double feature

Also, double bill. A program consisting of two full-length films shown for the price of a single ticket. For example, It was a double feature and lasted five hours, or The women's conference had a double bill, first speakers from China and then visiting guests from the rest of the world . This expression is occasionally loosely used for other paired events (as in the second example). [c. 1930]

Two movies for the price of one. Movie theater owners during the Great Depression of the 1930s hit on the idea of attracting more business during those troubled times by offering not one but two feature-length films. That was in addition to the newsreels, cartoons, serial episodes, coming-attraction trailers, and short subjects that moviegoers had grown accustomed to seeing. The two films were not of equal quality. One was the feature, the star-studded movie that people wanted to see. The second feature was a B movie. Double features lasted through World War II up to the 1960s, when the studios insisting that theaters rent two films at a time was declared illegal.