Silent Era Facts


First time people paid to see a movie at Koster & Bial's Music Hall in New York City: April 20, 1896 (Shakespeare's birthday) First Pittsburgh Nickelodeon showing of The Great Train Robbery: June 19, 1905 First film company arrives in Los Angeles: 1907 Chicago is the first city to censor movies: November 4, 1907 Number of Theatres in 1910: Approx. 13,000 Average length of a movie in 1910: 3 reels, approx. 30 minutes (read the addendum to this) Average cost of a ticket in 1910: $0.07 Mary Pickford's salary in 1910: $175 per week Average feature film budget in 1913: $13,000 First serial: The Adventures of Kathlyn, 1913 Charlie Chaplin's debut as "The Tramp": Kid Auto Races at Venice, 1914 First movie sex symbol: Theda Bara, 1915 Buster Keaton's first film: The Butcher Boy, 1916 Number of studio employees in Hollywood: 1920: 20,000; 1926: 300,000 First Motion Picture Theatre in the United States: Vitascope Hall, New Orleans, LA, July 26, 1896 (location is now a Burger King) (courtesy David B. Pearson)


More pages of facts…

Silent Era Trivia
A list of the most popular movies in 1922-27
A very brief and not so thorough history of animation in the silent era
More facts from the 1924 Film Daily Yearbook
What silent stars have their prints in Grauman's (Mann's) "Forecourt of the Stars?"
Want to talk like a Shiek or a Sheba? Learn the lingo of the teenagers of the Twenties
A list of directors' salaries in 1926
The typical cost of a big-budget production in 1920


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