Movie-going in the era of COVID-19

Here’s an interesting article from today’s New York Times about the opening weekend performance of Christopher Nolan’s latest mind-bending film, Tenet. It brought in $20.2 million. Consider that last fall’s Joker earned nearly twice that just on its opening day (and $96 million for its opening weekend). So the consensus for Tenet (and for Hollywood)? Not good, but not bad either, considering.

There was an interesting article in The Hollywood Reporter last April about how Hollywood fared during the 1918 flu pandemic, which is also worth the read. In Los Angeles alone, movie theaters lost a reported movie $1 million a week (about $17 million a week today). But by Spring 1919, when the spread of the flu had slowed, the movie theaters re-opened, and people were flocking to see films like Daddy Long Legs, starring Mary Pickford Here’s an image from the film (directed by Marshall Neilan for First National Pictures, and produced by its star). In it we see masked people scatter as a woman sneezes.

What other movies did audiences flock to see in early 1919? D.W. Griffith’s Broken Blossoms and True Heart Susie, both starring Lillian Gish (who had long since recovered from the flu), James Cruz’s The Roaring Road starring Wallace Reid, The Test of Honor starring John Barrymore (Drew Barrymore’s grandfather), and The Knickerbocker Buckaroo, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Also: The Homesteader, directed by the pioneering African American filmmaker Oscar Michaeaux, premiered in February at the Vendome Theatre, Chicago, to a packed house. The highest grossing film in 1919 was George Loane Tucker’s The Miracle Man, starring Betty Compson and Lon Chaney. It earned $3,000,000 (about $46 today).

And did you know that United Artists, the first major independent motion picture company, was founded February, 1919, by Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, and D.W Griffith? (featured, in that order, below)

Overall, Hollywood had quite the bounce-back after the 1918 flu pandemic. We’ll see what happens in 2021.