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Child Audiences in America's Nickelodeons, 1900–1915: The Keith/Albee Managers’ Reports

The soundscapes of nickelodeon theaters’ ‘silent’ exhibition were full of signs of children’s central role in nickelodeon audiences. Social histories, contemporary surveys by Progressive reformers, and managers’ reports from the Keith/Albee theater circuit provide ample evidence of city children’s audible dominance in nickelodeons. Such records, along with histories of children in cities, inform a new interpretation of some of the canonical films, 1900–1915, that feature young protagonists. Film historians miss an important lens through which to read these films when they have not taken into account the defining role of children as audiences in the nickelodeons. These films include works by Edwin S. Porter, which featured mischievous children, as well as other, later films that tended to fold children into narratives of good behavior and heroism. The latter films left children with less space to respond through their narratives, while the spaces around them changed to dampen—though never completely silence—children’s contribution to the theater’s overall soundscape. Many histories of the silent period, supported by contemporary studies of commercial amusements and urban children, note the active and sizeable presence of children in nickelodeon theaters. These histories provide the historical groundwork for exploring what it meant for children to be at the movies and how they shaped movie-going, and possibly the movies produced, during the nickelodeon years. In The Making of American Audiences, Richard Butsch synthesizes the results of several surveys from the period, estimating that ‘children in the audience ranged from 20 percent in Detroit and Madison, Wisconsin to two-thirds in Pittsburgh and