Why did so many Americans go to the cinema in the 1920’s?

Ronnie: Why did so many Americans go to the cinema in the 1920’s?
I know that going to the cinema was a cheap, new form of entertainments but why did so many americans go?

Answers and Views:

Answer by A. T.
Unlike today, the picture shows in the 1920s were not completely bankrupt of new ideas. So, not only was the entertainment cheap – and remember, in those days there were no televisions or DVDs to speak of at home – but the stories being told in the movies were not the same-old predictable formulaic trash that Hollywood spews out today.

Answer by 101% PROUD hippie liberal
Americans are obsessed with childhood and innocence (ugh) so they all went to the cinema for family time (barf!)

Europe has the right idea! Little to none family time and more time for sex and parties,

Answer by kent_shakespear
it was new, exciting, and was the newest popular tech.

There was no television in those days. Cinema and radio were new and exciting. Families listened to radio at home; they had to go to the cinema to see movies. There was no way to watch movies at home, unless you were wealthy.

Theater certainly existed, but it wasn’t the flashy new experience that cinema was. And more affordable theater, vaudeville or burlesque, tended to be formulaic and already seeming very old-fashioned. (Burlesque, incidentally, was more about low-brow or mildly vulgar skits, song and humor; only by the 1950s did it tend to mean strippers).

Answer by David L
You are touching on something here that really needs to be studied. Sociologists are supposed to study it, but they are all off being politically correct and competing for tenure and strokes. In the 1920’s people’s backs ached. So they probably wanted to sit in a comfortable chair. In the 1920’s people went to Chautauqua. They went to lectures. They went to theatre. To plays. To opera. To symphonies. They went to political debates that lasted for hours, and they sat through them, focused and thinking, and then they read the entire transcript of the debate the next day because it was printed in small, handset type on the front pages of their newspapers. So why did so many Americans go the cinema in the 1920’s? Good question. Look forward to your answer.

Answer by Kestril
It was new and a place where you could go cheaply and get away from everyday drudgery and sit back , watch the beautiful actors , dream and hold hands with your date . So much different from the somewhat limited theater plays.

Answer by Artorius
Television had not been invented yet. It was a great way to get entertained (it was relatively new). The cinema also had “newsreels” where a person could “see” what was happening in the world.

Answer by Laredo
They went to the cinema simply because it was new, it was entertainment, there was no such thing as a television. They could actually see their favourite Hollywood stars on the big screen. They could loose themselves in the film and the actors/actresses. It was also a time when families went out together so a night out at the cinema was the done thing.