The price of cinema was probably an important factor for the kind of audience it interested. Before the Nickelodeon prices varied, from a dollar or more for the first special Lumière events, to a few cents to fifty cents for a travelling showman (Musser 1990: 299). But in general, the market was in too turbulent a condition to put a reliable average price on motion picture watching. This even harder because they were often part of live entertainment. The prices the Nickelodeon charged were betwe