I have read an article lately that my husband had written in their office website (it is an e-magazine). Movies in the olden times show 2 films. That means you pay once and sit inside the theater for more than 3 hours to watch 2 films. He said that some people would watch the first showing of the 2 films - normally starts at 1pm and ends at 4 pm - and stay in the theater to sleep for the next showing. It is really a different culture then.
I remember when theaters did that. We would usually go to the afternoon matinee, which would start about 1PM, and the second show would start after the first one finished. There would , of course, be the previews (which is what trailers were called back then), a short news video, and a cartoon before the main show started. After the second feature, there was a break, and then they would show the first movie over again. Sometimes, people arrived late and missed the beginning of the movie, so they could then stay for the second showing and watch the part that they missed the first time. Sometimes, if it was a really great movie, we would stay and watch the whole movie for the second time. So, going to the movies (which cost a whole 35 cents admission) was an event that lasted for the whole afternoon. Thankfully, popcorn was only a dime for a large bag; so no one starved to death during the movies.
Heh, it was truly different, wasn't it? I also remember that back in my day, the cinemas usually had two movies, split by ratings. "A" movies were the "main course", if you will, the main attraction. It's what most people watched. "B" movies were the "side dish", the cheaper movie which usually was of way lower quality, but the room wasn't that crowded.
I remember those days, we would plan our day around the movies. It was called a double billed film. We would go to watch the comics and watch the two films if they were both good, if not we would leave when the second film started. As a teenager it was a great way to get out of the house, as long as we were back in front of the building when our parents came to pick us up, it was the first taste of freedom for me.
I also remember to have attended movie theaters in childhood going with my parents. They exhibited an old film first, then commercial and an around the world newsreel, and finally the main movie. If you were going early, it was possible to stay and watch over all this block again. When I was a teenager, it was just the main movie, the commercials and newsreel and the a repetition of the same movie you could stay and watch as many times as you liked. This allowed you to get into the theater anytime even if the movie was already running, but you can always watch the missing part in the next run. Even though by the end of the 1970s a new cinema concept was introduce "no-voluntary permanence" and therefore it was necessary get into the cinema on time to watch the full movie, as you were invited to leave as soon as it was over. I have not visited a movie theater for decades now, so I'm not very familiar with the actual attendance formats.
I did not have the opportunity of going to that old cinema showing 2 films called double-program theaters. My father would bring us to downtown Manila for the first-run theaters showing American movies. But I was not very interested in the movies for I was more interested in the goodies that my father would buy for us, normally chocolates like M&M. My husband has a good story to tell about those olden theaters because he was born in his grandma's house that is situated in front of the Rainbow theater. He was only 5 years old when he first saw a movie together with his aunts and uncles (who were teenagers). And since the movie had started at 11am (an exceptional case) you know what they ate? I couldn' t believe it because they had rice and beef stew wrapped in banana leaf. Get it? By the way, the aunts and uncles were just visiting from the province.