From David Thomson's The Whole Equation (2004), p. 62.
Nickelodeons got their product from local exchanges, and there was a ravenous demand for fresh material. Louis B. Mayer knew the risk in having nothing new to show. The business was chronically unstable, vulnerable locally to gangsterism. The audience often had no idea what they were going to see, but they were disappointed at a familiar film coming back again. The equipment was far from reliable; projection and film perforation were inexact, and could ruin a show. The rooms were poorly ventilated (the bad air at a nickelodeon was proverbial; in some venues perfume was sprayed in the air and disinfectant applied to the scummy floor). The film could catch fire: the stock then was celluloid nitrate, highly inflammable and dangerous at any time if not stored properly. In many respectable households going to the flicks was deemed unhealthy and dangerous. There were several ruinous fires. Projection booths had a bolt on the outside of the door so that management might confine the blaze (and the projectionist).
The old terms of abuse-“the bug hutch,” “the fleapit”-denoted how much of a class war hung over movies. The earliest films . . . were for the poor, the uneducated, immigrants, and children. Everyone noted, and many were alarmed, how the venues were crammed with children who seemed to have nothing better to do. Social disapproval became tinged with ideas of academic outrage.
