Cinemas and cinemagoing in wartime Britain, 1939–45

The utility dream palace

Richard Farmer

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781784997809
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: History

During the Second World War, the popularity and importance of the cinema in Britain was at its peak. In this groundbreaking book, Richard Farmer provides a social and cultural history of cinemas and cinemagoing in Britain between 1939 and 1945, and explores the impact that the war had on the places in which British people watched films. Although promising the possibility of escape from the hardships and terrors of wartime life, the cinema was so intimately woven into the fabric of British society that it could not itself escape the war. Drawing on a wealth of contemporary sources, and on the memories of wartime cinemagoers, Cinemagoing in wartime Britain, 1939-45 is the first book to offer an in-depth exploration of the impact that phenomena such as the black out, the blitz, food rationing, evacuation and conscription had on both the exhibition industry and the experiences of the picturegoers themselves.

1

Dark houses: cinemagoing in the early months of the war

For a brief moment at the start of the Second World War, the Welsh town of Aberystwyth became the centre of the British film exhibition industry. On 5 September 1939, exhibitors in Aberystwyth, acting on the advice of the Chief Constable of Cardiganshire, reopened venues that, like all other cinemas in Britain, had been ordered to close as a consequence of the outbreak of the war two days earlier. Authorities feared that German air raids would, in the process of laying waste to British cities, kill anyone unfortunate enough to be in a cinema when a bomb hit. Aberystwyth’s location was thought to offer relative immunity from unexpected raids, if only because there were thought to be more appealing targets for the Luftwaffe on the journey from Germany to the west coast of Wales. Queues soon formed after the town’s five cinemas had been told that they would share ‘the honour of putting on the first wartime entertainment’.¹

Cinemas in other parts of the country remained closed, and jealous eyes were cast towards Cardigan Bay. In London, the Embassy cinema in Notting Hill Gate erected a sign stating that it would remain ‘closed until further notice’ and which informed would-be cinemagoers that the nearest open cinema was to be found 239 miles away. A bold directional arrow let passers-by know in which direction they should travel if they wanted their regular fix of moving pictures (see Figure 2). One man who made the arduous return trip from the capital was Guy Morgan, film reporter for the Daily Express and, some years later, author of Red Roses Every Night, a history of the Granada cinema circuit in wartime. Morgan believed that the many hours he spent travelling to Aberystwyth were ‘worth it’ to be able to watch Carole Lombard and James Stewart play the leads in Made For Each Other (1939), a film whose pat conclusion he had initially regarded as a ‘slight disappointment’ but which in wartime seemed to have pleased him greatly.²

2 Gaumont British News 594A, 14 September 1939.

Morgan’s revision of his opinion of Made For Each Other neatly illustrates the desperation for entertainment felt in Britain during the opening days and weeks of the war, particularly as in many industrial centres, the south and east coasts and London, cinemas and theatres remained closed. Their closure was felt all the more acutely because of the dearth of alternative entertainment, and because the terrifying excitement of war came to naught when German bombers did not immediately darken British skies. In Preston, one diarist summed up the first days of the war: ‘No cinemas. No decent wireless programmes. No lights. No raids. BOREDOM!’³ London, meanwhile, was said to be ‘as dead as Sodom and Gomorrah before the disaster and without any chance of their vices.’⁴

The radio had been all but commandeered by the government and as a consequence became, in the words of Sidney Bernstein, owner of Granada cinemas, ‘a source of depression.’⁵ Each day, the BBC carried ten news bulletins – twice the pre-war number – whilst ministers and – joy! – civil servants were called to the microphone to speak about new regulations and other worthy, war-related topics.⁶ As late as 26 September, Clement Attlee found fault with this entertainment-free diet of official programming: ‘at times I feel depressed when I listen in. You should not be depressed by listening in.’⁷ Yet Attlee was, by his own admission, ‘not a habitual listener’ and had he tuned in more regularly he would no doubt have been treated to numerous ‘gramophone recordings and jolly bouts of community singing stiff with nautical heave-hos and folksy nonny-noes’,⁸ and ‘large doses’ of Sandy Macpherson, theatre organist extraordinaire.⁹ Macpherson can lay claim to being the first radio celebrity of the war, beating Lord Haw-Haw to the title by some distance. For the first month of the conflict he was the only organist cleared for broadcast by the MoI, and as such was called upon at all-too-regular intervals – forty-five programmes in the first fortnight of the war alone – to keep people’s spirits up. Yet his ubiquity soon grated; one woman let the BBC know that she ‘could be reconciled to an air raid, if in the course of it a bomb would fall on Sandy Macpherson and his everlasting organ, preferably whilst he was playing his signature tune’.¹⁰ The hostility generated by the BBC’s over-reliance on the organ lingered to the extent that months later an MP who described the instrument as ‘Hitler’s secret weapon’ received his biggest ever postbag, almost all of it complimentary.¹¹

With nerves fraying in anticipation of the expected devastating air raids, it became clear that Macpherson’s fingers would not, on their own, be able to maintain morale. The public wanted to be diverted. It was felt that the return of entertaining broadcasts such as Band Waggon, starring Arthur Askey and Richard Murdoch, would be doing ‘National Service’ by offering listeners ‘relief from the instructions, regulations, talks and lectures’ (not to mention organ music) that dominated the airwaves.¹² Demands for changes to the wireless schedule were accompanied by calls for the reopening of the cinemas and theatres. Basil Dean insisted that ‘the importance of entertainment … in wartime can scarcely be over-estimated’ and based his call for reopening on the observation that ‘the strain upon the occupants of what might be termed the civil trenches will be almost as great as that imposed upon those who man the firing posts’.¹³ In the House of Commons, John McGovern suggested that ‘If there is one thing more than any other destined to bring a revolution in this country, it is the continual closing of the cinemas’,¹⁴ whilst Kinematograph Weekly claimed piously that the drunkenness said to be plaguing the West End of London would be solved at a stroke by the reopening of the nation’s picture houses.¹⁵ The best known – and most quoted – of the calls for reopening came from George Bernard Shaw, who wrote to The Times to declare the closures to be ‘a masterstroke of unimaginative stupidity’ and ask, ‘What agent of Chancellor Hitler is it who has suggested that we should all cower in darkness and terror “for the duration”?’¹⁶

Such calls did not fall on deaf ears, and it was not long before cinemas returned to the business of, as one writer put it, ‘keeping our thoughts occupied so that they shall not dwell too long on the all too prominent topic of the moment’.¹⁷ Indeed, and as the exhibition trade well knew, the government had never intended to close all entertainments indefinitely. Rather, it had planned for a short break, which the popular press reported as likely to last at least a fortnight, to assess the nature and extent of the damage it was assumed would be caused by enemy action.¹⁸ When such action was not forthcoming, the Home Office felt that tentative permission for reopening might be given. This decision arose out of the recognition that, in the words of Archibald Southby MP, ‘all war is a risk’ and that consequently it was better ‘that the normal life of the people should continue so far as possible than that we should adopt [a] sort of super funk-hole policy’.¹⁹

The process by which places of entertainment were permitted to open was far from straightforward, however, and mirrored general uncertainty about the way in which the war would unfold given the failure of the German air force to immediately attempt to raze all British cities to the ground. Yet the threat from the air remained foremost in the minds of those called upon to decide whether it was safe to reopen the cinemas. On 5 September, Sir Alexander Maxwell of the Home Office chaired a meeting at which Wing Commander Whitworth-Jones, representing the Air Staff, advised caution: ‘Strategically and tactically no one knew when an attack would come, what would be the weight of the attack, and how strong the defences would prove. Until these factors were known by experience the Air Staff would be against a change of policy.’ Maxwell concurred, but conceded that operational cinemas were ‘desirable for public morale’. As such, he recommended that a statement be issued explaining that the government was ‘not insensitive … to the value of entertainment for persons under the strain of present conditions’, and assuring the public that restrictions would be lifted as soon as was practicable.²⁰

Over the following days, representatives of the Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Association made a number of visits to Whitehall, and advanced arguments in favour of reopening. Foremost amongst these was the service that the cinemas might provide to the public not only through the exhibition of feature films and entertainments, but also by screening newsreels and information films: ‘valuable propaganda was being lost through the closure’.²¹ The trade also requested that economic factors be borne in mind. Whilst they remained closed, cinemas were losing substantial amounts of money. Although the Home Office disputed the fabulous sums bandied about by the CEA, it found it harder to dismiss the Association’s assertion that thousands of employees might need to be laid off if the prospect of reopening was not forthcoming.²²

British cinemas were permitted to ‘follow in the proud footsteps of Aberystwyth’²³ only after a period marked by what Kinematograph Weekly described as ‘delay and confusion’, with the process complicated by the workings of the Home Office’s own initial scheme for closure.²⁴ The Home Office plan had established a situation whereby cinemas would be allowed to reopen only at the discretion of the local Chief Constable. Yet in practice it was unclear whether each constabulary’s discretionary powers became effective only upon receipt of Home Office permission, or if they could be deployed entirely on a Chief Constable’s own initiative. Indeed, the cinemas of Aberystwyth were reopened only because the Chief Constable of Cardiganshire interpreted the Home Office directive differently from his colleagues elsewhere in Britain, and believed himself empowered to reopen the places of entertainments within his jurisdiction without reference to Whitehall. The Home O...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of tables
• General editor’s foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Note on sources
• Introduction
• 1 Dark houses: cinemagoing in the early months of the war
• 2 The Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Association and the government
• 3 Forlorn and bedraggled spectacles: cinemagoing in the blitz
• 4 On the appearance and disappearance of staff
• 5 Showmanship in wartime
• 6 Cinemagoing in wartime
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index