[I am so old] I can remember "ladies please remove your hats" notices in live-theatre programs when I was a kid; probably 1950s, the last era when women wore hats to go "downtown."
There’s a misconception that movie snacking started with talkies or the Great Depression.
Snacking was a feature of the live theater hundreds, thousands of years before movies were invented and people munched along to the movies from the start.
A local cinema (The Dome, Worthing,UK) still has its original wooden floor. During a screening of A Quiet Place someone bought coated peanuts in an open pot, but eating them was too loud for that film so they just held them. Then a jump scare! Nuts everywhere, rolling noisily towards the screen!
There's a time and place for audience participation in a movie theater, like when it's a cult movie where the entire audience already knows to expect that. Don't do this in other situations, especially not when it's a new movie most of the audience hasn't seen yet!
There were spielers in immigrant communities who acted as translators/performers for the audiences who lacked English but the overall consensus was that it was rude or at least mildly annoying
Oof, I’m just imagining the embarrassment from going to the movies with a person for the first time only to find out they’re a “read the title cards out loud” type.
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Back then, they had “read the title cards out loud” types.
As you can imagine, they were pretty annoying.
I am talking about wildcat performances by uninvited amateurs convinced that the rest of the theater was there to hear them.
I probably would have lobbed peanuts at their heads.
I mean, I don’t bring my own strobe light to an orchestra recital. You follow?
Anyway, another source of annoyance was snacks, specifically the shelling of peanuts and munching of popcorn
“This is what Sherman meant.”
(War is hell.)
But, while snacks weren’t the revenue source they are now, they were highly profitable, so they stayed.
Snacking was a feature of the live theater hundreds, thousands of years before movies were invented and people munched along to the movies from the start.
Looking at you Wicked singers.
https://youtu.be/dyjs5W3mRbI?si=KDaSqVsvjwUaSU_t