In August, the Jones Film and Video Collection received the Paul Adair Collection, a donation of business records and log books from the Texas-based Interstate Theatre Circuit. The collection includes 180 books that contain the box office records for most of these movie theaters from the 1930s to the 1970s. In addition to being a record of the films showed at these theaters, they also reveal how much each film took in at the box office, cartoons that ran with the movies, and often the negotiated percentage due to the distributor.
This sample page shows three different theaters from Dallas – The Esquire, The Village, and The Inwood during December 1966. It includes the final weeks of the The Inwood’s record setting run of The Sound of Music, which ran for over a year and a half. Over the course of its showing, the theater took in $751,357 in box office receipts.
Blog post: Courtesy of Jeremy Spracklen, Moving Image Curator, Hamon Arts Library