The first ever commercial motion picture house opened on April 14, 1894 in New York City at 1155 Broadway, on the corner of 27th Street. The venue used ten Kinetoscopes, a device for peep-show viewing of films, set up in parallel rows of five, each showing a different movie. For 25 cents a viewer could see all the films in either row; half a dollar gave access to the entire bill.
The Lumière brothers performed for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines, Paris on December 28, 1895 marking the debut of the cinema.
The Regent Street Cinema in London played short footage by the Lumière Brothers in late February 1896. It was the first piece of film shown in the United Kingdom.
On April 23, 1896, the first public exhibition of projected motion pictures in America took place at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. The event used a Vitascope film projector, which was invented by Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins. The Vitascope was an improved version of the Phantoscope, which was originally invented by Jenkins. The exhibition consisted of a series of short films, including scenes of everyday life, as well as footage of famous athletes and performers. The event was a huge success and marked the beginning of the motion picture industry in America.
Iowa is home to the oldest continuously operating movie theater in the world. The State Theatre, located in Washington, Iowa, has been open since 1897.
Thomas Lincoln Tally’s Electric Theatre, the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opened on April 2, 1902 in Los Angeles. It showed short films for ten cents per customer. A converted arcade, The Electric Theatre was located at 262 Main Street - next to St. Vibiana's Cathedral.
The cinema organ, with its distinctive 'voicing' and its special effects was developed in the early 20th century especially by the Wurlitzer Company in the USA, to accompany silent films and to play popular medleys during intervals.
The term ''Nickelodeon'' was used for early movie theaters that cost 5¢ to enter. An ''odeon'' was any building used for live entertainment in ancient Greece and Rome.
Scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer renovated the Gem Theater, a rundown, 600 seat burlesque house in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which he reopened on November 28, 1907 as the Orpheum, his first movie theater. Within a few years, with Nathan H. Gordon, he created the Gordon-Mayer partnership that controlled the largest theater chain in New England.
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| A San Francisco Kinetoscope parlor, ca. 1894–95. |
The Lumière brothers performed for their first paying audience at the Grand Cafe in Boulevard des Capucines, Paris on December 28, 1895 marking the debut of the cinema.
On April 23, 1896, the first public exhibition of projected motion pictures in America took place at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. The event used a Vitascope film projector, which was invented by Thomas Armat and C. Francis Jenkins. The Vitascope was an improved version of the Phantoscope, which was originally invented by Jenkins. The exhibition consisted of a series of short films, including scenes of everyday life, as well as footage of famous athletes and performers. The event was a huge success and marked the beginning of the motion picture industry in America.
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| 1896 poster advertising the Vitascope |
Iowa is home to the oldest continuously operating movie theater in the world. The State Theatre, located in Washington, Iowa, has been open since 1897.
Thomas Lincoln Tally’s Electric Theatre, the first full-time movie theater in the United States, opened on April 2, 1902 in Los Angeles. It showed short films for ten cents per customer. A converted arcade, The Electric Theatre was located at 262 Main Street - next to St. Vibiana's Cathedral.
The cinema organ, with its distinctive 'voicing' and its special effects was developed in the early 20th century especially by the Wurlitzer Company in the USA, to accompany silent films and to play popular medleys during intervals.
The term ''Nickelodeon'' was used for early movie theaters that cost 5¢ to enter. An ''odeon'' was any building used for live entertainment in ancient Greece and Rome.
Scrap-metal dealer Louis B. Mayer renovated the Gem Theater, a rundown, 600 seat burlesque house in Haverhill, Massachusetts, which he reopened on November 28, 1907 as the Orpheum, his first movie theater. Within a few years, with Nathan H. Gordon, he created the Gordon-Mayer partnership that controlled the largest theater chain in New England.
The oldest continually operating cinema in Britain is The Electric Cinema in Birmingham, England. Originally built as a music hall in Station Street it was converted to a cinema in 1909, and showed its first silent film on December 27 of that year. The cinema has two screens, both able to show digitally-shot films and one also able to show films in 35 mm. The cinema also hosts a number of special events throughout the year, such as film festivals and Q&A sessions with filmmakers.
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| Opening day, 22 September 1910 |
Early movie theaters in Japan hired benshi, storytellers who sat next to the screen and narrated silent movies. They were descendants of kabuki jōruri, kōdan storytellers, and other forms of oral storytelling. With the advent of sound in the early 1930s, the benshi gradually disappeared.
The largest movie theatre in the world, Radio City Music Hall in New York City, opened in December, 1932. It originally had 5,945 seats.
Richard Hollingshead opened the world's first drive-in movie on 10 acres off Wilson Boulevard, Camden, New Jersey on June 6, 1933, with a screen of 40 by 30 feet. The charge was 0.25 ¢ per person, with a maximum of $1.00. The first film shown was the Adolphe Menjou movie Wife Beware.
The Camden drive-in theater was advertised with the slogan, "The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are."
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| First drive-in theater, Camden, New Jersey, 1933 |
The Elgin Theatre in Ottawa, Canada, became the first venue to offer two film programs on different screens in 1957 when Canadian theater-owner Nat Taylor converted the dual screen theater into one capable of showing two different films simultaneously.
For many decades people would come and go during the screening of movies. However, When Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho was first shown in 1960, the director required theaters to not allow moviegoers in after it started. It was after that when people would watch entire movies more regularly from start to end.
While searching the Paris Catacombs in 2004, police discovered a cinema in one of the caverns. It was equipped with a giant cinema screen, seats, projection equipment, film reels, a fully stocked bar and a complete restaurant with tables and chairs. The source of its electrical power and the identity of those responsible remain unknown.
In 2004 police discovered a movie theater in the Paris Catacombs. It was equipped with a giant cinema screen, seats, projection equipment, film reels, a fully stocked bar and a complete restaurant with tables and chairs. Its power source and the identity of those responsible remain unknown.
A group of embittered singles worked together to buy up all odd-numbered cinema seats for a Valentine's Day screening of Beijing Love Story, at the Shanghai Xintiandi cinema on February 14, 2014. They thus forced couples to sit apart while watching the sappy big-budget romance.
The world's first permanent virtual reality movie cinema opened in Amsterdam in 2016. Viewers can turn in their chairs to see the movie in 360°.
Tony "Nem" Mitchell has watched Avengers: Infinity War an incredible 103 times at his local movie theatre in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, breaking the record for the most cinema productions attended - same film.
The Sound of Music had the longest first run in US cinemas ever at four and a half years.
At 62 metres high, Cineworld Glasgow is the tallest cinema in the world.
Film trailers were originally shown after the movie, which why they are called “trailers.”
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