Shoe Shine Boy [Mickey looking at a movie poster.]

Accession number X2011.4.10368.343

Unique identifier M3Y5350

Description The Golden Age of American Cinema, the Hays Code, and “Posteritis”

Marsh maintained a lifelong interest in the movies, both as a casual attendee and as a keen observer and recorder. As early as 1913 the young Marsh, then studying at Yale University, began to keep track of and comment upon the movies he saw. Marsh’s day planners from the 1930s and 1940s, in which he took extensive notes about his schedule and activities, show that the artist went to the movies at least once or twice a month. In these appointment books Marsh would often note the title of the movie he attended and, occasionally, a short one or two-word review. From these entries it seems that Marsh’s cinematic tastes were quite varied, ranging from romantic dramas like Yes, My Darling Daughter (1939) to light-hearted musicals like Fred Astaire’s Swing Time (1936), from literary adaptations like Wuthering Heights (1939) to films with “tough guy” heroes such as The General Died at Dawn (1936). As a cinephile, Marsh could not have chosen a better home than New York City; not only were there 144 movie theaters in operation in 1936 in Manhattan alone, but the city also secured all the latest films the moment they were released. In fact, New York City movie audiences were voracious and vast enough that the so-called first run theaters—where films were debuted before being sent to smaller markets—had, at two weeks, the shortest lead time of any movie houses in the country.
Marsh was obviously not alone in his love of the movies and for good reason: critics still call the 1930s and early 1940s the golden age of American cinema. Before the onset of the Great Depression the movie industry saw record attendance, selling 110 million tickets a week at a time when the US population only totaled 130 million people. And even once the Depression hit, production companies were able to mitigate much of the fiscal impact, holding box office returns to a modest 10 to 35 percent drop, by relying on the novelty of the ‘talkies’ to attract customers. Although Hollywood did eventually suffer an 85 million dollar revenue deficit among studio and exhibition companies by 1932, the public continued to view the movies as cheap, quality entertainment.

Dated 1947

Medium acetate negative

File dimensions 23.7 in × 23.7 in at 300dpi
60.2 cm × 60.4 cm at 300dpi

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Motion picture theaters