Becoming Israeli: National Ideals and Everyday Life in the 1950s

6 | Going to the Movies

Going to the Movies 6When snow started fallinginTelAvivinFebruary 1950, children ran into a movie theater and threw snowballs at the screen,thusannouncingtheexceptionalweathereventtotheaudience,some of whom rushed out of the cinema to see the wonder with their own eyes.1 Movie theaters were prominent sites in Israeli cities. In addition to their relatively large size, these buildings were often located in central squares and along busy thoroughfares. Their yards provided wide spaces for political rallies and public celebrations, and some theaters’ interior halls were used for meetings and other purposes.2 An indirect indication of movie theaters ’ familiarity was their frequent use as reference points in advertisements for shops, residential buildings for sale, industrial plants, cafés, and hotels, which were described as being “opposite Mugrabi [cinema],” “near Rama movie theater,” “in the vicinity of Ofir,” and so on.3 In the United States during the economic depression of the 1930s, movies were perceived as a daily necessity rather than a mere luxury,4 and a similar view held in 1950s Israel. According to a 1952 unESCO report, Israelis were “the world’s most inveterate cinema-goers,” attending 120 commercial cinemas, including sixteen open-air establishments, with a seating capacity of 79,500 and 1,200 employees. Another one hundred cinemas, funded or subsidized by the Histadrut, were operating in transit camps and other settlements .5 From April 1951 until March 1952, when Israel’s population was about 1.5 million, 21 million visits were counted in the commercial cinemas, including eight million in Tel Aviv, four million in Haifa, and half a million in Jerusalem. In rural areas each person visited the cinema an average of fourteen times a year, “and the average Tel Avivian goes to the movies 21 times a year.”6 Three years later, when the country’s population was almost 1.8 million , 23 million visits were counted in 150 movie theaters, not including agricultural settlements, and the number rose to 26 million in the following year. In 1956, on average, each Israeli frequented the cinema sixteen times a year, a figure surpassed only in Great Britain.7 The popularity of cinema-going 114 ■ b e c o m i n g i s r a e l i was not a new phenomenon for most Israeli residents. The pastime was also popular among Jews in their various countries of origin and in Mandate-era Palestine.8 There were no cinema chains in Israel, and 75 percent of the movie theaters were in private hands; the remaining one fourth were operated on a cooperative basis.9 In addition to the cinemas from the Mandate era, new movie theaters were gradually established after the state’s founding,10 some by veteran soldiers.11 In 1950 one cinema in Tel Aviv started all-day (“nonstop ”) screenings, and several theaters followed.12 New air-ventilation systems were installed in some theaters, although they were not always turned on during the shows.13 The first three-dimensional movie was shown in Haifa in 1953, and several commercial cinemas in Israeli cities offered cinemascope movies.14 The Cinema Owners Association campaigned for lower taxes on tickets , which at 50 to 100 percent in Israel dwarfed the claimed 25 percent rate abroad. The price of the ticket included governmental income tax, municipal tax, and a symbolic donation for the Jewish National Fund. In Tel Aviv muAn Israeli snowman outside the Mugrabi cinema in Tel Aviv, February 1950. National Photo Collection (Government Press Office), d400‑048. Photo by David Eldan. Going to the Movies ■ 115 nicipaltaxeswereparticularlyhigh,20to40percenthigherthaninperipheral towns.15 Cinema owners struggled continuously with the Tel Aviv municipality over the issue of taxation. When tickets were stolen from box offices, for instance, the municipality refused to return the tax already paid for these unsold tickets. Cinema owners, for their part, distributed untaxed free tickets to theater workers and all their family members, and held untaxed “special screenings.”16 In Jerusalem, where municipal taxation was lower than in Tel Aviv, cinema owners protested against the constant increases in municipal taxes on cinema tickets by closing down the theaters on Saturday evening , the “night out” portion of the week. When the municipality increased the tax levied on movie posters, cinema owners in Jerusalem protested by ceasing to advertise the movies altogether.17 Strikes were also occasionally held in Tel Aviv, Haifa, and Jerusalem by cinema workers, who demanded higher salaries and better working...