This text examines the place of Hollywood cinema in the everyday life of its spectators from its beginnings to the arrival of sound. Previously, little has been known of early audiences and their response to the films of the day and this book brings together an array of research on some of the key issues in the field. These include the social composition of audiences, questions of ethnicity and class in the Nickleodean era and how attempts at regulating cinema were justified by the particular and (not always accurate) constructions of cinema audiences by middle class reformers. Other contributors consider the extent to which movie audiences and other conditions of reception became standardized in the period and the ways in which audiences and exhibitors participated in - or resisted - the process of homogenization that accompanied the rise of Hollywood.