What Was Surprising About the First Trailer Shown in a Cinema?

Every cinemagoer is well-acquainted with the “trailer” format. Defined as a preview or advertisement, commonly for a feature film set to be released in the future, trailers offer a chance to get a sneak peek of what's to come.

But why are these short bursts of footage called trailers when they usually precede the main feature at movie theaters, rather than trail it?

The answer lies in the history of the trailer. In 1913, Nils Granlund, an advertising manager for Marcus Loew’s theaters in New York City, created the first trailer, albeit for a Broadway show rather than a movie. The trailer included rehearsal footage and other shots of the production process for the musical The Pleasure Seekers, showing at Winter Garden Theatre. This edited montage was shown after film screenings at Loew’s theaters and was therefore called a “trail-er” as it followed the main feature.

It’s worth noting how different the cinema experience was a century ago from what we are used to today. Rather than paying to view one feature film, audiences often sat down to experience a double feature, newsreels, cartoons, short films, and trailers in a continuous loop. People might join mid-movie, meaning they were likely to see the trailers sandwiched between other program items.

In 1913, another iteration of the trailer was shown at screenings of The Adventures of Kathlyn, an adventure serial with thirteen episodes produced by Selig Polyscope. This was the second serial made by an American studio, and short trailers with suspenseful cliffhangers were used at the end of each episode to entice people to come back for more.

Nils Granlund continued to make trailers and produced several for Charlie Chaplin features, but soon, other movie theaters and studios began creating their own. In 1919, Herman Robbins recognized a lucrative business model and launched the National Screen Service (NSS). The NSS was a company that movie theaters and studios could pay to produce trailers for them, alongside other promotional materials like movie posters. The NSS was the go-to company for trailer production until the 1960s when filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick began making their own movie trailers.

Terrific trailers: