When Movies Were Theater

Architecture, Exhibition, and the Evolution of American Film

William Paul

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780231541374
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

There was a time when seeing a movie meant more than seeing a film. The theater itself shaped the very perception of events on screen. This multilayered history tells the story of American film through the evolution of theater architecture and the surprisingly varied ways movies were shown, ranging from Edison's 1896 projections to the 1968 Cinerama premiere of Stanley Kubrick's 2001. William Paul matches distinct architectural forms to movie styles, showing how cinema's roots in theater influenced business practices, exhibition strategies, and film technologies.

1. MAKING MOVIES FIT

If any building embodies Louis Sullivan’s principle that form follows function, it is the theater…. No American architect, not even Louis Sullivan, was predisposed to experiment with the interior arrangement of the playhouse.

—Mary C. Henderson¹

One of the best-kept secrets in the theatre is the frequency with which architectural design totally frustrates the intentions of artists for whom such work is ostensibly undertaken. It is one of the theatre’s greatest ironies that those who design its stages and auditoria, no matter how distinguished they may be as architects, are very often baboons when it comes to creating a space in which actors and audiences can happily cohabit.

—Charles Marowitz²

Performance spaces, once built, tend to outlast their creators. Miscalculations made in one generation may haunt the users of the facilities through many subsequent generations.

—Martin Bloom³

For fifty years our theatre has been steadily and slowly working over from the bizarre operatic structure set upon the drama of Europe by the bursting luxuriance of seventeenth century Italian courts towards a reticent auditorium which should display, upon an illusively lighted stage within a frame, a realistic representation of life. At last…we have reached a form appropriate to the purposes of the nineteenth century drama.

—Kenneth Macgowan⁴

THE THEATER BUILDING LITERALLY HAS AN ANCIENT HISTORY, one that goes back far before anyone could even imagine the technological developments that would lead to movies for the theater. But the theater building as an architectural form also has a varied history. On the face of it, the function of live theater would seem to dictate a specific use of space as much as film theater does: the very nature of the event requires a performing area and a viewing area. But in live theater this requirement is even more indefinite than with film since performing and viewing areas may, in fact, occupy the same space. I have begun this chapter with a colloquy of four voices to suggest the following: the function of live theater might always be clear, as theater historian Mary Henderson has it, but only if we define theatrical function in the most generalizing way of spectators encountering performers. If the function were so simple, how could so many “distinguished” architects become baboons as dramatist-director Charles Marowitz claimed in 1997? Clearly, Henderson’s understanding of function, based on a fairly restricted notion of theater, is too vague to imply, let alone dictate architectural form.

But if the nature of the theatrical entertainment were more specifically defined—with possibilities ranging from, say, the circus to naturalistic drama—then function would become more varied and potentially call for a variety of forms. Further, what constitutes theatrical entertainment can change with time, as is very much the case with the appearance of motion pictures within late-nineteenth-century theaters. Such changes can give rise to the “miscalculations” of past theater architecture surviving long after the original designers, as architect Martin Bloom has it. Although Bloom has in mind flaws inherent in the original design, miscalculation can also mean a past function for theatrical space that no longer conforms to current practice, a change in performance style that earlier architects could not have anticipated. This problem of a mismatch between architecture and staging is evident in stage and film producer Kenneth Macgowan’s ironic praise for contemporary theater architecture finally arriving in 1921 at a form appropriate to dramatic styles of the previous century, an irony lost on us if we are not aware of the changes taking place in the most advanced theater productions when Macgowan wrote this, an irony that should be apparent from the book’s title, The Theatre of Tomorrow.

In the United States, motion pictures first appeared in theatrical spaces designed for other purposes. My concern in this chapter is with how well motion pictures actually fit within those spaces and, complementarily, the extent to which those spaces helped condition an understanding of motion pictures. Crucial to this consideration is an understanding of the function of theatrical space, an understanding that does in fact change with history, even if we limit theater to mean a dramatic form usually centered on a preexisting text. The function of the spaces in which movies first appeared in 1896 has a precise historical determination. To complicate matters, the understanding of the function of theatrical space was itself undergoing a change in precisely this period, with changes in staging practices and the audience-performer relationship. Following up on his ironic praise for the new theater architecture, Macgowan notes isolated exceptions of the previous century that were becoming more of a trend at the time of his writing: “For a hundred years scattered artists, architects and directors have been fighting both the court opera house and the modern peep-show theatre in an endeavor to create still another form of playhouse—a structure neither as absurd as the opera house nor as limiting as the picture frame stage…a theatre for the future as well as the past; a theatre for the drama that grows tired of the limitations of realism” (186–87). In Macgowan’s formulation, theater architecture effectively expresses a preference for kinds of staging as well as kinds of drama, so, for example, the “picture frame stage” evinces a preference for realistic staging. Taking a cue from Macgowan, then, I would like to reverse Sullivan’s familiar dictum and use form as a means to arrive at function.

Let me begin with Sullivan himself by considering the Dankmar Adler–Louis Sullivan Auditorium Theatre in Chicago (1889), “the most important and influential theater building of the nineteenth century after Bayreuth Festspielhaus,” a building roughly contemporaneous with the invention of cinema and possibly an influence on subsequent movie palace architecture.⁵ There are a number of striking features in the design of this building that we are no longer likely to see in a new theater: side boxes, which were perpendicular to the hall, not facing the stage; an arrangement that allowed covering the orchestra seats with wood planking; and, finally, one of its most innovative architectural features, “hinged ceiling plates, which could be lowered to close off two upper balconies.”⁶ What precisely was the theatrical function of these architectural forms?

The first two items actually had little to do with theatrical entertainment. Of the man who commissioned the building, Sullivan wrote, “he wished to give birth to a great hall within which the multitude might gather for all sorts of purposes, including grand opera.”⁷ “All sorts of purposes” might well be an understatement since the first use to which the hall was put, a year before its formal opening, was the 1888 Republican National Convention. After the space officially opened as a theater, it also functioned as a concert hall for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which made the Auditorium its home until it moved to a dedicated concert hall in 1904. In both these cases the side boxes that did not directly face the stage could make sense: facing the orchestra is not necessary for a concert, while facing the interior could make sense for a convention. Covering the orchestra seats with wood planking was necessary for the convention as well, but it also allowed for the possibility of gala balls, which were indeed held in this theater. The one item here that actually has to do with theater was the hinged ceiling since it allowed for “reducing capacity to about twenty-five hundred for dramatic presentations.” At the time of its construction, the theater “was designed to seat over forty-two hundred for operatic, choral, or orchestra performances.”⁸ As an architectural matter, then, “dramatic presentations” clearly stood in opposition to these other entertainments and called for a different kind of architectural space. The different configuration of space should provide insight into contemporary understanding of, say, the function of grand opera as different from that of dramatic presentations.

Writing of the move toward “the large, pictorial, and essentially Romantic style of stage production” in the nineteenth century, theater historian Donald C. Mullin has observed, “Whether the design change dictated by fashion influenced playwrights or whether the changes in dramatic entertainments ran parallel to those in architectural practice is not clear.”⁹ Architectural space will inevitably place constraints on what may be exhibited within it, but to what extent may performance determine architectural space? At the beginnings of Western theater there seems to have been a fairly direct connection between theater design and performance. In the enormous outdoor theaters of ancient Greece, performance space was contiguous with audience space, with both performers and audience utilizing the same paradoi, the walkways to enter seating and performing areas.¹⁰ The consequent emphasis on theater as communal experience, with playing and seating areas constituting a continuous space, finds its literary reflection of community in the onstage chorus. Further, the very size of the theaters necessitated the use of masks with built-in miniature megaphones and something like platform shoes for all performers to make them more visible and audible to the widely scattered audience. This, in turn, had to have an impact on the way the plays were written.¹¹ Still, these were structures that were being erected at the same time as the plays being written for them. In later centuries, however, economics could be as important a factor in determining architectural form as theatrical function, most especially in theaters built on speculation in a commercial market.

For example, the advent of the unroofed theaters in Elizabethan England staged dramas within structures “undoubtedly derived from the bull and bear baiting yards.”¹² The reason for the architecture was both economic and political, “so that the buildings could readily be adapted to gaming houses should their use for plays be restricted at any time by the authorities, thus insuring the owners against loss by the multi-purpose nature of their building design” (ibid.). Would the design have been different had the sole function been presentation of plays? The design of contemporaneous interior court theaters, based on a rectangle, was certainly different, so it seems likely the rectangular shape could have provided a model for unroofed theaters as well, one that might look more familiar to us. But the court theater did not face the economic constraints of the commercial theaters. The resulting dual-purpose architecture of the unroofed theater consequently acted as a limiting factor on how plays were presented, its circular form requiring a platform that extended from one end of the circle toward its center. At the least, there could be no question of extensive scenery, which is why Shakespeare’s plays often call upon our imaginations to provide settings for the staged action. Further, the extremely varied views of the performing area created by the circular shape were certainly a factor in determining a style of playwriting that favored the expressivity of language over spectacle.¹³

Architecture, then, could affect the composition of a play, and I will argue in later chapters that it would eventually have an impact on film production as well. But in its earliest appearance in a theater, film might seem more of an immutable object that merely had to be fit within an existing space willy-nilly, not able to change in any fundamental way as staging practices in live theater could change in response to architecture. Nevertheless, how the film image was presented to an audience within a given architectural space turns out to have required a good deal of forethought and could be surprisingly varied, even in its earliest exhibition. This is to say that the theaters themselves did affect how the first motion pictures were perceived by the American public, literally in terms of how the screen was spatially located in relation to the spectators. But there was also a metaphorical meaning fostered by the connotations of the theatrical space as well as the manner of presentation, both in theatrical format and in issues of staging, which inevitably invoked other theatrical presentations.

Once a theater is built, the very expense of its construction makes tearing it down the last option to allow for any novelty in theatrical presentation. For this reason, architecture is generally the most conservative element of theater. As economic necessity determined the form of the Elizabethan theater, it also determined the venue for motion picture exhibition: the sense that cinema might be little more than a novelty as well as the very brevity of the films themselves could not warrant new structures. Further, as much as motion pictures were a novelty, they also operated within a context of visual novelties that were a striking feature of nineteenth-century entertainments, not least of which was the development of photography itself.¹⁴ I want to look at two that had strong associations with theater and may be seen as precursors of the motion picture: panoramic paintings and tableaux vivants. Both appeared in a period that seemed to increasingly value illusionism, both paralleled each other in periods of popularity, and both were effectively supplanted by motion pictures as a popular entertainment. Finally, each allows us to consider how an illusionist object would depend upon a specific architectural space to create its illusion. Panoramic paintings with their trompe l’oeil ambitions aimed at fooling the eye into accepting pictorial representation as reality are of interest because they required special buildings that looked nothing like conventional theaters, and yet they were seen as theatrical entertainments and ultimately did have a direct impact on theater practice.¹⁵

First popular in the late eighteenth century, panorama painting saw a major revival in the few decades preceding the first exhibition of motion pictures. In both periods, the panorama painting brought with it the dedicated buildings of the earlier period. These buildings could seem at an extreme remove from theater buildings: spectators were led up a stairway to a central viewing platform where they found themselves surrounded by a wraparound painting. But even if the buildings themselves did not provide an architectural connection to conventional theater, the paintings were viewed as a form of theatrical entertainment: for example, a 1903 historical survey of the “New York Stage” lists “The Colosseum,” a building which opened in 1874 specifically to display a panorama painting, “London by Day.”¹⁶ This painting was enormously successful for three months, after which time, much as a new play might open, a new painting, “Paris by Night,” was installed. When business fell off (reportedly because of competition from P. T. Barnum’s circus at the Hippodrome, the cavernous space that would become the first Madison Square Garden), the show closed and the building was taken down.¹⁷ Similarly, the panoramic painting “The Battle of Gettysburg” was exhibited in a special building, “The Cyclorama.” As plays in this period would travel to different cities, the painting was moved to Washington, D.C., after a two year ru...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents 
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: An Art of the Theater
• 1. Making Movies Fit
• 2. Store Theaters: A Radical Break
• 3. Palatial Architecture, Democratized Audience
• 4. Elite Taste In A Mass Medium
• 5. Uncanny Theater
• 6. The Architectural Screen
• Conclusion: Ontological Fade-Out
• Appendix 1: Stage Shows and Double Features in Select Markets Outside New York City
• Appendix 2: Feature Films Based on Theatrical Sources, 1914–2011
• Appendix 3: Filmography
• Appendix 4: List of Theaters
• Abbreviations Used for Citations in Notes
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Series List