Interestingly, even as Higgins Hall was being constructed in 1895, Thomas Edison (who had married Chautauqua co-founder Lewis Miller's daughter) was tinkering with his motion picture camera and projector while vacationing only a few hundred yards away. Chautauqua was also the scene of several meetings between Edison and George Eastman who developed the all-important continuous roll film (instead of individual plates) which made movies practicable.
Between 1911 and 1915, the play was the thing in Higgins Hall, which housed first the Coburn Players and then the Chautauqua Players. But the Magic of Movies took over Higgins Hall in 1916, presented by The Community Motion Picture Bureau in cooperation with the Institution, and films have been shown there ever since. (It's interesting to note that Chautauquans' thirst for the flickering images was so great that during the mid 1920s, movies were also shown in a second building known as the Hall of Expression which was located on the plaza where Smith Library now stands.) Photos of Higgins Hall during this early movie era are not available, but newspaper ads for the films that were shown (examples illustrated are from 1920, 1926, 1931, and 1937) do give us a sense of the period.

Also, sometime during the 1920s or 1930s (we can find no record that pinpoints the year), the peaked roof of Higgins Hall was extended the full length of the building, thus providing space for a balcony. A simple intersecting peak replaced the ornate decorations which had topped the original entrance. (They were literally lopped off. Evidence is visible in the attic space created by the new peak). A best guess is that the terra cotta material from which all of the ornamentation was made simply didn't hold up under the severe conditions of western New York winters.
Chautauqua Institution ceased functioning as a presenter of movies in 1938 when it leased Higgins Hall to Joseph Woodburn, a retired actor and vaudeville performer, who operated it as a private business until his death in 1954. My memories (as a fifth-grader in 1952) are of Mr. Woodburn collecting the ticket money at a rickety little red table just inside the entrance doors.