Silent Cinema Slides

The lantern slides in this set were displayed in the vast numbers of movie theaters that had spread across America from the dawn of the twentieth century.

Still silent, the films were screened in converted theaters or custom built spaces known as nickelodeons—after the five cent entrance charge. By the time these slides were in use, nickelodeons saw weekly audience figures in the tens of millions.

The slides offer a welcome, and then reminders of acceptable and unacceptable behavior—important when patrons could enter the nickelodeon at any time, and stay for as many of the typically-ten-minute long films as they wished.