Crybaby

An innovative new feature in Seattle moving picture circles was debuted in the summer of 1911, when Eugene Levy took over management of the Grand Opera House and began operating it was a full-time moving picture theatre. (The Grand also offered stage and musical entertainment as well, but the venue was primarily being touted as a picture house at the time.) Levy made several renovations to the theatre before swinging open its doors, which included installing a brand-new screen and making some cosmetic changes throughout the house. But one of his ideas was entirely new: creating a special nursery where female patrons could leave their infant children while enjoying the show. (“May Check Babies During the Play,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 26 May 1911, Page 10.)

The move was a response to a growing concern in the exhibition business. Many patrons were young mothers who arrived at the theatre with infants in tow. And infants, of course, have notoriously bad manners, so they occasionally disrupted the movie experience with crying or fussy behavior.

Eugene Levy’s solution was to have a special room with attendants who would watch patron’s small children for the 30-40 minutes they spent taking in the show. It’s not clear how long this remained at feature at the Grand Opera House, but it nonetheless demonstrated that young mothers, at the very least, had some special needs when it came to moviegoing.

This was not a regular feature in Washington’s picture theatres, but the Grand Opera House also wasn’t the only one attempting to address the issue. Seven years later, at the Society Theatre on Capital Hill, management came up with a slightly different way to meet the needs of the young mothers. (See “‘Split Reel’ Notes for Theater Men,” Motography, 3 June 1916, Pages 1261-1262.) There, a special room was installed off to one side of the auditorium, where mothers could feed or otherwise calm a fussy child. But this room had a large glass viewing area as well, so the women would be able to handle their child(ren) while also seeing the screen, ensuring they’d miss none of the action. And since the movies were silent, with no dialogue to follow, it was an arrangement that worked well for mothers and other patrons.

But it wasn’t just the Society Theatre catering to these needs. That same year, in 1916, the Majestic Theatre in Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood was showcasing the very same patron feature – and even one-upping the Society. (See A.R.M. Sutton, “A Glass House,” Motography, 29 July 1916, Page 249.) The Majestic, one of the city’s newer suburban houses (yes – at the time Ballard was considered “the suburbs”), had not one but TWO glass enclosures, each on either side of the auditorium. “On each side of the auditorium there is a room with glass walls,” reported Motography. “One side is for the use of mothers with fretting children. They can watch the show from here without the youngsters disturbing the other patrons. The other side is a smoking room where the men can see the pictures and still enjoy their pipes and cigars.”

So in the mid-teens, at least, picture attractions at the Majestic Theatre came with, literally, some side entertainment. One could look straight ahead and enjoy the movie unfurling, accompanied by the house music. But off to one side there might be several frantic women, behind glass, struggling to calm their infant children while also attempting to follow the action onscreen. And meanwhile, on the opposite side of the auditorium, there’d be a group of men peering through a hazy fog, attempting to enjoy the picture show while slowly hot boxing themselves into lung cancer.