Five Cent Fascinations

Edison nymph. early film.

This below is from the “entertainment” section of Jane Addams’ 1909 complilation of newspaper articles: Spirit of Youth and City Streets. The nickelodeon era was only in its third year, so it is safe to say, the motion picture took off with youth from the very beginning. Addams’ point of view is similar to what most moral reformers held. Addams’ uses more ‘science’ although of the anecdotal kind and less vitriol in her editorials. She also reveals some insight into the nature of the new medium, which she ties in with theatre in general. It is a passive medium. Movies became an adult entertainment in the next decades, only re-establishing itself with very young audiences in the 50′s and 60′s with Disney and then becoming a youth-focused medium in the 80′s. when I was raising my sons. (At least that’s how I see it.)

“Going to the show” for thousands of young people in every industrial city is the only possible road to the realms of mystery and romance; the theater is the only place where they can satisfy that craving for a conception of life higher than that which the actual world offers them. In a very real sense the drama and the drama alone performs for them the office of art as is clearly revealed in their blundering demand stated in many forms for “a play unlike life.” The theater becomes to them a “veritable house of dreams” infinitely more real than the noisy streets and the crowded factories.

One Sunday evening last winter an investigation was made of four hundred and sixty six theaters in the city of Chicago, and it was discovered that in the majority of them the leading theme was revenge; the lover following his rival; the outraged husband seeking his wife’s paramour; or the wiping out by death of a blot on a hitherto unstained honor. It was estimated that one sixth of the entire population of the city had attended the theaters on that day. At present, however, most improbable tales hold the attention of the youth of the city night after night, and feed his starved imagination as nothing else succeeds in doing. In addition to these fascinations, the five-cent theater is also fast becoming the general social center and club house in many crowded neighborhoods. It is easy of access from the street the entire family of parents and children can attend for a comparatively small sum of money and the performance lasts for at least an hour; and, in some of the humbler theaters, the spectators are not disturbed for a second hour.

The room which contains the mimic stage is small and cozy, and less formal than the regular theater, and there is much more gossip and social life as if the foyer and pit were mingled. The very darkness of the room, necessary for an exhibition of the films, is an added attraction to many young people, for whom the space is filled with the glamour of love making.

Hundreds of young people attend these five-cent theaters every evening in the week, including Sunday, and what is seen and heard there becomes the sole topic of conversation, forming the ground pattern of their social life. That mutual understanding which in another social circle is provided by books, travel and all the arts, is here compressed into the topics suggested by the play.

The young people attend the five-cent theaters in groups, with something of the “gang” instinct, boasting of the films and stunts in “our theater.”

They find a certain advantage in attending one theater regularly, for the habitués are often invited to come upon the stage on “amateur nights,” which occur at least once a week in all the theaters. This is, of course, a most exciting experience.

If the “stunt” does not meet with the approval of the audience, the performer is greeted with jeers and a long hook pulls him off the stage; if, on the other hand, he succeeds in pleasing the audience, he may be paid for his performance and later register with a booking agency, the address of which is supplied by the obliging manager, and thus he fancies that a lucrative and exciting career is opening before him. Almost every night at six o’clock a long line of children may be seen waiting at the entrance of these booking agencies, of which there are fifteen that are well known in Chicago.

Thus, the only art which is constantly placed before the eyes of “the temperamental youth” is a debased form of dramatic art, and a vulgar type of music, for the success of a song in these theaters depends not so much upon its musical rendition as upon the vulgarity of its appeal.

Salmon Tales -the Movie 1910 Canada

J.Searle Dawley at the camera (perhaps) on location in Western Canada 1910. The caption says “Taking Portraits of the Rockies.” He was hired by Edison to help promote Western Canada to Americans and Europeans (the Northern type, of course.)13 films were made, 10 of which were melodramas.

A scene from James Searle Dawley’s Frankenstein, also filmed in 1910.

It is said that anthropologist Hortense Powdermaker coined the word “Hollywood Dream Factory” in the 1950′s, but I found a 1910 article that describes motion pictures in the exact same way: A motion picture actor is being interviewed for Canada West, and he sure seems to have his ‘script’ down. Indeed, he ‘spins’ Addams’ negative view of motion picture entertainment into a positive one, using her term.

“Did you know that Jane Addams called the nickel show “the House of Dreams” asked the motion picture actor padding the sleeping pillow into place and leaning back in the corner of the section. (Editor: Jane Addams,Spirit of Youth and City Streets, 1909.)

“She hit it exactly right, too.” The Nickel Show is the house of dreams to East Side New York and West Side Chicago and most every town of three thousand all over North America. Sadie and Jim, Lena and Fred, don’t think much of the fried-potato reality they live in. There’s too much work and too little lark and not one Duchess or Indian in the landscape. Like everyone else, they have a notion of what things ought to be like to be fun, their dream. They’ve only got about a thousand words or so in their vocabulary, and not very much imagination, and they don’t know enough to spin dreams for themselves. So they go to the nickelodeon and see three or four different kinds of dreams, for five cents.

We’re the fellows who have to get out to hustle the dreams for Sadie and Jim. And it isn’t such easy work living in a dream as you think it might be.

(Then the actor goes on to say that he went into picture work because he was out of a job- that like other dramatic actors he ‘looked down on picture work.’ “I had a pretty good name as an actor as I was signed as part of the stock company. I still had my old contemptuous way of thinking “Nothing to do but pose into a camera. I learned my mistake.”

“We had been engaged by the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, to go through the Dominion, taking motion pictures to be shown all over the US and Europe to advertise the country. We had a special train in charge of a railway official who made sure we didn’t miss any good bets on the good points, and we surely took them all in. We rode with those champions of the plains, the Royal Northwest Mounted Police. At Regina we assisted in the roundup of 5000 cattle at Brooks, where one girl in the company donned a ‘divided skirt’ and rode with the rest of the men. We had a fight with the Indians in Calgary and I carried a bruise given to me by one brave for a month. “Ugh, me Kill” he said which made my scalp rise and I got hold of a mounted police to make sure he understood it was only a ‘pretend’ kill.
At Banff, we charged the buffalo at the National Park and did some wonderful swimming feats in the big pools. At Logan, we outdid ourselves by climbing 8000 feet above sea level nearly killing our leading lady. None of us knew anything about mountain climbing: we were dressed as if for an afternoon stroll. Our Swiss guide took one look at the leading lady’s suede shoes and said something under his breath. At Vancouver we did some stunts on the Empress of Japan and in Victoria we made a salmon fishing film, where we went out at five in the morning to drop and raise the nets and then we got down with the slippery, slimy salmon at the bottom of the barge…

People are being forced into cheap amusements and the picture show fits the bill, these days when the average man can’t afford 2.00 for a good seat and won’t sit in the cheap seats at a first class theatre. An increasingly better class of actors is producing an increasingly better class of pictures..and in this day and age when we all demand novelty and an increasing amount of sensationalism, in both drama and literature, the motion picture actor has to possess, not only art, but also courage.

Getting down with the Salmon for one of the 3 documentaries made by Dawley. Is this a ‘still’ from the silent picture or one of the first publicity shots? Likely a publicity shot, like the one below, showing their train and cow-catcher.

Here’s the announcement of the effort in the New York Dramatic Mirror:

The kinetogram (the bi-monthly bulletin of the Edison Company) announces that the Edison Company recently made special arrangements with the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company to take an Edison crew of photographers and a selected stock company of players by special train to Vancouver, stops being made on the way to enact dramatic subjects in appropriate localities. The party left June 22 and are now at work.