News cinema

A news cinema or newsreel theatre is a cinema specialising in short films, shown in a continuous manner. However, despite its name, a news cinema does not necessarily show only cinematographical news.^[1]

Timeline

The first official news cinema, The Daily Bioscope, opened in London on 23 May 1909.^[2] In the United States, however, the apparition of a dedicated news cinema came much later, the first being the Embassy Theatre on Broadway, New York City, which opened in 1925 as a first-run theater before Loew's Inc. converted it into a news theater on 2 November 1929.^[3] However, because of competition with television news, it reverted into a first-run theater in 1949.^[4]^[3]

In

Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald

and was in operation from 1933 until being demolished in 1981.

Shows

The original programmes of news cinemas featured mainly of

travelogue. Afterward, newsreels came to occupy a shorter length of the programme, replaced by other, more entertaining elements. Programs typically lasted one hour, and were shown continuously, without any interval between performances.^[1]^[5]

Actor

Three Stooges, Donald Duck, the Ritz Brothers, and news footage, including footage of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.^[5]

Seebohm Rowntree, in 1951, similarly reports that "the news films occupy only a comparatively small part of the programme, largely because public interest in news films has declined". According to him, they have been replaced with

domestic economy.^[1]