Sunday Matinee
Memorial Day weekend is here, and for those of us who haven’t loaded our Nash touring cars to head to the mountains, an afternoon at the movies seems in order. Fortunately, the Boise Egyptian Theater is within virtual driving distance.
This theater opened on April 19, 1927 with John Barrymore’s 1926 film Don Juan which was, according to Wikipedia, “the first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone sound effects and musical soundtrack, though it has no spoken dialogue.”
In the 1920s, it was common for theaters like the Boise Egyptian to be built with stages and to alternate vaudeville performances, lectures, and movies. Some theaters even wrote their own scores to accompany silent films, though the orchestra pit would have been empty for this Vitasound production. “Talkies,” of course, were the beginning of the end for Vaudeville.
What shall we wear for our Sunday matinée? Leslie Hindman Auctioneer strikes the right tone, I think, with this 1923 French couture dress from the collection of Katharine (McLane) Tiffany Abbott. 
No room for a necklace with that midshipman-style bow, but we can dress the outfit up with a pair of art-deco jadeite Fouquet earrings.
It surprised me, incidentally, to find the term “movie” dates back to 1912 – I’d expected something stodgier like “moving pictures” or “film” — but in the 1920s, movies were on the cutting edge of culture, fashion, and slang.
Thank goodness for the Online Etymology Dictionary!
