Story of Early Movie Magazines

When it comes to businesses and activities that never existed before, there's one whole category of periodicals that did not exist just over 100 years ago.

Movie magazines started appearing around 1905-1906, focusing on the Dream Factory. Not that movies had been ignored. Earlier magazines, including theatrical as well as general interest magazines, published articles about the emerging film industry as far back as 1895, but they viewed it as a kind novelty, the way computers were describved in magazine articles in the 1960's about how computers would run your home.

Once the movie industry took off things started to get serious. There was money to be made in publishing and readers ready to buy.

Trailing the trade journals that were beginning to appear were a number of consumer-oriented titles that appealed directly to fans. Between 1909 and 1911 these fan magazines were introduced, some of which would thrive for years, such as Photoplay, Motion Picture Story (which would become Motion Picture Magazine), and Picture Play Magazine.

Studios resisted fans' demands that they release the names of their stars until 1910 and the first fan clubs began appearing about that time. The very first was organized by a friend of mine, Chaw Mank, set up 1910 for three actresses popular in the day, one of whom was Violet Merseau. (Chaw would continue organizing fan clubs until his death in 1985.) The Hollywood star system was slowly coalescing.

The industry grew, publishing responded. Photoplay World began publishing in 1917 and Photoplay Journal in 1916.

The movie magazines evolved as they aged. More titles arrived...Movie Guide in 1931, Silver Screen in 1930, Movie Story in 1924, Movie Mirror in 1928, and the best of the silent movie era, Screenland in 1924. Screenland targeted fans with 80-100 pages per issue, packed with 7-9 full-page photos of individual stars and would-be stars intended for the scrapbook.

About 60 titles appealing to movie fans would show up at newsstands between 1911 to 1938. Across the world, other movie fan magazines were capitalizing on the demand.

Profiles mixed fact and fantasy about the Hollywood stars. Gossip columnists of the 1930s contributed to the evolution of the magazine contents, as well.

Collectors will find the movie magazines of the 1920's the most sought-after due to their relative rarity.

Magazines tended towards a cover price of 15 cents, which rose to 25 cents in the 1930s. The movie magazines peaked in readership in the 1930s with some titles having 1,000,000 subscribers. Magazines of that era were filled with star photos with 60-100 per issue, on good paper and with good color quality.

There were two popular magazine formats.

One was like Movie Story, a photo novelization of current movies, a style that peaked 1933-1948. The other was more of a "newsy" type with photos, news, trivia, and behind-the-scenes stories.

Modern Screen Magazine was one of those magazines that combined both styles in a format that ran over 200 pages and included 100 star photos along with movie novelizations. Even with increasing production costs, and World War Two's shortages, Modern Screen was able to maintain its standards throughout. That was despite the competition being forced to cut back on the size and number of pages as well as relying on poorer quality paper.

During this period, Screenplay Secrets made a negative into a positive, by printing reach issue in different color inks.

Cover art also saw a decline in the 1940's due to production costs from the high-quality two-color printing in soft pastels of the 1930's.

More changes drove the evolving market in the 1950's. Movie magazines began switching their focus to scandal, which included publishing frequently-contrived stories about the stars. Television stars and rock stars started making their way into the movie magazine during that era, their share growing as their respective medium grew.

The old-style magazines ultimately disappeared due to a decreasing number of films being produced, the end of the studio star system, and competition from general interest celebrity magazines like People and it's clones.