Film Trailer History

The first trailer shown in a U.S. movie theater was in November 1913, when Nils Granlund, the advertising manager for the Marcus Loew theater chain, produced a short promotional film for the musical The Pleasure Seekers, opening at the winter garden theater on Broadway. Granlund was also first to introduce trailer material for an upcoming motion picture, using a slide technique to promote an upcoming film featuring Charlie Chaplin at Loew's Seventh Avenue Theatre in Harlem in 1914. Up until the late 1950's, trailers were mostly created by National Screen Service and consisted of various key scenes from the film being advertised, often augmented with large descriptive text describing the story, and an underscore generally pulled from studio music libraries. Most trailers had some form of narration and those that did featured stentorian voices. In the early 1960's, the face of motion picture trailers changed. text less, montage trailers and quick-editing became popular, largely due to the arrival of the 'New Hollywood' and techniques that were becoming increasingly popular in television. Stanley Kubrick's main inspiration for the 'Dr. Strangelove' trailer was the short film 'Very nice, very nice' by Canadian film visionary Arthur Lipsdett. in 1964 Andrew J.Kuehn distributed his independently-produced a trailer for 'Night of the Iguana' his format was so successful,he began producing this new form of trailer with partner Dan Davis. Kuehn opened the west coast office of Kaleidoscope Films in 1968 and Kuehn and his company become a major player in the trailer industry for the next three decades. Directors like Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone and Barbra Streisand began to depend on Kuehn and Kaleidoscope for their ability to create the best trailers theater-goers could see. top trailer companies have all been run by former Kaleidoscope creative like the Cimarron Group, Ant Farm, Motor Entertainment. In earlier decades of cinema, trailers were only one part of the entertainment which included cartoon shorts and serial adventure episodes. these earlier trailers were much shorter and often consisted of little more than title cards and stock footage. Today longer more elaborate trailers and commercial advertisements have replaced other forms of pre-feature entertainment and in major multiplex chains, about the first twenty minutes after the posted showtime is devoted to trailers.