在影院卖爆米花是谁发明的？
Who Made Movie Popcorn?

In the 1920s, movie palaces rose up around the country like so many portals into a glamorous world. After you bought a ticket, you might pass through gilded archways and ascend a grand staircase lighted by a crystal chandelier to find your velvet seat. Eating was not meant to be part of the experience, says Andrew F. Smith, author of “Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America.” Theater owners feared that audiences would strew popcorn and peanuts on those crimson carpets. They hung signs discouraging people from bringing in food from vendors parked outside and didn’t sell it themselves.

20世纪20年代，电影院开始在全美兴起，和其他许多新鲜事物一起，打开了一个通往精彩世界的大门。买上一张电影票，就可以走过镀金拱门，走上一段恢弘的楼梯，在水晶吊灯照耀下找到你的丝绒座椅。吃东西本来并不包含在这种体验之内，《“爆”文化：爆米花在美国的社会发展史》(Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America)的作者安德鲁·F·史密斯(Andrew F. Smith)说。影院主人担心观众会把爆米花和花生洒在红地毯上。他们竖起标志，不鼓励观众把从影院外的小贩那里买到的食品带入影院，影院自己也不出售零食。

A widow named Julia Braden in Kansas City, Mo., was one of the rare concessionaires who managed to talk her way inside. She persuaded the Linwood Theater to let her set up a stand in the lobby and eventually built a popcorn empire. By 1931, she owned stands in or near four movie theaters and pulled in more than $14,400 a year — the equivalent of $336,000 in today’s dollars. Her business grew even in the midst of the Depression, at the same time that thousands of elegant theaters went bust.

密苏里州堪萨斯城一个名叫茱莉亚·布拉登(Julia Braden)的寡妇说服影院让她入内，成为获得了这种稀有特许权的人之一。她说服林伍德影院让她在大厅设摊位，最终建立起一个爆米花帝国。到1931年，她在大约四家电影院拥有摊位，每年能赚1.44万美元以上，相当于如今的33.6万美元。她的事业甚至在大萧条期间还在发展，与此同时，数以千计的豪华影院宣告倒闭。

According to Smith, it’s impossible to establish who sold the first box of movie popcorn. For decades, vendors operated out of wagons parked near theaters, circuses and ballparks, selling a variety of snacks. But Braden seems to have been among the first to set up concessions linked to movie houses — and to pioneer a new business strategy: the money was in popcorn, not ticket sales. (That’s still true today. Movie theaters reap as much as 85 percent of their profits from concession sales.)

史密斯说，是谁初次在影院卖爆米花，如今已不可考。几十年来，小贩们都是在剧院、马戏场和运动场附近停下车子，贩卖各种零食。但布拉登那批人似乎是首批获得与影院相关的特许经营权的人，他们开创了一种全新的商业战略：通过爆米花而不是电影票赚钱。这种策略如今还在生效。影院通过特许经营获得的利润最高可达影院收入的85%。

In the mid-1930s, a manager named R. J. McKenna, who ran a chain of theaters in the West, caught on to this idea. An old man selling popcorn outside one of McKenna’s movie houses amassed enough money to buy a house, a farm and a store. McKenna installed a popcorn machine in the lobby and collected the proceeds — as much as $200,000 in 1938. With that kind of money rolling in, who cared about the rugs? McKenna lowered the price of tickets just to draw more people to his concession stand. By the 1940s, most theaters had followed suit, and soon the smell of melted butter wafted through lobbies. One entrepreneur of the era offered the following advice: “Find a good popcorn location and build a theater around it.”

20世纪30年代中期，一个名叫R·J·麦坎纳(R. J. McKenna)的影院经理在西部经营着连锁影院，他把握住了这个创意。一个在麦坎纳的某家影院外卖爆米花的老人赚的钱攒起来足够买一栋房子、一个农场和一个商店。麦坎纳在影院大厅里装了一台爆米花机，以此赢利，1938年赚的钱达到20万美元。有这么多钱源源涌入，谁还在乎会不会把地毯弄脏？麦坎纳降低了电影票价，吸引更多人来特许经营的摊位买东西。到20世纪40年代，大多数影院都效仿他的做法，很快黄油融化的香味就传遍了一座座影院大厅。当时的一个创业者提出了这样一条建议：“找一个好的爆米花摊位，再围绕它盖一个影院。”

POP STARS

爆米花之星

Max Robbins is the director of research at Ag Alumni Seed, where he breeds and tests popcorn plants.

马克斯·罗宾斯(Max Robbins)是奥格校友种子协会(Ag Alumni Seed)的研究顾问，专门培育和测试用于爆米花的爆裂种玉米种植。

What goes into making a new variety? We use classical plant breeding, and one of the traits we look for is pop expansion — how big the kernel is after it pops.

新品种有什么特色呢？我们使用经典育种方法，其中我们想达到的一项重要目标就是爆裂幅度，也就是玉米粒裂开后能有多大。

Why is size so important? People prefer the larger-kernel corn. The flake has to be large and attractive. Also, by the way, there are two kinds of flake shapes: butterfly and mushroom. The butterfly flake — that’s what you’re going to see in the movie theater or what you’re going to buy to pop at home. And then you’ve probably seen what we call a mushroom flake when you’re buying caramel corn.

为什么大小那么重要呢？人们都喜欢颗粒饱满的玉米。米花应该膨大诱人。顺便说一句，米花裂开有两种形状：蝴蝶状和蘑菇状。蝴蝶状的米花就是影院里买到那种米花，或者在家自制的米花。如果买了制作焦糖米花的玉米，那就会看到我们所谓蘑菇状的米花了。

How do you test new varieties of popcorn? We use a machine that’s just like what you’d see at a movie theater. It has been modified with a giant graduated cylinder on its bottom, where normally the guy at the movie theater would be scooping popcorn into a box. That’s so we can measure the volume of popped kernels.

你们是怎样测试新品种的米花的？我们使用和影院里的爆米花差不多的机器，不过影院里卖爆米花的人都是把米花扫进一个盒子，我们这里，米花是落进底部一个带刻度的圆筒状容器。这样我们就可以计算颗粒爆裂后的量。

So you must end up eating a lot of popcorn. People will stop by and pick up bags. Some people feed it to their chickens.

所以你们肯定吃了不少爆米花啦。来探访的人都会拿走大包米花，有些人拿它们喂鸡。

本文最初发表于2013年10月6日。

翻译：董楠