This Month

During the first fifty years of the American cinema, the act of going to the movies was a risky process, fraught with a number of possible physical and moral dangers. Film fires were rampant, claiming many lives, as were movie theatre robberies, which became particularly common during the Great Depression. Labor disputes provoked a large number of movie theatre bombings, while low-level criminals like murderers, molesters, and prostitutes plied their trades in the darkened auditoriums. That was all in addition to the spread of disease, both real (as in the case of influenza) and imagined ("movie eyestrain").

Audiences also confronted an array of perceived moral dangers. Blue Laws prohibited Sunday film screenings, though theatres ignored them in many areas, sometimes resulting in the arrests of entire audiences. Movie theatre lotteries became another problem, condemned by politicians and clergymen throughout America for being immoral gambling.

The Perils of Moviegoing in America: 1896-1950 by Gary D. Rhodes (Continuum Press) provides the first history of the many threats that faced film audiences, threats which claimed hundreds, if not thousands, of lives.

"The Perils of Moviegoing in America reclaims a heretofore lost chapter of film history, meticulously detailing the dangers faced by early moving picture audiences."
--David Stenn, author of Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild

"Gary Rhodes provides the fortunate reader with a rigorously researched and compelling history, which systematically unveils the sensational aspects of moviegoing that have been left at the periphery of film studies. A mesmerizing page turner."
--Charles Musser, author of The Emergence of American Cinema

"Completely original."
--Kevin Brownlow, film historian and filmmaker

Gary D. Rhodes, Gary D. Rhodes, PhD, is currently Head of Area for Film Studies at The Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is the author of Lugosi (McFarland, 1997) and White Zombie: Anatomy of a Horror Film (McFarland, 2002). Rhodes has also written and directed a number of documentary films.

The Perils of Moviegoing in America: 1896-1950 will be available from most major booksellers in late November.