ten-twent-thirt
n.— «The result has been, so the theatre managers themselves agree, not only the practical extinction of the cheaper melodramas which used to cater to “the masses,” the “ten-twent-thirts,” as they were called, plays which had no literary quality whatever, and were never so well done as film-players do the same sort of thing, but also the practical desertion of the gallery seats for dramas of the better sort. A generation ago it would have been almost inconceivable that a man would build a theatre without any gallery in it.» —“Class-Consciousness and the ‘Movies’” by Walter Prichard Eaton Atlantic Jan., 1915. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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