A still from an Edison film showing the crowd leaving The Claremont Theatre in New York where his motion pictures were being played.
The stuffier magazines and certain ministers may have been railing against the evil of the Nickelodeon, but this 1913 Edison video shows why the motion picture industry was there to stay.
Who’s leaving this motion picture house? Couples, mostly older, Grandparents and their grandchildren, fathers and their sons and daughters, older sisters and their younger brothers and vice versa, boys, mostly in pairs and sometimes alone, even a couple of moms with babies in large prams. I didn’t see too many young people in their twenties at this show, I’m guessing it was during working hours.
