypical case is the “b’hoys” who crowded the Bowery Theater of New York and directed the show from the pit. They decided what the musicians played. They forced actors to repeat a favorite line in the middle of a scene, or to divert from the play altogether and sing a song or dance. They called actors and man- International Labor and Working-Class History No. 59, Spring 2001, pp. 106–120 © 2001 International Labor and Working-Class History, Inc. American Movie Audiences of the 1930s 107 agers before the curtain for applause or a dressing down. When not satisfied with the responses to their calls, they rioted, sometimes even chasing actors out of the theater. In the late nineteenth century, even after the law had given managers greater authority over audiences, working-class audiences were still quite lively in cheap melodrama theaters that catered to working-class audiences. They talked and sang, hissed and booed, although they rarely rioted. Not far from the Bowery, Yiddish theaters on Second Avenue were renowned for their avid and outspoken audiences. Throughout the plays, they busily kibitzed about the characters and what would happen to them. Between acts the hubbub of their talking and argu- ing with family, friends, and neighbors made uptown theaters seem dead. When nickelodeons cropped up like mushrooms shortly before 1910, working-class neighborhoods filled them with voluble audiences who again set the tone and pace to fit their own purposes. Reformers, such as Jane Addams in Chicago and Michael Davis in New York, remarked how working-class immi- grants turned these commercial spaces for movies into social clubs for their own needs. Reformers likened it to the workingman’s club, the saloon, without alco- hol and with the wife and children. What these lively audiences had in common were theaters in or on the edge of their own working-class neighborhoods, with relatively cheap admission. The theaters were public spaces where workers felt welcome. These were unpreten- tious places (the Bowery, although an impressive building, had wood benches in the pit and gallery), not requiring “proper” dress or behavior, where one could “drop in” with little planning. They made it a social space through their animated conversation and playful mood. And they were filled with familiar faces of fel- low workers, a devoted following of regulars who could recognize each other at the theater. How did sound film and the Depression change all this at the movie theater of the 1930s? Who Were Movie Audiences? Admissions and Demographics Although different sources claim different attendance figures, the general pat- tern of change in the sound era is clear. (See Table 1.) Before sound technology and the Depression came crashing in on the movies in 1929, admissions had been growing steadily, as movie-going became increasingly a universal recreation. The Depression and the disappearance of silent films coincided with a slowdown in 1930–33, even though admission prices dropped to as little as a third of what they had been. But a revival began about 1934. From that point, attendance steadily rose to 1948, when postwar developments (television, suburbia) again changed movie-going habits. This was the golden era of movies, when movie go- ing was most popular. During the 1930s and through World War Two, people spent more on movie-going than any other recreation, accounting for about twenty percent of all recreational expenditures and eighty percent of spectator amusements.3 Beyond gross admissions, estimates of demographic breakdowns are un- 108 ILWCH, 59, Spring 2001 Table 1. Movie Theaters and Admissions Indoor theaters Weekly attendance Average Year Sound Silent Drive-ins (in millions) admission price 1927 20 21,644 57 1928 100 22,204 65 1929 800 22,544 80 1930 8,860 14,140 90 0.30 1931 13,128 8,865 75 0.20 1932 13,880 4,835 60 0.23 1933 14,405 4,128 60 .23 1934 14,381 2,504 70 .23 1935 15,273 80 .23 1936 15,358 88 .23 1937 18,192 88 .23 1938 18,182 85 .23 1939 17,829 85 .23 1940 19,032 — 80 .241 1941 19,645 95 85 .252 1942 20,281 99 85 .273 1943 20,196 97 85 .294 1944 20,277 96 85 .317 1945 20,355 102 85 .352 1946 18,719 300 90 .403 1947 18,059 548 90 .404 1948 17,575 820 90 .401 1949 17,367 1,203 70 .460 1950 16,904 2,202 60 .528 1951 16,150 2,830 54 .528 1952 15,347 3,276 51 .60 1953 14,174 3,791 46 .60 Sources: Theaters, admissions, and prices from Film Daily Year Book, 1960 (New York: Film Daily, 1960), 105, 107. Admission prices for 1930–31 from Tino Balio, Grand Design (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 13. certain, as illustrated by continuing disagreements over the class composition of nickelodeon audiences. By the 1930s most people went to the movies, but some went more than others. In 1939, writer Margaret Thorp estimated that forty mil- lion of 130 million Americans in the 1930s were regulars, and described the au- dience as mostly middle-class, white, between fourteen and forty-five years old, and more adult females than males. George Gallup described the typical movie- goer just before World War Two as twenty-seven years old, earning twenty-eight dollars a week (close to the median income for American families).4 While most would agree that the audience was white (since segregation and poverty restricted attendance by blacks and other minorities), there is disagree- American Movie Audiences of the 1930s 109 ment over the class balance. Contradicting Margaret Thorp’s impression that the middle class predominated, community studies from the 1930s indicate heavier movie-going by lower classes. A study in San Francisco found that workers and clerks with income about one third of professionals spent over twice as much per year on movie-going. A 1936 Fortune survey found twenty-eight percent of the “prosperous,” twenty-seven percent of the lower middle class, and nineteen percent of the poor went to the movies once per week. Sociologists W. Lloyd Warner and Paul Lunt found large numbers of workers in movie houses in the mid-1930s in “Yankee City.” At least some portion of the audiences were un- employed workers whiling away their idle hours.5 It is clear that all classes went to the movies and went more regularly than today. However, what is more important for understanding audience behavior is the makeup of audiences in individual theaters: Who was sitting next to whom? While it is hard to establish with any certainty, trends in exhibition suggest that individual theaters had audiences that were less homogeneous in terms of eth- nicity and class, as compared to audiences in the famous nickelodeons. These and other changes arising from the Depression, along with the introduction of sound film, transformed movie audience behavior. Sound Silences Audiences: 1926–1931 A simple factor in quieting audiences was the introduction of sound film. Be- tween 1926 and 1931 movie theaters were fitted with sound systems, the over- whelming majority in 1930. By 1931, theaters without sound were in the minor- ity; by 1934, they had all but disappeared. (See Table 1.) Between 1928 (before sound had an impact) and 1935 (after silent movies had disappeared), one-third of all movie houses, about seven thousand theaters, closed. Those that closed their doors typically could not afford to install new sound systems and were mostly independents in rural and working-class areas. One old movie-goer said, “After that, everything seemed to change with the movie business.