For almost as long as film has existed, New Orleans has been a movie town.
Filmmakers love to shoot here, stars love to bask in the city’s mystique and residents love to see their beloved Big Easy shining bright on the big screen.
But recently a question was posed to the Curious Louisiana staff: When, exactly, did this love affair start? And, more specifically, when did New Orleans get its first movie theater?
It’s a bigger, more important question than some might realize, because when Vitascope Hall first opened its doors on Canal Street in summer 1896, it wasn’t only New Orleans’ first permanent, for-profit movie house. It was also America’s.
Those qualifiers — “permanent” and “for-profit” — are important here, as movies in the early days were usually just a few minutes long and frequently shown in sideshow-type exhibitions of the then-emerging technology.
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In fact, Vitascope Hall originated with just such an exhibition, arranged by New York businessman William “Pop” Rock, who, in a 1916 interview with The Moving Picture World, said he paid $2,500 to the company that created the then-fledgling Vitascope projector for the rights to the company’s Louisiana territory and a Vitascope Armat projector.
“I took my machine and started for New Orleans,” Rock said. “… I made a contract with the West End Park for four weeks, and we packed them in.”
Scandalous beginnings
Early films at that temporary, open-air theater at West End included a skirt dance by Cissy Fitzgerald, scenes from the inside of a smithy, a scene of an elevated train in New York City and, in a film that reportedly generated outcry from local clergy, “The Kiss,” which showed a liplock shared by John Drew and May Irving.
The films were exceedingly short — a version of “The Kiss” posted by the Library of Congress to YouTube lasts all of 28 seconds — but audiences ate it up, with an estimated 8,000 people attending on opening day and more than 12,000 the following Sunday.
“Cissy’s was the only color picture in the lot, and, therefore, was the most real; but the kiss picture pleased the audience the most, and they gave it three or four encores,” The Times-Picayune wrote on June 28, 1896, in what is one of the earliest printed movie reviews. “The way that Drew goes through the premonitory symptoms and then squares off for action, and finally precipitates himself full upon Miss Irving’s lips, are all shown with startling realism.”
To be sure, movies at the time were still very much in their infancy. France’s Lumiere brothers had given their history-making first-ever paid screening just seven months earlier. The Vitascope Armat projector acquired by Rock had been invented just three months earlier. The first studio films wouldn’t be produced for another year yet.
In other words: Rock and business partner Walter Wainwright were truly blazing new ground.
How the streetcar got involved
Consequently, their initial setup at West End was rudimentary. As Rock told The Moving Picture World, they had to tap into a streetcar line for electricity to power the projector’s lamp. A former circus man named Billy Reed was hired to crank the projector.
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Still, the enthusiastic reaction from audiences was proof enough to convince Rock and Wainwright that there was money to be made by opening a theater downtown, where the people were.
They settled on an empty storefront at 623 Canal St., which — with its front windows covered with black canvas to keep out unwanted light — was big enough to accommodate 400 paying customers.
It opened for business on July 26, 1896. Tickets cost a dime for a program of several shorts. For another 10 cents, curious eyes could get a peek inside the projection booth.
According to projectionist Reed, writing in the June 3, 1911, edition of The Moving Picture News, the first program consisted of five films: “Brooklyn Bicycle Parade,” “The Duel,” “The Kiss,” “White Wings Parade” and “Trilby Dance.”
“The people simply flocked to the place,” Reed wrote. “We had many special performances by select society people of New Orleans who wished to see the pictures.”
Short-lived success
Alas, the novelty of it all apparently had its limits. Rock closed Vitascope Hall after just four months, in October 1896. He and Wainwright continued to schedule Vitascope exhibitions in town into 1897, however, making each man an estimated profit of about $2,000, the equivalent of about $75,000 in 2024.
Then there was the value of the films he had amassed.
“When we got ready to leave New Orleans in the fall of 1897, I had about 600 subjects,” Rock said. “Of these, I traded 300 to some people in Texas for a lot of diamonds.”
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Rock went on to become president of the Vitagraph Company of America, later Vitagraph Studios, which was bought by Warner Bros. in 1925.
As for the building at 623 Canal, it’s still there, although today it’s home to a souvenir and liquor store.
In 2019, a historical marker was erected on the sidewalk out front, acknowledging its indelible place in film history.
