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The Road to Multiplex
by Ed Mauget
Most of us didn't realize it, but we Rogers class of 1960
students attended high school at a time of a decline in the film
industry. This was stimulated by three forces.
After World War II the US Supreme Court ruled that the major studios
could no longer control the complete life cycle of films that
consisted of production, distribution, and exhibition. It ordered
that the studios give up ownership of theaters, citing that this had
been a monopoly in violation of antitrust laws. This upset the film
industry's business model.
The second change originated from committees in the US Congress
investigating alleged infiltration of the movie industry by
Communists. We called this hysteria McCarthyism after US Senator
Joseph R. McCarthy who denounced numerous political figures as
taking part in Communist activity. The hysteria spilled into the
entertainment industry. Movie studios fired, or didn't hire many
actors, writers, and directors who were accused of being or
associating with Communists. This was the era of the blacklist. It
harmed the film industry.
The third, and greatest disruption, was caused by the emergence of
television. The number of sets in US homes grew rapidly in the
1950s, eating into movie attendance. The zenith of movie attendance
was in 1946. By the 1960s, movie attendance was one forth the 1946
levels. Recall that Spokane's first TV station was KHQ channel 6. It
signed on as a dual NBC-ABC affiliate late in 1952. KREM channel 2
took the ABC affiliation when it signed on in 1954. Television
stations were similarly emerging in other US cities. This was a
threat to the movie business model that depended on families going
the movies on weekends. The film industry began to respond.
Although color film technology existed as early as 1908, the
majority of films had been black-and-white. More color films
appeared because the studios had to fight television's appeal by
trying to differentiate themselves from the monochrome television of
the 50's and early 60's. It is interesting that many of the better
films of the 60's and 70's were filmed in monochrome at the time
when the use of Technicolor was exploding. Recall Psycho, To
Kill a Mockingbird, On the Beach, and the Man Who Shot
Liberty Valance?
The studios also tried other enhanced technologies, such as 3-D.
This required two projectors and special glasses. Recall the House
of Wax? Only about six 3-D films were made, as the public soon
lost interest. The advent of wide-screen Cinemascope occurred
soon afterward with The Robe. Cinemascope required a
special lens on both the camera and the projector. In the 1960s,
wide-screen Panavision supplanted it. This worked with or
without special lenses. It is the standard wide-screen process used
today.
The 60's and early 70's were a time of turbulence for the industry.
The old studio system broke down and studios were acquired by
unrelated businesses whose executives knew little about producing
pictures. American cultural values changed. The 1930s-era Production
Code was eliminated, replaced a few years later by a rating system
that concentrated on depictions of sexual activity but gave scant
attention to the display of violence.
The industry turned around in the mid-1970s when new marketing
methods, appeared. These were ironically supported by television
advertising. The idea involved simultaneously placing a handful of
blockbuster films onto a huge number of screens for an extended
period. Gone were the days when a city such as Spokane had a number
of relatively large theaters, each with a single screen showing a
double feature that changed weekly, and was different from what the
theater down the street was showing. Remember "Held over for a
second week?" Previously the bill changed weekly. People went
to the movies weekly because the alternative was radio, another
technology that was to be disrupted by TV.
Today we have a smaller number of theaters, each with many screens -
the multiplex. Each theater usually shows the same suite of movies
as its competitors. Each movie in a multiplex runs on a separate
screen in a separate room that often has so-called "stadium
seating" never seen outside a skybox of an actual stadium. An
individual movie may run a month or more. After the title runs its
course in the movie houses, it moves into the DVD, cable, satellite,
and rental markets to begin an extended second life cycle. The movie
business is now healthier than it was when we were younger. We
Rogers '60 kids witnessed this metamorphosis of the film industry
from inception to its current state.
- Ed Mauget
References:
-- encarta.msn.com
-- www.wikipedia.org |
