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Courtesy of Charmaine Zoe, reprinted in 1926 edition of The Film Daily.
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Politician and entrepreneur John Paul
Harris had a storied career, in no small part due to his helping found the Nickelodeon
Era of early twentieth century America. This research describes
and assesses Harris’s role in the development of the film industry using qualitative indicators
such as first-person accounts, extant trade publications,
and secondary academic sources. Harris was born in 1871 to a family already
involved in the entertainment industry, with his father being a vaudeville
producer. While his father had shown films in the late 1900s, they were always a
secondary act to his vaudeville productions, not the primary reason audiences
came to the show. Harris, and his brother-in-law Harry Davis, are credited as
the first ones to open a theater dedicated to showing films when they started
their original “Nickelodeon” theater “on Smithfield Street in Pittsburgh on
June 19 ,1905.” As evidence
of the industry’s growth, by the time of his death, Harris’s company operated “sixty
theaters throughout seven states.”
Research Methodology
This research uses historical first-hand
accounts from Harris’s contemporaries as they describe his actions and legacy. It
will also include descriptions from extant trade publications of the nickelodeon
trend on the budding film exhibition industry. Lastly, some secondary academic
sources will be included to provide context and perspective. The information is
all accessible online through databases such as Internet Archive, archives of
the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and documents from The Historical Society
of Western Pennsylvania. Comparative analysis will be used to assess both the qualitative
and narrative information available. There are no apparent ethical concerns
other than the relentless pursuit of objective analysis. The limitations to
consider are that financial data of these early theaters is difficult to find,
so qualitative analysis will have to suffice.
Findings & Analysis
Like other early
theatrical entrepreneurs, Harris’s ingenuity, investment, and ability to
identify market signals regarding the potential and popularity of inexpensive,
available, and entertaining motion-picture theaters quite literally helped create
the demand for higher quality productions, better equipment, and more modern
theaters. While the so-called ‘Golden Age of Cinema,’ often designated as the
1920s to the 1960s, is usually the earliest cinema that contemporary audiences
remember, if Harris and the nickelodeons had not helped create demand, advance
technology, and cultivate more quality productions, the Golden Age would likely
have taken longer to get started or never come at all. Moreover, nickelodeons’
affordable prices, convenient locations, and frequent twenty-minute shows throughout
the day also helped increase the diversity of the audience members. As an
example of increasingly diverse audiences, a 1911 trade magazine called The
Nickelodeon described how some business owners in this era began to set up
their own nickelodeons near their farms or fields as a benefit or means of
attracting laborers to come work for them. Unlike
potentially expensive, exclusive live theatrical productions, the poor, the
ethnic minorities, and the uneducated were able to experience the magic of
moviegoing. This also meant there was more demand for films, which led to
increased production from the studios.
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| John P. Harris Memorial Theatre. Courtesy of Jack Oberleitner and CinemaTreasures.org |
As one of the
primary entrepreneurs of the nickelodeon era, many of his contemporaries, and those
who came after, felt that John Harris’s contributions warranted remembrance. As
evidence of his impact on the community and the film industry, within approximately
three years of his passing in 1926, the Harris Memorial Theatre was founded on 210
Fifth Avenue in McKeesport, Pennsylvania.
This theater would operate in various forms for another forty years and serve
as a reminder of Harris’s contributions to the industry. Additionally, also in
1929, members of the community installed a historical marker near the site of Harris’s
first nickelodeon to commemorate the man and his legacy. A
June 1929 article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette describing the
event noted that “thousands of persons crowded Smithfield street … to
witness the unveiling.” Moreover,
prestigious community leaders and speakers who participated included the mayor,
the president of The Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, the former
head of the local vaudeville circuit, and former governor and current secretary
of the Motion Picture Producers of America, Carl Milliken. The
article notes that they all “joined in lauding Senator Harris for his foresight
in appreciating the importance of the young industry.” The
tablet credits Harris for opening “the world’s first all motion picture theatre
the Nickelodeon” and claims that “this was the beginning of the motion picture
theatre industry.”Historical Society President William H. Stevens’
comments at the 1929 unveiling of Harris’s historical marker describe how he
had helped the theater business grow from simple nickelodeons across the
eastern United States to “the beautiful and commodious million dollar movie
palaces of today [1929].” These
larger theaters were constructed, in part, due to government regulation prescribing
the maximum number of occupants and seating arrangements permitted in nickelodeons. The
motion picture theater industry may have been an exception to Gabriel Kolko’s claim
that successful businesses of this era generally sought regulation and political
allies to protect themselves from competition. If
anything, those in the early film industry seem to have been frustrated by government
regulation as it pushed them away from profitable, low-cost nickelodeons,
though it did help advance the industry standard for movie exhibition to the
next level. Despite being in the birthplace of the nickelodeon, known for its eponymous
nickel admission price, this next generation of Pittsburgh theaters would charge
as much as “ten and twenty cents a show.”
Conclusion
Stevens’ comments at the 1929 unveiling of
Harris’s historical marker aptly summarize Harris’s contributions to his
community and the film industry at large. Stevens notes that while Harris’s
first nickelodeon was simply a “rented store room” in which he placed “ninety-six
chairs” and “one of those early crude projectors,” it helped to kick off a
booming industry. In its
own way, the nickelodeon craze that Harris founded helped to increase the availability
of cinema, attract a more diverse audience, and unite Americans through shared theatrical
experiences.
Footnotes
[1] Bartels,
Elizabeth, “More Than Your Nickel’s Worth: The Nickelodeon,” Pennsylvania Center
for the Book, Spring 2010.
[2] William
H. Stevenson, “Address of William H. Stevenson at the Unveiling of Harris
Memorial Tablet,” Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine 12, no. 4,
October, 1929, 209.
[3] “Motion
Pictures for Hop Field Laborers,” The Nickelodeon, January 7, 1911, in The
Nickelodeon (Jan-Mar 1911) 5, no. 1.
[4] “John
P. Harris Memorial Theatre,” Cinema Treasures, accessed November 15, 2023, https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/9466.
[5] “Harris
Memorial Tablet,” dedicated by The Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, June
1929, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
[6] “Thousands
Honor Founder of First Nickelodeon,” Pittsburgh Post Gazette, June 20,
1929.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] “Harris
Memorial Tablet,” 1929.
[10] Ibid.,
208.
[11] “Pennsylvania’s
Absurd Law,” The Nickelodeon, January 28, 1911, in The Nickelodeon
(Jan-Mar 1911) 5, no. 4.
[12] Robert
L. Bradley
Jr.
and Roger Donway, "Reconsidering
Gabriel Kolko: A Half-Century Perspective," The
Independent Review 17, no. 4 (Spring, 2013): 561.
[13] Michael
G. Aronson, “The Wrong Kind of Nickel Madness: Pricing
Problems for Pittsburgh Nickelodeons,” Cinema Journal
42, no. 1 (2002): 72,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1225543.
[14] Stevenson,
“Address …”, 207.
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