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Millions Like Us? Accented Language and the “Ordinary” in British Films of the Second World War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Jo Fox
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Type
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Journal of British Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 819 - 845
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2006

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References

1 Mass-Observation Archive, Special Collections, University of Sussex Library (hereafter M-O A): Topic Collection (hereafter TC) 17/5/B, letters to Picture Goer: British Films. Letter from R.V., Harrow, 1 January 1941.

2 Letter to Radio Times, 9 February 1940. Quoted in Nicholas, Sian, The Echo of War: Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC, 1939–45 (Manchester, 1996), 239Google Scholar.

3 Pronay, Nicholas, “‘The Land of Promise’: The Projection of Peace Aims in Britain,” in Film and Radio Propaganda in World War II, ed. Short, K. R. M. (London, 1983), 72Google Scholar.

4 Ibid.

5 M-O A: File Report (hereafter FR) 446, Tom Harrisson, “Social Research and the Film,” November 1940. Also reproduced in Mass-Observation at the Movies, ed. Sheridan, Dorothy and Richards, Jeffrey (London, 1987), 209–17, 213Google Scholar, and Documentary News Letter 1, no. 11 (November 1940).

6 Ibid.

7 For more on Mass-Observation and their aims and organization, see Summerfield, Penny, “Mass-Observation: Social Research or Social Movement?” Journal of Contemporary History 20, no. 3 (July 1985): 439–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Kushner, Tony, “The Spice of Life? Ethnic Difference, Politics and Culture in Modern Britain,” in Citizenship, Nationality, and Migration in Europe, ed. Cesarani, David and Fulbrook, Mary (New York, 1996), 125–45, 130Google Scholar.

9 Higson, Andrew, Waving the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain (Oxford, 1995), 42–43Google Scholar.

10 Ellis, John, “Victory of the Voice?” Screen 22, no. 2 (1981): 69–72, 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Gillett, Philip, The British Working Class in Post-war Film (Manchester, 2003), 19–20Google Scholar.

12 Harper, Sue and Porter, Vincent, British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference (Oxford, 2003), 251Google Scholar.

13 George Perry cited in Barr, Charles, Ealing Studios, 3rd ed. (Berkeley, 1998), 26Google Scholar. See also McKibbin, Ross, Classes and Cultures: England, 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998), 434CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Quoted in Aldgate, Tony, “Comedy, Class and Containment: The British Domestic Cinema of the 1930s,” in British Cinema History, ed. Curran, James and Porter, Vincent (London, 1983), 257–71, 261Google Scholar.

15 Montgomery, John, Comedy Films (London, 1954), 179Google Scholar. Quoted in Aldgate, “Comedy, Class and Containment,” 261.

16 Nuttall, Jeff, King Twist: A Portrait of Frank Randle (London, 1978), 14Google Scholar. Quoted in Aldgate, “Comedy, Class and Containment,” 261. For evidence of continued resistance to American culture in Britain, see Weight, Richard, Patriots: National Identity in Britain, 1940–2000 (Basingstoke, 2002), 178Google Scholar.

17 McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 433.

18 Ibid.

19 The National Archives: Public Record Office (hereafter TNA: PRO) RG 23/44, Wartime Social Survey, DC 48532/1.

20 Cinema, 1 January 1941, 5. As Jeffrey Richards notes, “Fields was the top female star at the cinema box office from 1936–1940 and Formby the top male star from 1937–1943” (Richards, , Stars in Our Eyes: Lancashire Stars of Stage, Screen, and Radio [Preston, 1994], 10Google Scholar).

21 Richards, Jeffrey, Films and British National Identity: From Dickens to Dad's Army (Manchester, 1997), 258Google Scholar.

22 Ibid. Note use of “our.”

23 Richards, Stars in Our Eyes, 10.

24 Richards, Films and British National Identity, 1; Sedgwick, John, Popular Filmgoing in 1930s Britain: A Choice of Pleasures (Exeter, 2000), 102Google Scholar; Richards, Jeffrey, “Cinemagoing in Worktown: Regional Film Audiences in 1930s Britain,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 14, no. 2 (1994): 147–66, 164CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Sedgwick, Popular Filmgoing, 111–12, 119.

26 For comments on the popularity of Formby, see ibid., 192–93.

27 Richards, Films and British National Identity, 261.

28 TNA: PRO INF 1/724, memorandum by the International Broadcasting and Propaganda Enquiry, 21 June 1939. Reprinted in full in Taylor, Phillip M., “Techniques of Persuasion: Basic Ground Rules of British Propaganda during the Second World War,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 1, no. 1 (1981): 57–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The sense of engaging the public is prevalent throughout the document.

29 Ellis, “Victory of the Voice?” 71.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

32 Nicholas, The Echo of War, 239.

33 C. E. M. Joad, The Listener (BBC house journal), 16 April 1942. Quoted in Nicholas, The Echo of War, 262 n. 54.

34 W. E. Williams, The Listener, 2 April 1942. Quoted in Nicholas, The Echo of War, 240.

35 East to Hyndley, BBC Written Archive Centre R 34/672/1, 10 July 1942. Quoted in Nicholas, The Echo of War, 100.

36 TNA: PRO INF 1/251, from Francis Williams to Sir Kenneth Clark, Home Planning Executive Sub-committee, 16 April 1941.

37 Ibid.

38 TNA: PRO RG 23/44, Wartime Social Survey, DC 48532/1, 1943. Nicholas Pronay contends that the lower economic groups also made up the majority of cinemagoers in the prewar period (Pronay, , “The ‘Moving Picture’ and Historical Research,” in “Historians and Movies: The State of the Art, Part I,” special issue, Journal of Contemporary History 18, no. 3 [July 1983]: 365–95)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 “Films and a People's War: A Discussion of the Basic Principles of Propaganda in This War,” Documentary News Letter, November 1940, 3–4.

40 M-O A: FR 90, Morale: Channels of Publicity, 14 April 1940. The Griersonian style is the particular form of documentary associated with the filmmaker John Grierson. Grierson was adamant that the documentary should be as realistic as possible in its representation of the ordinary. For Grierson, film was not so much about aesthetics as observation. For more on this, see Grierson, , “The Documentary Idea” (1942), in The Documentary Film Movement: An Anthology, ed. Aitken, Ian (Edinburgh, 1998), 103–15Google Scholar.

41 “Films and a People's War,” 3.

42 For more on the Boultings’ vision of the postwar utopia in this film, see the interview with Roy Boulting, March 1980, held in the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive (hereafter IWMS) 4627/6.

43 Paris, Michael, “Filming the People's War: The Dawn Guard, Desert Victory, Tunisian Victory, and Burma Victory,” in The Family Way: The Boulting Brothers and Postwar British Film Culture, ed. Burton, Alan, O’Sullivan, Tim, and Wells, Paul (Trowbridge, 2000), 97–109, 97Google Scholar.

44 Eley, Geoff, “Finding the People's War: Film, British Collective Memory, and World War II,” American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (June 2001): 818–38, 837–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Powell, Dilys, Films since 1939 (London, 1947), 39Google Scholar.

46 TNA: PRO INF 1/292, Stephen Taylor, Home Intelligence, “Home Morale and Public Opinion: A Review of Some Conclusions Arising out of a Year of Home Intelligence Weekly Reports,” 1 October 1941, 7.

47 Ibid.

48 TNA: PRO INF 6/330, working script for the Ministry of Information short film Ordinary People (1941).

49 Harry Watt, quoted in “George Formby Wins the War,” Times Higher Education Supplement, 20 July 1973. Located in British Film Institute (hereafter BFI) Subject File, “World War II and Film.”

50 TNA: PRO INF 1/292, Stephen Taylor, Home Intelligence, “Home Morale and Public Opinion,” 4.

51 “Films and a People's War,” 4; TNA: PRO INF 1/292, Stephen Taylor, Home Intelligence, “Home Morale and Public Opinion,” 4.

52 TNA: PRO INF 1/679, Sir Arthur Willert to R. H. Parker, director of the Home Division, MoI, 28 April 1942, ref: AW/RHMC2; TNA: PRO INF 1/679, Rowntree minute, Morns (MoI Midlands) to Briggs, 29 April 1942.

53 M-O A: TC 17/ 5/A, raw materials for report on letters to Picture Goer Weekly, May–November 1940, 1,536 letters analyzed. M-O A: “Home propaganda: A Report Prepared by Mass-Observation for the Advertising Service Guild,” Bulletin of the Advertising Service Guild, no. 2 (London, n.d., ca. 1942), 33.

54 “Films and a People's War,” 4.

55 Nicholas, The Echo of War, 239.

56 “The Man on the Screen,” Documentary News Letter, May 1940, 3.

57 Ibid.

58 M-O A: TC 17/8/A, Film Reports and Memos, 1940–1943. MoI. Donnington report, 27 September 1941.

59 “The Man on the Screen,” 3.

60 Ibid.

61 Ellis, “Victory of the Voice?” 71.

62 “The Man on the Screen,” 3.

63 Ellis, “Victory of the Voice?” 71.

64 “The Man on the Screen,” 3.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 M-O A: TC 17/5/A, letters to Picture Goer Weekly, 1940 report. A.W.R., West Hartlepool, 15 December 1940.

68 Roger Manvell, “They Laugh at Realism,” Documentary News Letter, March 1943, 188.

69 Ibid.

70 TNA: PRO INF 1/251, “Five minute shorts,” Home Publicity Committee minutes, 13 November 1940. This is also reiterated in TNA: PRO INF 1/679, Rowntree memorandum on “Home Propaganda,” 25 April 1942, 3 (b).

71 A synopsis of these films can be found in Chapman, The British at War, 91. See also the original scripts and scenarios in TNA: PRO INF 6/524 (All Hands); INF 6/525 (Dangerous Comment); INF 6/526 (Now You’re Talking); INF 6/527 (You’re Telling Me).

72 See, e.g., “Anti-gossip Films Reviewed,” Documentary News Letter, May 1940, 17.

73 “The Man on the Screen,” 3. Here the author is referring to Dangerous Comment.

74 “Anti-gossip Films Reviewed,” 17.

75 M-O A: TC 17/8/A, Film Reports and Memos 1940–1943. MoI. “Report on and Responses to MoI Short Films,” Len England, 10 October 1940. England also commented on the fact that Sebastian Shaw, Dorothy Higson, and Edward Chapman also star.

76 M-O A: TC 17/8/A, Film Reports and Memos, 1940–1943. MoI. Donnington report, 27 September 1941, with specific reference to the “careless talk films.”

77 M-O A: FR 639, You’re Telling Me, 5 April 1941. Also in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 435–37.

78 TNA: PRO INF 1/292, Stephen Taylor, Home Intelligence, “Home Morale and Public Opinion,” 7.

79 M-O A: FR 458, “Fifteen Ministry of Information Shorts,” Len England, 16 October 1940. Also reproduced in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 425. The original data and report can also be found in M-O A: TC 17/8/A, “Report on Audience Responses to MoI short films,” Len England, 10 October 1940.

80 M-O A: FR 458, “Fifteen Ministry of Information Shorts,” Len England, 16 October 1940. Also reproduced in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 425.

81 Ibid.

82 See, e.g., a report in Kinematograph Weekly on 17 July 1941, 1 (“M. of I. Shorts Shelved by Exhibitors”), which details some of the problems the ministry encountered attempting to distribute shorts. It should be noted this is a qualified statement. Mass-Observation records that some short films were popular, and this is supported in a more general sense by the Wartime Social Survey. See, e.g., TNA: PRO INF 1/292, “MoI Films and the Public. An Investigation by the Wartime Social Survey into Public Reaction to the Films made by the Films Division of the Ministry of Information,” 8 October 1941.

83 M-O A: FR 446, “Social Research and the Film,” Tom Harrisson, November 1940. Also reproduced in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 210.

84 See, e.g., a report produced by Len England on the 1942 film Next of Kin dated 25 April 1942 in which England comments that “it failed for exactly the same point as the earlier careless talk films failed. … In the earlier report on the `careless talk' films, I emphasized strongly the point that the working class were shown as the careless talkers, and the workers as spies. The result was that the careless talk seemed not to affect the man in the street who was, however, subconsciously offended by the idea that all spies were in his class of society” (M-O A: TC 17/9/D).

85 Today's Cinema, 25 July 1941, 5.

86 TNA: PRO INF 1/210, Ian Dalrymple to Mr. Mercier, 15 May 1941.

87 IWMS 5367/11, interview with Harry Watt, October 1981, reel 4.

88 Higson, Waving the Flag, 208.

89 Welch, David, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–45 (London, 2001), 181–82Google Scholar.

90 Graham Greene, quoted in Short, K. R. M., “RAF Bomber Command's Target for Tonight—1941—UK Royal Air Force; Documentary Film,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 17, no. 2 (June 1997): 181–218, 192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

91 The Times, 25 March 1943, 6.

92 British press book for The Silent Village. Held at British Film Institute Library, London.

93 Ibid.

94 For Dalrymple's claim, see Aldgate, Anthony and Richards, Jeffrey, Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War (Oxford, 1986), 232Google Scholar.

95 BFI Special Collections, Humphrey Jennings Collection, treatment for Fires Were Started, “N. F. S. Fifth Treatment,” 27 January 1942. Also reproduced in The Humphrey Jennings Film Reader, ed. Jackson, Kevin (Manchester, 1993), 44Google Scholar.

96 British press book for Fires Were Started. Held at British Film Institute Library, London.

97 Daniel Millar, “Fires Were Started,” Sight and Sound (Spring 1969): 100–104, 100.

98 BFI Special Collections, Humphrey Jennings Collection, treatment for Fires Were Started, “N.F.S. Fifth Treatment,” 27 January 1942. Also reproduced in Jackson, The Humphrey Jennings Film Reader, 45.

99 Jackson, Kevin, Humphrey Jennings (Basingstoke, 2004), 255Google Scholar.

100 British press book for Fires Were Started. Held at British Film Institute Library, London.

101 Jackson, Humphrey Jennings, 266.

102 Sansom, William, “The Making of Fires Were Started,” Film Quarterly 15, no. 2 (Winter 1961–62): 27–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cited in Jackson, Humphrey Jennings, 266.

103 Millar, “Fires Were Started,” 102.

104 TNA: PRO INF 1/212, memorandum to Mr. Jarratt (Crown Film Unit) from J. A. Bardsley, publicity manager, 7 December 1942, regarding a test screening of Fires Were Started in Preston.

105 “The Man on the Screen,” 4; John Grierson Papers, Special Collections, University of Stirling, G4:20:4, “Films and the War,” speech by Grierson to the National Film Society of Canada, n.d.

106 “The Man on the Screen,” 3.

107 M-O A: “Home Propaganda: A Report Prepared by Mass-Observation for the Advertising Service Guild,” Bulletin of the Advertising Service Guild, no. 2 (1942): 31.

108 Wright, Basil, The Long View: A Personal Perspective on World Cinema (London, 1974), 109Google Scholar.

109 Interview with Rotha in Sussex, Elizabeth, The Rise and Fall of British Documentary (Berkeley, 1975), 140–41Google Scholar.

110 Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, 219.

111 British press book for Millions Like Us (1943). Held at British Film Institute Library, London.

112 Evidence for the contemporary understanding of social division at the end of the war can be found in M-O A: FR 2275, “Character in War and Peace,” August 1945; M-O A: FR 2270A, “The General Election,” July 1945; M-O A: FR 2278B, “Feelings about the Peace,” August 1945. For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Fox, Jo, Film Propaganda in Nazi Germany and Britain: World War II Cinema (Oxford, 2006)Google Scholar.

113 M-O A: FR 2270A, “The General Election,” July 1945.

114 The Cinema, 24 September 1943, 8.

115 The Times, 7 June 1944, 8.

116 C. A. Lejeune, “London's Movie News,” New York Times, 16 July 1944, X3.

117 The Times, 16 April 1930, 13.

118 Glancy, H. Mark, When Hollywood Loved Britain: The Hollywood “British” Film, 1939–1945 (Manchester, 1999), 3Google Scholar.

119 Ibid., 90.

120 Edgar Anstey, The Spectator, 17 July 1942, and Documentary News Letter, August 1942. Quoted in Glancy, When Hollywood Loved Britain, 155.

121 Walter Pidgeon was actually Canadian, but this distinction was not recognized by contemporaries. See, e.g., The Times, 8 July 1942, 6.

122 Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, 206.

123 Wright, The Long View, 109.

124 M-O A: 1943, directive replies on favorite films, in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies. Comment 1 is from a clerk, thirty-four, from Belmont (284). Comment 2 is from a mother and part-time typist, twenty-seven, London (264).

125 IWMS 11845/1, interview with Bernard Miles, 30 minutes recorded in 1986.

126 Kinematograph Weekly, 1 October 1942, 28; IWMS 11845/1, interview with Bernard Miles, 1986.

127 IWMS 11845/1, interview with Bernard Miles, 1986.

128 Quotation from Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, 208.

129 Documentary News Letter, October 1942, 143–44. Quoted in Aldgate and Richards, Britain Can Take It, 209.

130 M-O A: 1943, directive replies on favorite films, in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 271–84.

131 Kinematograph Weekly, 1 October 1942, 28.

132 M-O A: 1943, directive replies on favorite films, in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 278. Here the comment is from a social worker, forty-one, London.

133 Ibid., 264.

134 Interview with Sir Anthony Havelock Allen, June 1990, in An Autobiography of British Cinema: as Told by the Film-makers and Actors Who Made It, ed. McFarlane, Brian (London, 1997), 291Google Scholar.

135 British press book for In Which We Serve, 15. Held at British Film Institute Library, London.

136 The Times, 24 September 1942, 6.

137 IWMS 11845/1, interview with Bernard Miles, 1986.

138 Wright, The Long View, 109.

139 IWMS 11845/1, interview with Bernard Miles, 1986.

140 M-O A: 1943, directive replies on favorite films, in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 234–41.

141 Kinematograph Weekly, 3 October 1940, 4.

142 See, e.g., “Hays Office Objects to Great British Film,” News Chronicle, 2 December 1942, British Film Institute subject file, “censorship”; The Times, 24 December 1942; The Times, 10 December 1942, 8. A report also appeared in The Scotsman, 10 December 1942, British Film Institute subject file, “censorship.” For more discussion on this, see Slide, Anthony, “Banned in the USA”: British Films in the United States and Their Censorship, 1933–1960 (London, 1998), 83Google Scholar.

143 Manvell, “They Laugh at Realism,” 188.

144 Blaxendale, John, “‘You and I—All of Us Ordinary People’: Renegotiating ‘Britishness’ in Wartime,” in “Millions Like Us”? British Culture in the Second World War, ed. Hayes, Nick and Hill, Jeff (Liverpool, 1999), 295–323, 322CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

145 Rose, Sonya, Which People's War? National Identity and Citizenship in Wartime Britain, 1939–1945 (Oxford, 2003), 6Google Scholar.

146 Blaxendale, “‘You and I—All of Us Ordinary People,’” 322.

147 Rose, Which People's War? 286.

148 Fielding, Steven, “The Good War: 1939–1945,” in From Blitz to Blair: A New History of Britain since 1939, ed. Tiratsoo, Nick (London, 1998), 34Google Scholar.

149 Rose, Which People's War? 23.

150 Harris, José, “War and Social History: Britain and the Home Front during the Second World War,” Contemporary European History 1, no. 1 (1992): 17–35, 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

151 For a further discussion of this issue, see James Chapman, “British Cinema and ‘The People's War,’” in Hayes and Hill, “Millions Like Us”? 33–62.

152 M-O A: FR 446, “Social Research and the Film,” Tom Harrisson, November 1940. Also reproduced in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 212.

153 Stacey, Jackie, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (London, 1994), 113Google Scholar. Quoted in McKibbin, Classes and Cultures, 432.

154 M-O A: FR 2120, “The Film and Family Life,” 13 June 1944. Also reproduced in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 298. For more on Love on the Dole, see Caroline Levine's article in this issue: “Propaganda for Democracy: The Curious Case of Love on the Dole,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 4 (October 2006): 846–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

155 M-O A: FR 2120, “The Film and Family Life, “ 13 June 1944. Also reproduced in Sheridan and Richards, Mass-Observation at the Movies, 297.

156 Ibid.

157 Noel Coward, interviewed by C. A. Lejeune, “How Coward Did a Five-Fold Job,” New York Times, 14 February 1943.

158 Eley, “Finding the People's War,” 838.