Popular culture and working–class taste in Britain, 1930–39

A round of cheap diversions?

Robert James

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780719095528
  9780719080258
• eBook ISBN:
  9781847797551
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book examines the relationship between class and culture in 1930s Britain. Focusing on the reading and cinema-going tastes of the working classes, Robert James' landmark study combines rigorous historical analysis with a close textual reading of visual and written sources to appraise the role of popular leisure in this fascinating decade.

Drawing on a wealth of original research, this lively and accessible book adds immeasurably to our knowledge of working-class leisure pursuits in this contentious period. It is a key intervention in the field, providing both an imaginative approach to the subject and an abundance of new material to analyse, thus making it an undergraduate and postgraduate 'must-have'. It will be a particularly welcome addition for anyone interested in the fields of cultural and social history, as well as film, cultural and literary studies.

1
‘The people’s amusement’: the growth in cinema-going and reading habits

Cinema-going was by far the most popular leisure activity in the 1930s. The most frequently used phrase regarding its popularity is taken from A.J.P. Taylor, who described cinema-going as ‘the essential social habit of the age’.¹ Contemporary surveys attest to the cinema’s immense popularity. In 1935, the New Survey of London Life and Labour declared that the cinema was ‘easily the most important agency of popular entertainment,’ describing it as ‘the people’s amusement’.² Simon Rowson’s figures from the previous year lend weight to this claim. Rowson estimated that in 1934 the country’s consumers made 963 million visits to the cinema and calculated that there was an average weekly attendance of eighteen and a half million cinema-goers to the halls across the country.³ Sidney Bernstein’s questionnaires, conducted in 1932, 1934 and 1937, also revealed that nearly fifty per cent of film-goers visited the cinema twice weekly; some made as many as seven visits a week.⁴ Going to the cinema had thus become a mass leisure activity which attracted all social classes.

Of course, historians have long utilised these statistics to illustrate the all-pervading nature of the cinema-going habit during these years. We should not, though, use such quantitative material to make broad generalisations regarding society’s consumption patterns in 1930s Britain. Recent historical research has raised questions over the ability of some members of society to participate in this form of mass commercial leisure. Andrew Davies has argued that access to the cinema could be ‘structured by class, income, gender and age’.⁵ Davies is right to raise these issues; a range of factors determined cinema-going patterns in the period. Indeed, one of J.P. Mayer’s respondents recalled that her father was often unemployed and so could not afford to go to the cinema regularly.⁶ To better understand the meaning of going to the cinema for consumers in the 1930s, then, we need to cast the net more widely. This chapter, therefore, provides a broad survey of the growth of the cinema-going habit in the period, outlines the various reasons behind it, and assesses how different consumer groups could be attracted to this relatively new leisure form. Of course, as this book is a study of working-class taste, the appeal of the cinema to this social group will be the principal focus. We have established that cinema-going was the most popular leisure pursuit in the period; we now need ascertain why. Why did it take precedence over other leisure pursuits? What were the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors? What was it about the cinema-going experience that appealed to so many?

One transformation to the cinema-going experience which helped to attract consumers during this period was the conversion and enlargement of many small cinemas into new ‘picture palaces’. In fact, while the number of cinemas had risen only slightly since the boom building period of the early 1920s, there were a greater number of these larger cinemas owned by the three large chains – Associated British Cinemas, Gaumont-British, and The Odeon; seating capacity thus rose significantly.⁷ These lavish, plush and palatial buildings offered the film fan an entirely new type of cinema-going experience. Cinema’s popularity cannot be attributed to this transformation alone, however. For while the number of ‘picture palaces’ certainly increased, many smaller cinemas remained. Rowson calculated that more than seventy per cent of the existing cinemas had fewer than one thousand seats, and more than fifty-two per cent of the total seating capacity could be found in these types of hall.⁸ Therefore, while the growth of the ‘picture palace’ offered consumers more choice, other factors accounted for the cinema’s growing popularity, especially among working-class consumers, who were less likely to visit this type of hall on a regular basis.

One important factor was the cost; cinema-going was a relatively inexpensive leisure activity. According to Rowson’s survey, forty-three per cent of the entire cinema admissions in 1934 were for seats costing no more than 6d, and thirty-seven per cent for seats costing no more than 10d.⁹ In the same year, one Film Weekly letter-writer claimed that cinema-going was ‘an entertainment which is within reach of all. Even the man with only a few coppers in his pocket can have two or three hours’ enjoyment and forget his worries for a time’.¹⁰ Therefore, while the cinema attracted consumers with a range of incomes, the majority of cinema-goers were purchasing seats in either the smaller, and thus cheaper halls, or the lower-priced areas of the larger cinemas. While the cinema attracted all classes of citizen, then, it was the lower-middle and working classes who attended most often, and of these it was the latter who dominated in the smaller halls.

In fact, the social and demographic changes occasioned by the First World War had helped to create a new class of consumer, and it was from within the working classes where these ‘new consumers’ were principally drawn. Moreover, it was women, especially working-class women, who were regarded to be the main beneficiaries of these changes to society’s consumption patterns.¹¹ Consequently, women were heavily targeted by those working in the film trade. For example, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1935) was marketed as a love story to attract female cinema-goers. The Gaumont-British film, adapted from John Buchan’s novel, was a spy mystery which had an obvious appeal to the male cinema-goer, but it was given a feminine angle by the use of publicity material featuring the film’s stars in affectionate embraces accompanied by slogans highlighting the couple’s tempestuous relationship.¹² Unsurprisingly, the New Survey of London claimed that the films being produced had ‘a real appeal to women’.¹³ It is no coincidence that the survey also reported that girls and women accounted for seventy per cent of weekly cinema admissions.¹⁴ Other contemporaries confirmed this gender disparity in cinema attendance. Frank Reynolds, art editor of Punch magazine, noted in his book on local cinema-going habits that women predominated in the five cinemas in the market town close to his village home.¹⁵ Likewise, in an interview with a Mass-Observer, Sydney Cole, the manager of the Classic Cinema in Tooting, remarked, ‘our business is kept by women’.¹⁶

This does not mean that men were not also attracted to the cinema. For many unmarried working-class men (and, of course, women) the cinema was an ideal place to take or encounter members of the opposite sex.¹⁷ Many married men also accompanied their wives to the cinema. In a recollection of his life growing up in Salford, Robert Roberts commented on the emergence of this trend: ‘Many women who had lived a kind of purdah since marriage (few respectable wives visited public houses) were to be noted now, escorted by their husbands to the “pictures”’.¹⁸ On the whole, though, women were the cinema’s most frequent patrons. Robert Roberts’s comments on pub-going partly reveal why this was the case. ‘Respectability’ was a key determinant in attracting women to the cinema. Many working-class leisure pursuits, such as pub-going, were still something of a taboo for working-class women. The cinema was one of the first leisure activities deemed respectable enough for women to attend. It was partly because of its acceptance as a respectable pastime, therefore, that women, whether with their husbands, friends or alone, became the most frequent visitors to the cinema. The development of the matinée performance offers another reason for the cinema’s growing popularity among women. Offering cheaper prices and greater flexibility, the matinée performance opened up a new leisure opportunity for women and became an additional factor in aiding the growth of the cinema-going habit among female consumers. Unsurprisingly, the New Survey of London reported that it was ‘no uncommon sight to see women slipping into the cinema for an hour, after they have finished their shopping and before the children come home from school’.¹⁹

A number of other factors encouraged the growth of the cinema-going habit among working-class men and women. Pleasure, comfort and warmth are themes that regularly feature in contemporary records as enticements for both sexes. Three female respondents to Mass-Observation’s 1938 questionnaire on the cinema commented on their cinema-going experiences thus:

Warm, cosy and happy.²⁰

Pictures are a cheap as well as most entertaining occupation … I can go and enjoy myself … without feeling I am spending more than I can afford.²¹

The comfort and warmth of the Odeon is an aid to enjoying the film.²²

In a similar vein, Frank Reynolds remarked that the cinemas in his locale ‘flourish, being well patronised by an unsophisticated throng, who, after a tiring day, seek the sanctuary of the Picture Palace, which provides at least a place in which to sit down,’ and ‘has the great advantage of being warm in winter and cool in summer’.²³ George Orwell observed that unemployed men would visit the cinema for warmth and comfort. ‘In Wigan a favourite refuge was the pictures, which are fantastically cheap there,’ Orwell noted, adding: ‘Even people on the verge of starvation will readily pay twopence to get out of the ghastly cold of a winter afternoon’.²⁴ William Woodruff has written about the cinema in an analogous manner and, recalling his poverty-stricken childhood in Depression-era Blackburn, reminisces thus: ‘Local cinemas advertised warmth not film. For threepence you could keep warm, be entertained, and forget the bleak world outside’.²⁵ In fact, Woodruff describes how he gained entrance to the cinema by handing the attendant ‘two empty, clean two-pound jam jars’; this was hardly a prohibitive entrance fee, even for a child from an impoverished working-class family.²⁶ These remarks, then, establish cinema-going as a valued source of entertainment for the working classes, one which combined warmth, comfort, pleasure and low cost.

As the most popular leisure activity among the working classes, cinema-going inevitably played a major cultural role in their lives. Robert Roberts fondly remembers the cinema’s cultural attractions for that ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• General editor’s introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 ‘The people’s amusement’: the growth in cinema-going and reading habits
• 2 ‘Fouling civilisation’?: official attitudes towards popular film and literature
• 3 Trade attitudes towards audience taste
• 4 ‘What made you put that rubbish on?’: national trends in film popularity
• 5 ‘The appearance is an added incentive’: national trends in literature popularity
• 6 ‘A very profitable enterprise’: South Wales Miners’ Institutes
• 7 ‘Gunmen, rustlers and a damsel in distress’: working-class tastes in Derby
• 8 ‘The home of the brave’?: working-class tastes in Portsmouth
• 9 Popular film and literature: textual analyses
• Conclusion: ‘giving the public what it wants’
• Appendices
• Select bibliography
• Index