Before it was a television channel, the word “nickelodeon” meant a performance that cost a nickel: juke box, player piano, and especially a movie theater. On Monday, January 12, at 7:30 pm, Town Historian Daniel Cruson will give his annual lecture, this year looking at “A Night At The Nickelodeon.”

The program will take place in the lower meeting room of C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street.  

Newtown was among the earliest towns to project moving pictures for its citizens. These performances consisted of short films, often no more than two to four minutes long, separated by short in-person entertainments.

The earliest theaters to show films were often storefronts divided into a front lobby and a rear viewing area, separated by a simple partition, often nothing more than a curtain. Because the price of admission was five cents, these early store front theaters were called nickelodeons.

They were popular in the early years of the 20th Century until the development of longer narrative films that told a story made higher admission prices and more substantial theaters desirable and worthy of investment.

Although all of Newtown’s earliest films were projected in the old Town Hall, Mr Cruson will recreate the look and feel of the nickelodeon using film footage shown in the early theaters. The “show” will include about 20 short film clips including The Kiss, considered to be dangerously risqué at the time (viewer discretion advised).

There will also be several travelogues of New York, including a ride on the front of a locomotive crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, together with a ride over the 104th Street elevated railroad curve, both from 1899, a visit to an Eastside ghetto fish market in 1903, and a panorama of the Manhattan waterfront filmed that same year.

A historical film surveying the damage resulting from the San Francisco Earthquake will be included, along with footage of the Spanish American War, with what are purported to be scenes of a Cuban firing squad.

Several short narrative films, including The Enchanted Drawing, Fun in a Bake Shop, and An Old Maid Having Her Picture Taken, will also be shown for the audience’s amusement.

The grand finalé will be local, with the only known film of Mark Twain in Redding with his daughters shortly before his death, a film of the Danbury Fair in 1904 photographed by Edwin Porter for the Edison Corporation, and a three-minute film of Newtown’s Washington Bicentennial Parade of 1932. 

Mr Cruson will offer narrative between the movies, which have not been rated by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Dan Cruson is a past president of Newtown Historical Society, and served as president of the Connecticut Archeological Society for 18 years, recently retiring from that position. He has written many books and spoken innumerable times on local history topics and has served as Newtown’s official town historian since 1994, when the Legislative Council created the position in accordance with new state legislation encouraging town to have such a position. He had served in that capacity, unofficially, for years prior to that as well.

Light refreshments will be served following the presentation. All ages are welcome, and reservations are not needed.

Call 203-426-5937 or visit newtownhistory.org for further information.