Double feature
The
double feature was a
motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.
Movie theaters, interested in attracting customers during the economically difficult
Great Depression, began changing the way they booked movies. In the 1920s, before the Depression, an evening at the theatre would usually consist of the following:
* An
animated cartoon short subject (e.g.
Looney Tunes)
* A live-action comedy short (e.g.
Our Gang,
Laurel and Hardy, and
The Three Stooges)
* A novelty short: a
musical, a
travelogue etc.
* A
newsreel* The main
feature film.
Theater owners decided that they could attract more customers if they offered two movies for the price of one. The high-budget main feature (the
a-movie) ran first, and was followed by a lower-budget, and sometimes lower-quality, second film (the
b-movie). A short film and a
newsreel were generally shown in the short interlude between the first feature and the second. Although the double feature put many short comedy producers out of business, it led to the mainstream success of several b-movie producers and directors, such as
Ed Wood.
The double feature arose partly because of a studio practice known as "block booking," a form of
tying where a studio would require that a theater buy a
B-movie along with an A-movie. The
US Supreme Court decided that this practice was illegal in
United States v. Paramount in 1948.
By the
1980s, double features had been mostly abandoned in favor of the modern single-feature screening, in which only one feature film is exhibited. Short films still occasionally precede the feature presentation (
Pixar films generally feature a short, for example), but the double feature is now effectively extinct in first-run movie theaters.
Many
repertory houses continue to show two films, usually related in some way, back to back.
