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It was frowned upon. During the silent era, people would bring in bagged peanuts and you'd hear shells cracking all thru the picture, and find shells all over the floor after the show, which led the better operators to ban food altogether, while the neighborhood houses turned to concessionaires to try and control what sort of food got in.
Beginning around 1939, our place had "The Strand Store" in one of the ground-level storefronts, where snacks, soda, and even beer were sold -- one of the pictures we have has a "Pickwick Ale" sign visible in the window. The beer was strictly for takeout though -- they wouldn't let it in the theatre! In the early 1950s, they knocked thru the wall between the store and the theatre lobby, and the space became the in-house concession stand.
Candy bars and fruit drops like "Assorted Charms" were the most popular concession items in the thirties, although some houses allowed hot dogs in. Popcorn was considered declasse, the mark of a hick theatre, until sugar rationing cut into the availablity of candy during the war. The in-theatre popper didn't become common until after the war.
I had one relative (a great aunt) who said theater food wasn't clean and she only ate the packaged stuff at movie theaters. She specifically said there were cockroaches in many of the popcorn machines. She died when I was pretty young and I don't remember any more of what she said or if she was half cracker house or not, but the implication was there was a time when that - theater concessions aren't clean - was the popular perception. Was there anything to that or was she just nuts or extrapolating from some one off (any food business will have the occasion bad actor)? As a kid, I ignored her completely - the places looked okay (certainly never saw a roach in the popcorn) and was very happy if I had the money to buy popcorn, candy or soda.