The Early Movies

In the early 1900s, all you needed was a projector, a sheet to use as a screen, some chairs, and an empty storefront. Then you could open up a “nickelodeon” and collect five cents apiece from all the people who wanted to see the newest form of popular entertainment, the movies.

The first movies, just a few minutes long, showed everyday scenes: a sneeze, a kiss, a train. But then the “flickers” began to tell stories. In 1903, crowds flocked to see the Great Train Robbery, which tells, in 12 minutes, the story of a gang of outlaws who rob a train and are then chased and gunned down by a posse. By 1908, there were more than 10,000 nickelodeons in the U.S. alone, serving more than 25 million customers each week. Movies grew longer and more ambitious. And ornate theaters called “picture palaces” were built to show the expensive dramatic epics created by D.W. Griffith and others.

People went to the movies for thrills and laughter. Audiences especially loved the slapstick comedies produced by Mack Sennett at the Keystone Studios in Hollywood beginning in 1912. Those films featured the wacky “Keystone Kops,” and always included a wild chase during which everything that could go wrong did. Audiences didn’t care that the films were silent; they often laughed too loud to hear dialogue.

Charlie Chaplin, the great comedian began his career in Sennett’s Keystone comedies.