Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States by Douglas Gomery

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 199 this kind of imagery, and such examples of pictorial (as opposed to photographic) journalism are needed to show the special contribution photography offered. Robert Taft’s Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839—1889, first published in 1938 (New York) and still available in a Dover reprint edition, remains the classic study of the subject. Despite its subtitle, Taft’s book contains more technical information, correctly rendered, than the present work. Carlebach does not understand the photomechanical processes, and he confuses their names and charac­ teristics from the introduction all the way through to the glossary. His final chapter, “Dryplates and Halftones,” which should be the culmi­ nation of his argument, is the weakest in the book. By contrast, Taft’s chapter “Photography and the Pictorial Press” gives a brief history of the most important illustrated papers, plus a detailed and accurate description of the development of the halftone. This book offers a number of important illustrations from great moments in American history, and the author has gone to much trouble to locate and pair images from photo and print media, but he has not answered the fundamental question implied in his title: Where do pictures fit in the larger story of newsmaking, and how did photography influence and change journalism? Helena E. Wright Ms. Wright is curator of graphic arts at the National Museum of American History. Her specialty is the history of American pictorial printing. Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States. By Douglas Gomery. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. Pp. xxii +381; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $40.00 (cloth); $15.95 (paper). Shared Pleasures is an economic history of the exhibition end of the film industry in the United States. Douglas Gomery’s perspective emphasizes the impact of social, economic, and technological variables on industry revenue. The movie itself is relegated to a secondary level of importance. Movie exhibition is broadly defined, encompassing early nickelodeons, movie palaces, neighborhood theaters, multi­ plexes, late-show television, and home video. Because this is first and foremost a business history, the interaction of exhibition with techno­ logical and social change is analyzed in terms of rising and falling profits. Gomery has structured his book in three parts. The first describes the growth of movie theaters from an Edison kinetoscope parlor in a converted shoe store to today’s mall multiplex of twenty auditoriums. In the late years of the 19th century, both urban and rural audiences were introduced to the movies through traveling exhibitions and 200 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE short films shown at vaudeville houses. However, it was the nickelodeon era that transformed movie exhibition into a big business. The explosive growth of the nickelodeon resulted in a national marketing strategy based on the successful model of national chain and department stores. Powerful regional chains of theaters arose, the largest of these being Balaban and Katz ofChicago and Loew’s ofNew York City, whose lasting monuments were the glorious urban movie palaces of the 1920s. Ultimately these regional businesses coalesced into national chains dominated by the five major Hollywood production companies. Movie attendance was influenced by external events such as depres­ sion, war, suburbanization, and cold war ideology, and Gomery argues that these kinds of social and political factors were far more important in determining revenue than the draw of individual films. Exhibitors faced each challenge through innovation, often with technological incentives such as air conditioning and sound, or entrepreneurial ones, as with the introduction of popcorn and giveaways. Postwar baby-boom families spent their money on durable goods and housing rather than movies, and Gomery asserts that it was this trend toward a family- and child-centered suburban lifestyle that caused the postwar decline in moviegoing, rather than the more commonly perceived threat of television. Suburbanization resulted in the growth of drive-ins, mall cinemas, and the current rise of “postmodern Xanadus of pleasure,” multiplexes with concession stands the size of basketball arenas (p. 113). Part 2 of Shared Pleasures explores alternative types of specialized theaters such as the art cinema and theaters that cater to specific ethnic groups. The most compelling chapter in this...