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Cinema-going in a port town, 1914–1951: film booking patterns at the Queens Cinema, Portsmouth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 February 2013

ROBERT JAMES
ROBERT JAMES*
Affiliation:
School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies, University of Portsmouth, Milldam, Burnaby Road, Portsmouth, Hants., PO1 3AS, UK
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Abstract:

This article examines the localized nature of leisure provision and consumer taste in Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. Based on an analysis of the cinema-going habits of naval personnel and dockyard workers and their families in the naval town of Portsmouth, this article reveals how closely consumers’ tastes were predicated on their social and cultural identities. By mapping film booking patterns at one cinema, this article reveals how cinema managers chose to book films which responded directly to the tastes of their patrons. The article concludes that the film preferences of this community were shaped by their close connections with naval life.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 40 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 315 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 Figures taken from Kineweekly Year Book, 1914–51. The town covers an area of 13½ sq. miles.

2 These figures refer to the insured unemployed. Vision of Britain, ‘Work and poverty: percentage unemployed by category of the insured’, www.visionofbritain.org.uk, last accessed 30 Sep. 2011. See also Pollard, S., The Development of the British Economy, 1914–1990 (London, 1992), 53Google Scholar; Aldcroft, D.H., The Inter-War Economy: Britain, 1919–1939 (London, 1970), 119Google Scholar.

3 Rowson, S., ‘A statistical survey of the cinema industry in Great Britain in 1934’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 99 (1936), 67–129CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The Cinema Audience (1943), published in Mayer, J.P., British Cinemas and their Audiences (London, 1948), 251–75Google Scholar.

4 James, R., ‘Kinematograph Weekly in the 1930s: trade attitudes towards audience taste’, Journal of Popular British Cinema and Television, 3 (2006), 229–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 See Stead, P., Film and the Working Class: The Feature Film in British and American Society (London, 1989)Google Scholar; Stacey, J., Star Gazing: Hollywood and Female Spectatorship (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Harper, S., Women in British Cinema: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know (London, 2000)Google Scholar; Fuller-Seeley, K.H. (ed.), Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case Studies of Local Moviegoing (Berkeley, 2008)Google Scholar.

6 See Davies, A., Leisure, Gender and Poverty. Working-Class Culture in Salford and Manchester: 1900–1939 (Milton Keynes, 1992)Google Scholar; McKibbin, R., Classes and Cultures, England 1918–1951 (Oxford, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Langhamer, C., Women's Leisure in England, 1920–1960 (Manchester, 2000)Google Scholar; Beaven, B., Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain, 1850–1945 (Manchester, 2005)Google Scholar; Todd, S., Young Women, Work and Family in England 1918–1930 (Oxford, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James, R., Popular Culture and Working-Class Taste in Britain, 1930–39: A Round of Cheap Diversions? (Manchester, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recently, historians have begun assessing cinema-going habits in particular regions. Much of this research has concentrated on Portsmouth, due to the richness of the evidence available for the town. See, for example, Poole, J., ‘British cinema attendance in wartime: audience preference at the Majestic, Macclesfield, 1939–1946’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 7 (1987), 15–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harper, S., ‘A lower middle-class taste-community in the 1930s: admission figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK’, ibid., 24 (2004), 565–87Google Scholar; Harper, S., ‘Fragmentation and crisis: 1940s admissions figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK’, ibid., 26 (2006), 361–94Google Scholar; , J., ‘Cinemagoing in Portsmouth’, Cinema Journal, 46 (2006), 52–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; James, R., ‘“A very profitable enterprise”: South Wales Miners’ Institute cinemas in the 1930s’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 27 (2007), 27–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Information taken from Kineweekly Year Book, which lists cinemas operating in Portsmouth.

8 Council minutes 1914–51, held in Local History Department, Central Library, Portsmouth. The exact date of the cinema's closure cannot be ascertained. The pages in the council minutes listing the cinemas operating in the town are missing in 1948; the cinema is not listed thereafter. Newspaper advertisements also stop in Oct. 1948. However, the cinema is listed in Kineweekly Year Book until 1952.

9 See minutes of the Corporation Watch Committee Book, 1914 and 1945.

10 According to the council minutes, the cinema was owned and managed by Raymond Stross in 1945, Frederick Ernest in 1946 and John Willis, Robert Elkin and William Potter in 1947. In 1948, William Ling is recorded as owning and managing the cinema. Minutes of the Corporation Watch Committee Book, 1945–48. Kineweekly Year Book records H.P.E. Mears as manager in 1945, F.E. Murkin in 1947 and A.G. and K.M. Spiers from 1948 to 1951. Kineweekly Year Book, 1945–51. Kelly's Directory records Raymond Stross as proprietor in 1946. The argument regarding the frequent changes of management stands, however.

11 Kinematograph Weekly, 9 Apr. 1931, 25, 16 Apr. 1931, 29, and 14 May 1931, 29; Evening News, 8 Apr. 1931.

12 C.P. Walker, ‘Municipal enterprise: a study of the interwar municipal corporation of Portsmouth 1919–1939’, unpublished University of Portsmouth MA dissertation, 2003.

13 Evening News, 8 Apr. 1931; Kinematograph Weekly, 16 Apr. 1931, 29.

14 Kineweekly Year Book, 1933, 490.

15 Kinematograph Weekly, 13 Jun. 1935, 21.

16 Kineweekly Year Book, 1936, 558.

17 Ibid., 1922, 394, and 1928, 453.

18 Under Bingham's management prices ranged from 5d to 1s; Scott increased the lower band in 1934 to 6d; Petters reduced the lower band to 5d but increased the upper band to 1s 3d. Ibid., 1930, 446; 1933, 490; 1934, 519; 1936, 550.

19 In 1940, prices ranged from 5d to 1s 3d; in 1947, F.E. Murkin charged from 1s to 2s 3d; in 1948, A.G. and K.M. Spiers charged from 1s to 1s 3d. They remained the same until the cinema closed. Ibid., 1940, 555; 1947, 344; 1948, 357, 1949, 371; 1950, 375; 1951, 365.

20 Kinematograph Weekly, 18 May 1933, 11.

21 Evening News, 8 Feb. 1923.

22 Sedgwick, ‘Cinemagoing’, 56.

23 Only one advertisement was placed during the war, for Modern Hero (1940), on 19 Jul. 1941. Data in Kineweekly Year Book reveals that the cinema remained open. Kineweekly Year Book, 1939–45.

24 See, for example, ‘The kinema world’, Evening News, 24 Jul. 1926.

25 See, for example, advert for This is the Life (1917), Evening News, 30 Nov. 1919.

26 Sedgwick, ‘Cinemagoing’, 55–9.

27 This pattern continued post-1945, but more ‘big’ productions were shown in the late 1940s. This was probably due to the effects of the ad valorem fiasco of 1947, which forced exhibitors to show whatever films they could obtain. Harper, ‘Fragmentation and crisis’, 362.

28 A limited number of advertisements were placed in 1924, so the ratio of British to American films may have differed from that adduced by the evidence. Of those advertised, half were British.

29 As mentioned, no advertisements appear from 1914 to 1917, 1930 to 1931, 1938 to 1939 and 1949 to 51.

30 Evening News, 9 Nov. 1919.

31 Ibid., 16 Nov. 1919.

32 Gledhill, C., ‘Late silent Britain’, in Murphy, R. (ed.), The British Cinema Book (London, 2008), 163–76, 165–6Google Scholar.

33 According to Lucy Fischer, American film-makers’ interest in producing films focusing on World War I increased significantly as the decade progressed. Fischer, L., ‘Introduction: movies and the 1920s’, in Fischer, L. (ed.), American Cinema of the 1920s: Themes and Variations (New Brunswick, 2009), 1–22Google Scholar.

34 Gledhill, ‘Late silent Britain’, 164.

35 The pro-empire documentary 50,000 miles with the Prince of Wales, promoted in advertisements as the ‘official film of the Tour of Empire’, also celebrated Britain's role on the world stage. Evening News, 19 May 1921.

36 Evening News, 9 Oct. 1920.

37 Ibid., 27 Nov. 1920.

38 Ibid., 23 Oct. 1920

39 Ibid., 4 Dec. 1920.

40 Ibid., 26 Aug. 1922.

41 Robert Sklar argues that contemporary film-makers recognized the need to present social change, but in a manner that would not ‘disturb the inherited moral order’. Sklar, R., Movie-Made America: A Cultural History of American Movies (New York, 1994), 95Google Scholar. See also essays in Fischer (ed.), American Cinema of the 1920s, for a yearly analysis of film production.

42 Webb, J., ‘Leisure and pleasure’, in Webb, J., Quail, S., Haskell, P. and Riley, R. (eds.), The Spirit of Portsmouth: A History (Chichester, 1989), 141–53, at 142Google Scholar.

43 J. Webb, ‘Port and garrison town’, in Webb et al., Spirit of Portsmouth, 68–82, at 78–80.

44 Kuhn, A., Cinema, Censorship and Sexuality 1909–1925 (London, 1988)Google Scholar.

45 Rapp, D., ‘Sex in the cinema: war, moral panic, and the British film industry, 1906–1918’, Albion, 34 (2002), 422–51, at 451CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 See, for example, Evening News, 13 Nov. 1920.

47 Ibid., 19 Jan. 1922.

48 Ibid., 5 Oct. 1919, 10 Mar. 1921, 2 Feb. 1928.

49 For an account of the effects of World War I on society, see Pugh, M., We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars (London, 2009)Google Scholar.

50 According to Sklar, there was a significant increase in the production of crime and gangster films in America during the early 1930s. The rise in bookings for this type of drama at the Queens undoubtedly reflects this increase. Sklar, Movie-Made America, 176–81.

51 Taken from the press book for Losing Game (1930), held at the British Film Institute, London. This is American publicity material, but Britain's trade personnel were expected to use it.

52 Sutton, D., A Chorus of Raspberries: British Film Comedy 1929–1939 (Exeter, 2000), 104–9Google Scholar.

53 Evening News, 6 Dec. 1934.

54 Kent, S. Kingsley, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton, 1993), 140Google Scholar. See also Pugh, We Danced All Night, 171–92.

55 Pollard, Development of the British Economy, 58; Stevenson, J. and Cook, C., Britain in the Depression: Society and Politics, 1929–1939 (London, 1994), 279Google Scholar.

56 Between Jul. 1940 and May 1944, Portsmouth experienced 67 major air raids. The three main attacks took place in Aug. 1940 and Jan. and Mar. 1941. P. Haskell, ‘A changing city’, in Webb et al., Spirit of Portsmouth, 169–76, at 169.

57 In 1946, dramas outnumbered comedies at the Regent by 3 to 1; in 1947 and 1948, the ratio was 4 to 1. Harper, ‘Fragmentation and crisis’, 382–94.

58 Beaven, B. and Griffiths, J., ‘The Blitz, civilian morale, and the city: Mass-Observation and working-class morale in Britain 1940–41’, Urban History, 26, 1 (1999), 71–88CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

59 The increased number of ‘war-touched’ films undoubtedly reflects the increased number of films made from late 1942 that dealt with the conflict. Schatz, T., Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s (Berkeley, 1997), 2Google Scholar.

60 The 1947 ad valorem fiasco would have forced cinema managers to book older fare.

61 Harper, ‘Fragmentation and crisis’, 380. Exhibition patterns reveal that film noir – the ‘defining genre’ of the late 1940s, according to W.W. Dixon – was the preferred type of drama at the Regent in this period. Dixon, W.W., ‘Introduction: movies and the 1940s’, in Dixon, W.W. (ed.), American Cinema of the 1940s: Themes and Variations (Oxford, 2006), 1–21, at 10Google Scholar.

62 For an analysis of the changing aspirations of women in wartime and the expected post-war ‘return to normality’, see Butler, M., Film and Community in Britain and France: From La Règle du Jeu to Room at the Top (London, 2004), 125–49Google Scholar. See also Aldgate, A. and Richards, J., Britain Can Take It: British Cinema in the Second World War (London, 2007), 312Google Scholar; Harper, Women in British Cinema, 52.