That's All Folks

I was watching an old movie on TCM--which is all they show, after all--and something struck me as weird.  At the end of the film, the words "THE END" appeared.

Okay, not weird in that countless films end that way, but weird in that anyone ever found it necessary. I mean, it's pretty clear the movie is over.  The projector has run out of film.  The house lights go up (unless it's a double feature).

Who started this tradition?  Did it exist before films?  In a play, you just lower the curtain. And I'm not sure how common it is in books.  But maybe a storyteller would tell you that's the end, you can go back to whatever it is you were doing.

The earliest film were short--under a minute--and had no credits. Eventually, they started telling stories.  At some point, someone had to come up with the idea of putting "THE END" on screen.  But who did it?  When?  Why? Did they fear the audience wouldn't know it was over otherwise?

And have they stopped doing it?  I don't think you see "THE END" up there much any more.  If you did it would seem old-fashioned.  Now you maybe have a fade to black, followed by endless credits. (You didn't always have credits at the end decades ago, and if you did, it was usually just a quick list of the actors).

Let me end this was something a bit off topic.  I once went to a Halloween performance of Dracula at a really cheap theatre. So cheap they didn't even have curtains.  In the final scene, someone drives a stake through Dracula's heart.  The show is over.  But because the there was no curtain to close, the audience just sat there, looking at a dead guy in his coffin.  Finally he sat up and said, in an accent, "The play is over, I stake my life on it."

I bet he planned that.