Before television, once a movie ended the run in the theater, was that the end of someone's chance to watch it, especially for only mildly popular movies? How long was a typical theater run?

Before the rise of multiplex theaters, there were basically three tiers of theaters: first-run, second-run, and revival movie houses. First-run theaters were what they are now: they got the new release and played it as long as it was still filling seats. In the pre-multiplex days, a movie theater was a single theater, and they would typically play two movies on rotation. So this week's new movie would play at noon, 4, and 8, while last week's movie would play at 2, 6, and 10, or whatever the case may be.

Depending on the popularity of this week's new release, it wasn't unusual for a film to play as the "feature film" for only a single week before disappearing completely, if it wasn't expected to draw in more viewers than the current "B-picture". But typically, a film would play as the "feature film" for one or two weeks, then move to being the B-picture for another week or two, and then disappear from the theater completely. But this was pretty variable: if some film had bombed, it might only get that single week, while anytime there was a "hit" movie, it might play as the feature film for four straight weeks and then disappear without playing as the B-picture at all. In the pre-television era, only the smash blockbuster films would play for more than four weeks, and even among those smash hits, they rarely played for more than eight weeks before disappearing from the first-run theater.

There were also movies that would premiere as B-pictures instead of feature films, often low-budget efforts from one of the "Little Three" major movie producers (Columbia, Universal, and United Artists) and occasionally from one of the "Big Five" (Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, RKO, and 20th Century Fox) when the studio had little faith in its box office performance. Some of the "Poverty Row" studios (Monogram and Republic being two of the more significant) would also be able to get their low-budget films into first-run theaters as B-pictures on occasion, though they would rarely be able to blanket the country like the other studios could, because the eight major studios were colluding to keep their competitors out of first-run theaters (an issue that resulted in a 1949 Supreme Court case called United States v. Paramount Pictures in which the court ruled against the movie studios and forced them to divest themselves of their theater chains). In any case, those Poverty Row releases were lucky to get a commitment for even a single week as a B-picture in a first-run theater in all but the largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

The first-run theaters were typically located in the downtown areas, and were often of the "movie palace" variety. A few of these still exist, such as Radio City Music Hall in New York City (originally owned by RKO Radio Pictures), the Loew's Jersey Theatre in Jersey City, NJ (owned by MGM), the Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit (owned by 20th Century Fox), the Paramount Theatre in downtown Denver (owned by Paramount), and the Warner Theater in Washington D.C. (owned by Warner Brothers). Not all their movie theaters were named after the studio, as they often chose different names and had also acquired other pre-existing chains and didn't change the names of those chains. Any Keith or Orpheum theater you see were once Vaudeville theaters bought up by RKO (hence the K and O in the initialism), any Strand theater was part of a chain bought by Warner Brothers, and any Rialto Theatre still standing was once owned by Paramount in homage to the name of their movie palace in Times Square where they premiered many of their films in advance of its wide release.

It should be noted that the "Big Five" only owned something like 15-20% of the first- and second-run theaters in the U.S., but according to the SCOTUS decision, it was enough of a presence that they could strong-arm the other 80-85% of theaters into running their product exclusively, because they were the only ones with enough money to sign all the major movie stars. They tried to claim that competition was fair because they had partnered with the "Little Three" studios (who did not own their own theaters) in allowing their products into the Big Five's theaters and in affiliate theaters. But SCOTUS ruled they were colluding, because those eight studios made up something like 95% of all feature-length films playing in the first-run and second-run theaters, which is why SCOTUS legally required them to split their theater businesses from their movie production businesses.

Uniquely among the big players, MGM was actually owned by its theater business, and not the other way around, and that theater chain was called Loew's, which successfully transitioned into the multiplex era, while they sold off their movie studio business which then split in pieces. MGM was eventually sold to a real estate developer who wanted some of the studio's landholdings and the rights to the name, which is how the MGM Grand Casino came about, while the studio's Hollywood studio space and equipment was sold to other studios, and then the rights to the MGM back catalog of films was mostly sold to United Artists, and, in turn, to Ted Turner, and then, in turn, to Time Warner. MGM actually still exists, but without the rights to anything they made in their heyday, but they still do some production work--notably, the James Bond films and The Handsmaid's Tale on Hulu. Loew's had a better go at it, and continued to thrive as a major theater chain until 2006 when they merged with the AMC theater chain. But I seem to have gone a bit off-topic.

Major cities would also have some smaller first-run theaters other than the downtown theater palaces, but in most urban areas, even the most popular movie was only playing in a single downtown theater and perhaps one other smaller first-run theater somewhere away from downtown. Even movies as big as Gone With The Wind and Casablanca weren't playing in any city in more than two theaters at a time. This happened on purpose: the major studios granted exclusive first-run rights to a single theater in most cities, either a theater they owned or a theater/chain that had signed a "block-booking" contract with them. (Theaters were usually required to sign an exclusive contract with a single studio for 6-12 months at a time, usually not knowing all the films they'd be getting, but these packages of films usually also included a package of films from one of their competitors, or room on the scheduled to sign a second contract with another studio to fill in the rest of the schedule.) Thus, a single theater would have exclusive rights to a studio's movies, and didn't face competition from other theaters in town playing the same film, as happens today. If you wanted to see MGM's latest Clark Gable film on opening night, you had to go to the Loew's theater downtown, or whatever theater in town that was affiliated with MGM.

Once the first run of the movie was over, the movie theater would return their copy of the film to a distribution center called a "film exchange". There were usually one or two of these businesses in each major city, and fewer in less populated areas. These buildings were essentially a warehouse full of films, and they owned those physical copies (having bought them from the movie studio) and charged a rental fee for loaning out the copy they owned, based upon how many days and screenings the theater screened the film. The rental fee would then be split between the film exchange, but most of it going to the movie studio after the exchange recouped their costs. When the first-run theater returned a film to the film exchange, they would exchange it for the latest new release from the movie studio they were affiliated with. The theaters knew in advance what they'd be booking, so it usually wasn't a surprise on what new release they'd be getting in exchange, but they often didn't know long in advance--maybe a month or so. And the release dates were less rigid in those days, so a movie might not premiere in every city all at the same time. If last week's film did so well in Milwaukee that the theater wanted to screen it for another week, they might delay next week's film for a week, while it might premiere down in Chicago a week earlier. But in the cases of the highest-profile releases of each studio, they would often blanket the country as a new release on the same weekend.

(cont'd...)