Cinema tickets sold per week by 1939 — approximately how many?

• A. 23 million
• B. 13 million
• C. 33 million
• D. 43 million

Answer: (A)

Think about how popular going to the cinema was in late 1930s Britain. Film shows were a staple form of cheap, widely accessible entertainment, with many cinemas spread across towns and cities and a steady stream of audiences week by week. Because of that strong appeal, the total weekly cinema admissions sit at a higher level than the small estimates and aren’t as astronomically high as the largest figures would require. The option that places weekly attendance in that upper range best matches the actual scale of cinema-going at the time, whereas the smaller figure underestimates it and the largest figures would imply a level of attendance that history shows wasn’t quite plausible given the population and number of cinemas. In short, the plausible estimate is the one in the upper end of the range.