In this innovative study of early film exhibition, Joe Kember reveals a rich and diversifying landscape of popular entertainments in the mid-to-late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marketing Modernity calls for a reconsideration of the relationship between early film and industrial modernity, highlighting the role of the showman during that period, and revealing how modern entertainments stitched their commercial imperatives into the everyday lives of their audiences by marketing existing, comfortable modes of performance and personality.