Revisiting Postwar Theater Television

This essay explores the largely unsuccessful attempts to exploit electronic moving images in public cinemas in the United States between 1946 and 1953 as a case study of failed technological innovation. Scrutinizing the contemporaneous trade and popular press, the essay untangles the complicated web of interests and tactics among firms across the industries of theatrical exhibition, electronic manufacturing, and commercial broadcasting involved in theater television. The author analyzes the historical roots of postwar theater TV in the era of mechanical television in the late 1920s and early 1930s and explores its implications for the precarious situation of theatrical exhibition in the contemporary era of streaming video and global pandemic. After delineating the economic, demographic, and institutional factors behind the failure of postwar theater TV, the essay suggests several historiographic lessons for scholars addressing privileged moments of technological change and industry uncertainty in moving image culture.