Most studies of America's movie palaces have been nostalgic, preservation-oriented efforts which have tended to isolate movie palaces in time and space from other public architecture and from the larger current of consumerism in the U.S. In his study of San Francisco's Fox Theater, Preston Kaufmann asserts that "the world portrayed by the motion picture theater was in truth a carbon copy of the era which gave it birth. This could only be achieved in such an unforgettable decade as the Twenties."(4) Although the Twenties spawned some of the most fanciful and elaborate theater architecture, the movie palaces are understood more fully when they are read as part of a larger story--the rise of a pervasive culture of consumerism which dramatically altered the way Americans worked, played, and thought about their relationships to other citizens. When theater architect John Eberson called movie palaces "the most palatial homes of princes and crowned kings for and on behalf of His Excellency--the American Citizen," Eberson was speaking a language perfected by advertisers, retailers, religious leaders, government officials, and heads of industry during the fifty years prior.(5) Movie palaces perfectly demonstrate the anxieties, exhilirations, and pitfalls of the culture of consumerism which has become synonymous with the 'American Way.'
|The Rise of Consumer Culture||Palace Tour: Stage Shows and the Mighty Wurlitzer|
1 Maggie Valentine, The Show Starts on the Sidewalk: An Architectural History of the Movie Theater Starring S. Charles Lee, 9.
2 John Margolies and Emily Gwathmey, Ticket to Paradise: American Movie Theaters and How We Had Fun, 14.
3 qtd. in Margolies and Gwathmey, 10.
4 Preston Kaufmann, Fox: Story of the World's Finest Theater, 2.
5 Valentine, 34.
American Studies at the University of Virginia