How People Watched Old Movies Before VCRs

After the mid-1970s, people were able to buy videocasette-recording machines and then rent old movies to watch.

In 1963, how would the Dirty Dancing characters have watched old movies that featured dancing?

Keep in mind, first of all, that people went to movie theaters much more than they do now. People did not have the options of waiting for a movie to become available on cable television or DVD. So, for example, when West Side Story was being shown in movie theaters in 1961, then you went to a movie theater to watch it. While the movie was showing in the theaters, you might watch it two or more times.

Large cities had so-called art-house theaters that showed old movies. Many Woody Allen movies include a scene where the characters are watching an old movie in an art-house theater.

In the early 1960s there were only three television stations -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- and they sometimes broadcast old movies. Because there were only three stations, it was rather easy to keep informed about such broadcasts. When I was a kid, for example, CBS broadcast The Wizard of Oz once a year, and every kid in my neighborhood knew when it was about to be broadcast.

Other opportunities to watch old movies were provided by fund-raising events. For example, if a college club wanted to raise money, it could rent an old movie and show it in a college auditorium. The club would pay fees to rent the movie and the auditorium, but could earn a profit by selling tickets to watch the movie. Because opportunities to watch old movies were rare, these showings would attract rather large audiences.

When I was in high school in the mid-1960s, my high-school class thought about renting and showing an old movie to raise money. We ordered by mail a catalog from a company that rented out old movies. I remember us looking through the catalog and discussing which movie to order. As I remember, though, we decided not to risk the possibility that we might lose money on this fund-raising project.

Our decision was affected by a bad experience at our town's college. A college club had rented the movie Psycho for such a fund-raising project. The process of ordering and receiving the movie by mail took a few weeks, and the auditorium had to be reserved in advance, and the showing had to be advertised throughout the college and town. After all that preparation, it turned out that the movie was broadcast on television on the very same night as the club's scheduled showing. Of course, the auditorium was practically empty, and the club lost a lot of money.