Double feature

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The double feature was a motion picture industry phenomenon in which theatre managers would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which one feature film and various short subject reels would be shown.

Origin and format

Movie theaters, interested in attracting customers during the economically difficult Great Depression, began changing the way they booked movies. In the 1920s, before the Depression, an evening at the theatre would usually consist of the following:

An animated cartoon short subject (e.g. Looney Tunes)
A live-action comedy short (e.g. Our Gang, Laurel and Hardy, and The Three Stooges)
A novelty short: a musical, a travelogue etc.
A newsreel
The main feature film.

Theater owners decided that they could attract more customers if they offered two movies for the price of one. The high-budget main feature (the a-movie) ran first, and was followed by a lower-budget, and sometimes lower-quality, second film (the b-movie). A short film and a newsreel were generally shown in the short interlude between the first feature and the second. Although the double feature put many short comedy producers out of business, it led to the mainstream success of several b-movie producers and directors, such as Ed Wood.

Decline of the double feature

The double feature arose partly because of a studio practice known as "block booking," a form of tying where a studio would require that a theater buy a B-movie along with an A-movie. The US Supreme Court decided that this practice was illegal in United States v. Paramount in 1948.

By the 1980s, double features had been mostly abandoned in favor of the modern single-feature screening, in which only one feature film is exhibited. Short films still occasionally precede the feature presentation (Pixar films generally feature a short, for example), but the double feature is now effectively extinct in first-run movie theaters.

Many repertory houses continue to show two films, usually related in some way, back to back.

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