General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Nickelodeon (1976 film)

Nickelodeon is a 1976 American-British comedy directed by Peter Bogdanovich about the chaotic early years of silent filmmaking, in which a Chicago lawyer stumbles into the movie business just as independent producers battle the Motion Picture Patents Company. It stars Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds, and Tatum O'Neal, was written by Bogdanovich with W. D. Richter, and was produced by Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff as a Columbia Pictures-British Lion/EMI co-production.¹

Key fact	Detail
Release	New York opening 21 December 1976; Los Angeles opening 22 December 1976¹
Format	122 minutes, color by Metrocolor, shot in Panavision, rated PG¹
Budget	$7.9 million per the 10 December 1975 Variety; Columbia had withdrawn financing the month before, citing a budget it called "a $9 million black-and-white picture"¹
Setting	1910 Chicago, where attorney Leo Harrigan joins an independent film company fighting the Patents Company trust¹
Source material	Scenes based on actual incidents described to Bogdanovich by pioneer directors Allan Dwan and Raoul Walsh¹
Later version	A black-and-white Director's Cut appeared in a 2009 Sony DVD release paired with The Last Picture Show²

Spoilers

Story and cast

Following a trial in 1910 Chicago, attorney Leo Taylor Harrigan (Ryan O'Neal) hides in an alley from an enraged client and falls in with H. H. Cobb (Brian Keith), owner of the Kinegraph Company, an independent or "blanket" producer threatened by the Motion Picture Patents Company, a trust of major film producers bent on eliminating competition. Hired at $15 per scenario after improving a writer's idea, Leo moves into directing, while gunslinger Buck Greenway (Burt Reynolds) becomes a cowboy leading man. Both men fall for the nearsighted starlet Kathleen Cooke (Jane Hitchcock), and a rivalry grows between them.¹^•⁶ The cast also includes Tatum O'Neal as Alice "Princess" Forsyte, Stella Stevens, John Ritter, and Harry Carey, Jr.¹

The film marked the screen debut of Griffin O'Neal, Ryan O'Neal's son, who substituted for an influenza-stricken boy cast as a bicycle messenger, and the feature debut of Lorenzo Music, then known for his recurring role on Rhoda.¹ Tatum O'Neal studied tap dancing for six weeks to prepare for her role as an aspiring dancer.¹

Bogdanovich had originally conceived the story as a straight drama featuring lesser-known actors John Ritter and Jeff Bridges, but veered away from that concept, and the finished film moved between serious drama and slapstick comedy.³

Production history

Bogdanovich announced in December 1974 that he would direct his original screenplay for Columbia Pictures after completing At Long Last Love (1975), with W. D. Richter also working on the script. Working titles included Starlight Parade and Footlight Parade. James Stewart was among the actors Bogdanovich first coveted for the lead, and in July 1975 he named Cybill Shepherd, then his girlfriend, his "first (and only) choice" for the female lead.¹

The project nearly collapsed before cameras rolled. In November 1975, with principal photography scheduled for 6 February 1976, Columbia withdrew financing. Reported reasons included a "skyrocketing budget" with period sets and costumes and star salaries for Ryan O'Neal, Burt Reynolds, and Tatum O'Neal totaling about $1.1 million; Newsweek put the combined budget for the director and his three principal actors at $3 million and described Shepherd, whose previous two films with Bogdanovich had been box-office disappointments, as a primary reason for the withdrawal. On 28 November 1975 Columbia announced it would resume the film in partnership with British Lion, which paid several million dollars for European distribution rights; British Lion then joined with EMI in financing and distribution, marking both companies' entry into major American film production. Shepherd was dropped, and Bogdanovich said he would cast an unknown in a reduced version of her role.¹

Principal photography began 29 December 1975 in Los Angeles and Modesto, California. Much of the shooting took place at The Burbank Studio and the Columbia Ranch in Burbank, with other locations in Modesto, Jamestown, and the Vasquez Rocks near Acton. Allan Dwan, the subject of a biography Bogdanovich had written, served as technical adviser.¹

The black-and-white dispute

Bogdanovich had wanted to shoot the film in black and white on location, which he felt would convey the feel of the period, but after the commercial failures of Daisy Miller (1974) and At Long Last Love (1975) he no longer had the creative control he needed, and the producers insisted on color in the studio.³ He later described his disagreements with Columbia as heavily exaggerated and said his intention had been to shoot in color with "a monochromatic feeling."¹ Cinematographer László Kovács lit the film to accommodate black and white, using silent-era techniques such as irising in and out of scenes, and Bogdanovich said the film contains no opticals at all.⁴ A 2009 black-and-white Director's Cut, running 2 hours 4 minutes, was later circulated by repertory cinemas.⁵

Historical grounding

The film opens with a printed statement explaining that when moving pictures began, the big producers formed "The Patents Company" to stop the little guys, and "that is why the first war in movies was a real one."¹ Several scenes were based on actual incidents described to Bogdanovich by the veteran directors Allan Dwan and Raoul Walsh, who receive special thanks in the end credits.¹ The Austin Film Society describes the film as the meeting of Bogdanovich's two careers, as a filmmaker and as a historian of the medium whose interviews with Classic Hollywood directors were, in its words, essential work.⁵

The film also uses archival material: Bogdanovich and his actors convey the excitement that accompanied the release of D. W. Griffith's work using footage from a special tinted archival print.³

Reception

Several critics found the film disappointing; the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner called it a "$9.2 million home movie." It did, however, receive positive notice from the Los Angeles Times, Boxoffice, and critic Judith Crist in Saturday Review.¹ Time's review credited the film's relative success to the director's "warm, but not sloppy feeling for the very earliest period in film history," while noting it sought a movie-nostalgia market that was "more apparent than real."⁷ The Austin Film Society's account is blunter: audiences stayed away in droves, leaving the film for later generations to rediscover.⁵ A contemporary retrospective from the UW Cinematheque calls it a one-of-a-kind "slapstick drama" that works delightfully, with Bogdanovich's attention to detail and reverence for film history paying off.⁸

In a letter, Claire Du Brey, a veteran performer whose screen work dated back to 1913, charged Bogdanovich with anachronism, claiming that neither a studio enclosed by glass nor electric lighting could have existed in 1915; the film historian Marc Wanamaker countered with historical documentation showing that Los Angeles's earliest glass-enclosed stage had gone up in late 1909 at Selig Polyscope Studio in Edendale.¹

Afterlife

Largely unseen since its release, the film made its first DVD appearance in 2009 in a Sony double-feature package with The Last Picture Show, in both its original color version and a new black-and-white Director's Cut.² Sony Pictures now lists both versions, with the 2009 cut copyrighted separately, and the film is available digitally.⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026