ABSTRACT
The history of the motion picture industry spans over 100 years. During that period the industry has endured competitive challenges from network television, cable and satellite, massive corporate reorganizations, and years of government and private antitrust attacks. Since the passage of the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, few industries have been so drastically altered by government antitrust action as the motion picture industry. But it has survived, gaining prosperity through technological improvements in filmmaking and exhibition, and by capitalizing on new channels for distributing movies. Born from innovations in the photography of moving objects and the projection of images onto a screen, the industry rose from humble beginnings in the 1890s. The first theatrical screening was in New York City in 1896, following a vaudeville act. Movie viewing was widespread by 1910, and reached enormous popularity in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In the 1930s and 1940s upward of 400-500 feature films were produced per year in the United States, and theater attendance in many years reportedly averaged 85 to 90 million per week, or over 4 billion annually, well above contemporary attendance levels of approximately 1.4 to 1.6 billion.1
