Nickel Movies

By admin on February 25th, 2010

Nickel Movies

Most people these days think that Nickelodeon is a cable channel, but the name has far more historic roots than that! A Nickelodeon was one of the first neighborhood movie theaters. Usually they were small, had a piano player or maybe an organ if they were in a posh neighborhood and usually the films were all very short.

Nickelodeons are an American tradition. They started in Boston in the late 1880s and it didnt take long for them to spread all over the country. They cost five cents for entry and you got to see several films that were about fifteen minutes long. They were about all sorts of things - westerns, romances, war, melodramas, sporting events - and since they were silent, the piano player helped with the atmosphere and tension of what was on screen.

The most famous filmmakers of the day were known as the Miles Brothers and they churned out comedies and dramas galore and then distributed them all across the U.S.
Nickelodeons and the Miles Brothers did a great business for about twenty years and then came the first full length feature, The Birth of A Nation. That changed everything and prices increased to ten cents. The Nickelodeon served a great purpose in movie history. They got people used to going to see films and in the neighborhood. It can be said they paved the way for all the megaplexes of today.

There are a few mockups of Nickelodeons around the country in museums. The one at the Museum of Science and Industry is Chicago is always popular for film buffs to see. plays