Cinema going in the United States in the mid-1930s: a study based on the Variety dataset

Throughout the 1930s, the entertainment industry trade journal Variety published extensive information on the North American exhibition market in each of its weekly issues. The 'Pictures' section of Variety included weekly box-office reports from as many as 200 cinemas in 20 cities. The cinemas included were mainly 'first-run' venues with a large seating capacity, but there were also some smaller, second-run and specialty cinemas. The reports were organized by city, and they provided general comments on the trading conditions, audience preferences and promotional strategies seen in each city during the previous week, as well as more specific reports from a selection of the city's cinemas, indicating the box-office results for the week, and listing the items on each cinema's programme.