A History of Popcorn and the Movies

There are certain combinations that seem to be made for each other - peanut butter and jelly, politics and corruption, french fries and ketchup, and of course, my favorite: popcorn and movies. The thought of going to a theater and watching a movie without that barrel of popcorn is almost unthinkable. Sure, that tub costs as much as dinner for two at a Chinese buffet, but somehow the movie-going experience is incomplete without that tub of buttery, crunchy goodness getting all over your shirt as you munch away in the dark. But how did this tradition get started. To find out, you have to go way back, to a time when it didn't matter if the person next to you was talking during the movie because there was nothing else in the theater to listen to.

Popcorn and the Movies - Origins
At first theater owners hated popcorn. It made a mess in their theaters. They felt it distracted from the movie experience. At this time, popcorn was sold primarily by street vendors, who would push their popcorn carts around and sell popcorn to people walking down the sidewalks. Movie theaters were attractive places for these street vendors because they could count on crowds of people at regular intervals.

Most theater owners considered these street vendors a nuisance. People would get up during a movie to go outside the theater and buy popcorn. But then theater owners began to realize that they could be profiting from popcorn instead of the street vendors.

Popcorn Comes Inside
In 1925 Charles Manley, an inventor from Butte, Montana, perfected the first electric popcorn machine. He marketed the machine to movie theater owners, and one of the most successful combinations in culinary history was born.

During the Great Depression, a nickel bag of popcorn was one of the few treats people could afford. Unlike many other confections, sales of popcorn increased during the Great Depression. The main reasons were that it was filling, cheap and tasty - in a way like the movies of that era. A night at the movies was about the cheapest entertainment a family could buy, and popcorn went right along with that. Some theater owners actually lowered ticket prices when they installed their popcorn machines and saw profits go through the roof.

The Endurance of Popcorn
Once established, popcorn became an integral part of the movie experience. In the 1950's the amount of money made from popcorn exceeded the amount made from movies themselves. Popcorn had arrived. As television emerged, people continued the association between watching images on a screen and eating popcorn. In the 1970s and '80s, the simultaneous rise of VCR's and microwave ovens further contributed to the link between watching movies and eating popcorn, as microwave popcorn became a quick, clean way to cook popcorn while watching a movie at home.

In theaters today, although roughly 67% of revenue comes from ticket sales, this accounts for less than half of theater profits. Popcorn, other refreshments and arcade games are the big profit centers for theaters. Unlike movie ticket prices, which the theater must split with studios - theaters can keep 100% of popcorn profits. So chances are, popcorn and movies are here to stay.

Sources:

http://www.dietbites.com/article1086.html

http://www.rossonhousemuseum.org/body_popcorn_history.html

http://www.popcorn.org/poppinmonth/movies.cfm