Double feature
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The double feature, also known as a double bill, was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.
[edit] Origin and format
Movie theaters, interested in attracting customers during the Great Depression, began changing the way they booked movies. In the 1920s, before the Depression, an evening at the theater would usually consist of the following:
- An animated cartoon short subject (e.g., Looney Tunes)
- A live-action comedy short (e.g., Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, or The Three Stooges)
- A novelty short: a musical, a travelogue, etc.
- A newsreel
- The main feature film
Theater owners decided that they could attract more customers if they offered two movies for the price of one. The high-budget main feature (the A-movie) ran first, and was followed by a lower-budget, and sometimes lower-quality, second film (the B-movie). A short film and/or a newsreel were often shown in the short interlude between the first feature and the second. Although the double feature put many short comedy producers out of business, it was the primary source of revenue for smaller Hollywood studios, such as Republic and Monogram, that specialized in B-movie production.
[edit] Decline of the double feature
The double feature arose partly because of a studio practice known as "block booking," a form of tying in which major Hollywood studios required theaters to buy B-movies along with the more desirable A-movies. The U.S. Supreme Court decided that this practice was illegal in United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. in 1948.
By the 1960s, double features had been mostly abandoned in favor of the modern single-feature screening, in which only one feature film is exhibited. Short films still occasionally precede the feature presentation (Pixar films generally feature a short, for example), but the double feature is now effectively extinct in first-run movie theaters in the U.S.
Many repertory houses continue to show two films, usually related in some way, back to back.
