Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film

Children’s films may be divided into two categories:
those made expressly for a child audience, and those
made about children regardless of audience. This distinction
is important, as many of the most popular films that
feature child actors, like The Exorcist (1973) and The
Sixth Sense (1999), are clearly not meant to be seen by
children. Yet it is in such films that the film industry
represents children, reflecting society’s own notions of
childhood. Quite often, the very definition of childhood
is at stake in these films, changing as it does from one
generation to the next and within different contexts.
FILMS FOR CHILDREN BEFORE DISNEY
The nickelodeons of the early movie industry showcased
films that appealed to all ages and populations rather
than specifically to children. Moral guardians of the early
1900s were concerned about children attending movies
on their own because it could be an inducement to skip
school or become familiar with unruly characters, both
onscreen and in theaters. Although children did appear in
many films of the early film era, their roles were almost
exclusively as accessories to adult activities, such as the
little girl who frees her father in The Great Train Robbery
(1903) or the numerous children depicted as victims
of kidnappings in films like The Adventures of Dollie
(D. W. Griffith, 1908).
Yet, as Richard deCordova’s research has shown,
Hollywood had indeed become concerned with the child
movie audience by the 1910s. Children’s matinees
became common in many movie houses by 1913, and
groups like the National Board of Review’s Committee
on Films for Young People not only promoted matinees
CHILDREN’S FILMS
at the national level but encouraged studios to make
more films suitable for children, despite the fact that
children still often preferred films aimed at adults.
Then in 1925 the Motion Picture Producers and
Distributors Association under Will Hays (1879–1954)
began an effort to identify films suitable for children. By
the fall of 1925, the MPPDA had arranged fifty-two
matinee programs, with many films reedited and retitled
for youngsters. These programs were shipped as a special
block to theaters, and exhibitors were contracted to show
only the selected program films during Saturday matinees.
The MPPDA used this approach to promote the
studios’ sense of responsibility and at the same time to
encourage children to be loyal movie customers.
But no sooner had the MPPDA established this
successful program than they abandoned it the next year,
letting the task of staging children’s matinees fall back
into the hands of exhibitors. This brief foray into cultivating
a child audience did not induce the Hollywood
studios, which wanted to keep their audience as wide as
possible, to produce a new genre of films aimed at
children. Hollywood even cast established adult actors
in children’s roles, a practice that may seem preposterous
by present standards but at the time fostered a diverse
family audience. Stars such as Lillian Gish (1893–1993),
Richard Barthelmess (1895–1963), and especially Mary
Pickford (1893–1979) were exploited for their youthful
looks in popular stories like Pollyanna (1920) and Little
Annie Rooney (1925). Actual child actors of the 1920s
who gained fame on their own, such as Jackie Coogan
(1914–1984) and Baby Peggy (b. 1918), were cast alongside
adult stars to further ensure that their movies were
not exclusively focused on a childhood perspective.
SCHIRMER ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FILM 259