Influenza: The Hundred-Year Hunt to Cure the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic

by Dr Jeremy Brown

The entwining of business and health during the great flu pandemic was vividly demonstrated at the Strand Theatre in New York. In October 1918, with the pandemic now plainly in the public eye, a new Charlie Chaplin movie opened. Shoulder Arms was a Great War comedy that took place on the battlefields of France, and audiences loved it. Perhaps they wanted a distraction, and a reason to leave their homes. The crowds were so large that the Strand extended the film’s run. Harold Edel, its twenty-nine-year-old manager, took out a full-page ad in the weekly Moving Picture World. Some theaters were shunned by “panic-stricken people,” Edel wrote, so he wanted to congratulate those who “take their lives in their hands to see it.” At the bottom of the ad, double-underlined and in a huge font, was the recommendation of the Board of Health to “AVOID CROWDS.” Edel’s ad continued: “New Yorkers took their life in their hands and Packed the Strand Theatre all week.” It was splendid news for the business during a period of dark turmoil. Edel, alas, never got to see his ad in print. He died of influenza a week before it went to press.