British Popular Films 1929-1939

The Cinema of Reassurance

Stephen Shafer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN:
  9780415002820
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134988365
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Media Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Shafer's study challenges the conventional historical assumption that British feature films during the Thirties were mostly oriented to the middle-class. Instead, he makes the critical distinction between films intended for West End and international circulation and those intended primarily for domestic, working-class audiences. Far from being alientated by a 'middle-class institution', working men and women flocked to see pictures featuring such music-hall luminaries as Gracie Fields and George Formby.

1
INTRODUCTION

For the historian, the examination of films has provided a useful means of exploring the taste and values of different periods of the twentieth century. Numerous studies have assessed the relationships of the various national film industries to the societies in which they operated. Among the most interesting of these works are several that have dealt with American society during the ordeal of the Great Depression in the 1930s; for instance, Andrew Bergman’s We’re in the Money utilized effectively the content of the films themselves to show certain preoccupations in Hollywood’s response to the economic crisis in the United States. Other studies have examined the response of the film industries in other nations to the Great Depression, particularly in France, Germany, and Italy.¹

But, amazingly, while attention in film scholarship has been focused on this general issue, one of the most significant of the national film industries until recently has been uniformly neglected. In fact, the British film industry in the 1930s, at the time one of the largest in the world, has been mostly forgotten. The common perception of the contribution of Britain to world cinema is that it helped pioneer the documentary film, and less significantly, that it provided a genuine, if only temporary, challenge to Hollywood in the period after the Second World War. The usual conclusion about British movies of the 1930s, however, is that they are not really worth studying, and if discussed at all, they usually are dismissed aesthetically with a contemptuous reference to the “quota quickies” and with adjectives like “amateurish” and “stodgy.” Another conclusion frequently reached about British films during the thirties is that they were “stage-bound” and, accordingly, not popular with the working class. For instance, George Perry, in his survey of British film, referred to the “glut of stage adaptations” and the plotlines reflecting the “mores of the country drawing room” that predominated during this period; citing the “stilted delivery,” the “cinematic inexperience,” and the “cultured West End accent” of screen actors as an annoyance to popular audiences, Perry asserted that good British cinema had evolved into a middle-class institution at a time of “misery, poverty, and unemployment for the working classes,” and he determined that “most British films failed absolutely to sense the mood of the audience.”²

This conclusion, hastily arrived at, commonly shared and repeated, from survey to survey, is contrary to fact. An exploration of the films themselves shows a remarkable diversity and range; in many cases, neglected or forgotten features from this period hold up incredibly well and demonstrate a quality that utterly surprises one, after reading the usually disparaging comments in most general surveys. Undoubtedly this poor reputation was a product of a general impression of the low-budget movies made to satisfy provisions of the “Quota Act.” The quota was a product of the Cinematograph Films Act passed by Parliament in 1927 which established the percentage of British films that an exhibitor was required to rent in any one year. Because of block booking, in which exhibitors were required to show a package of films sight unseen, a condition demanded by American distributors, the British film industry had slumped alarmingly by the mid 1920s. Discussions had continued since the war years on ways to deal with the problem of facilitating British production. After extended debate, Parliament approved a requirement that beginning in 1928, a quota of British films, initially only 5 percent of the features shown, but rising by statute to 20 percent by 1935, had to be exhibited. All films would have to be registered with the Board of Trade, and a time limit for booking was imposed. Although the result was to generate new films and new companies, an unfortunate by-product was the emergence of cheaply made “quota quickies” which could then be booked inexpensively to meet the requirement. American distributors then acquired these often poorly crafted British features for release in the UK in order to meet the government’s quota requirement and legally circulate Hollywood films; other companies met the requirement by setting up their own production facilities and releasing their own low budget offerings. In this manner, the letter of the law could be met.

Although some of these low-budget films—like many “Poverty Row” productions in Hollywood that were sometimes shot in as little as four to seven days—were undeniably of poor quality because of the inexperience of many of the people involved, others proved surprisingly worthwhile and even good. The rapid expansion and the looser standards of the companies that supplied quota films gave many prominent movie figures their start in the industry. Unfortunately, the reputation of the poorer movies made under this system caused the general term “quota film” to become, unfairly, synonymous with the term “bad film”; as Charles Davy noted in 1937, this arrangement “helped Hollywood further by serving as a usefully bad advertisement for British production.”³

When the Cinematograph Act was renewed after the first ten years, following recommendations by a Parliamentary investigative committee under the direction of Lord Moyne, revisions were made to discourage the “quota quickies”; specifically, a minimum budget was required for a film to qualify, and the percentage of required films was dropped temporarily to twelve and a half percent for renters and fifteen percent for exhibitors, later to rise to thirty and twenty-five percent respectively. As a result, in the late thirties, MGM and other Hollywood units began to make higher quality films in England. But the basic conclusion that “quota films” were all necessarily bad or that all British films were somehow tainted by the quota structure is fundamentally wrong.⁴

Similarly, the conclusion that all British films were “stage-bound” drawingroom dramas is also fallacious; while it was true that in the first years of the sound era producers searching around desperately for properties naturally relied on stage vehicles, the great majority of films were created from original stories or were based on novels and stories already published. As the decade went on the reliance on plays was substantially reduced so that by the last three years of the decade, as Table 1.1 demonstrates, fewer than one in five films were taken from stage plays.

Table 1.1 Films based on plays

Additionally, to assume that all plays were necessarily “middle-class” in nature is to ignore the tradition of provincial and working-class dramas and music-hall sketches (these were not automatically distinguished from legitimate West-End stage plays in credits).

Correspondingly, the number of films based on novels and stories increased as the decade went on, as Table 1.2 reveals.

Presumably, the films based on novels or radio plays (as listed in Table 1.3) removed any temptation to depend on a “proscenium arch” filming approach to the dramatic property.

In fact, until very recently, the primary inspiration for most British films and the source of most film performers in the thirties have seldom been discussed in the literature; that source was the music hall, which was only fitting, since the “halls” had been the primary purveyor of entertainment for the English working classes prior to the age of motion pictures. Ironically, these exiles from the music hall, who were not completely committed to the artificial conventions of stage tradition, gave the most realistic portrayals on the screen. Film-maker Alberto Cavalcanti called attention to the versatility of music hall performers, who were attracted to a medium in which they could personify a wide variety of types because they were “unfettered by the rigid dignity of the drama” and, accordingly could “turn themselves to any subject”; he refers to the “almost documentary aspect” of the films in which music hall performers appeared, and observed that the stories, settings, and backgrounds “were those of everyday life” which made them appealing “to all classes of the public” and gave them more “social importance” because they were “closer to contemporary problems.”⁵

Table 1.2 Films based on novels or stories

Table 1.3 Films based on radio productions

In another context, John Fisher reminisced about the extraordinary personal popularity of the great music hall comedians who were revered “not merely for the laughter they raised” but also “because of the basic social identity they shared with the bulk of their audiences”; Fisher added that “with their origins [and] their attitudes often firmly rooted in the working class” the screen images of these variety stars were “fixed in this world” so that they “could at the same time be identified as ordinary people and as stars in spite of themselves.”⁶ With the onset of sound, these performers could project not only the visual characteristics but also the aural qualities of everyday life, endearing themselves to the movie-going public. Individuals like Ernie Lotinga, and his character Jimmy Josser, Will Hay, and his befuddled Narkover educational authority figure, Max Miller and his cheeky “chappie,” the Lupino family (Wallace, Barry, and Stanley), George Robey, Violet Loraine, and dozens of other headliners came to the screen in the thirties and promptly created highly memorable characters.

One of the most prominent of these music hall performers was Arthur Lucan, whose “Old Mother Riley” washer-woman character not only made a successful shift to the screen, but also became the central figure in one of the longest lasting movie series in British film history. Though admittedly a farce caricature, “Old Mother Riley” is a good case study of this type of portrayal and helps to show the appeal of such music hall performers’ work. Lucan’s make-up and costume evoked a realistic impression of the harshness of life for the working classes; regardless of whether the situations being portrayed were farcical in nature, his rubbery, bony features when garbed in a long dress, shabby shawl, and tattered bonnet provided a remarkably authentic vision of real life existence to which working-class audiences responded. Fisher describes Lucan’s “legendary” characterization in spite of its “absurdity” as being “subtle” and “humane” with a “definite credibility, a strict, even if zany fidelity to working class life”; he adds that her gossipy character and her “reliance upon the lesser creature comforts, namely her chair, her fire, and her gin” along with her “determination and strength in shortened circumstances” all worked together to evoke, in spite of her vulgarity, the “touching portrayal of someone who was only too true a figure…of the British social structure.”⁷ Fisher noted that the character, also, in a humorous way, touched upon the problems of poverty in old age by concentrating on “unwantedness…loneliness, and ill-health.”⁸ What is significant about this popular character was “the neglect of Old Mother Riley by the West End” which, Fisher pointed out, was “characteristic of the attitude which existed towards the…unsophisticated provinces”; Lucan’s films found their “readiest audience” in the “North country market” in Lancashire and Yorkshire, though the character itself “represent[ed] a unique hotch-potch of provincial traits” including the “quaint illogicality and endearing blarney” that was the “unmistakably Irish” persona “of the Liverpool dockside and neighboring industrial towns.”⁹ Because the movies of these transplanted music hall stars like Arthur Lucan rarely played the influential West End, critics rarely wrote about them, except in terms of ridicule. Consequently, they have been largely ignored by social historians and forgotten by students of film. And yet, throughout the decade of the 1930s, British moviegoers flocked to see pictures by music hall luminaries from the industrial North of England such as the legendary Gracie Fields and the popular singer-comedian George Formby, who was often praised as the “male Gracie Fields.”¹⁰

These music hall performers often accompanied their screen portrayals with popular songs. Formby, the “gormless” comic son of the famous music hall veteran George Formby, senior, for instance, was best known for the humorous, slightly naughty, but invariably cheery tunes that he sang in his films in the late thirties. The songs which he performed while accompanying himself on a ukulele became extremely popular records, and as Formby became Britain’s box office leader in the latter part of the decade, his discs sold millions. The words of the songs invariably conveyed a sense of optimism and wishfulness. For example, the tune “Feather Your Nest,” from the film of the same name, (lyrics by Formby and veteran song writers Harry Gifford and Fred E.Cliffe), imagines what a couple would do when they finally get rich, and their speculations center on the fun they might have in a “lovely bathroom all new.” The rather mundane idea that riches might bring a real bathroom reminds us of the assorted luxuries, such as bathrooms, that were not taken for granted in the thirties. Similarly, in “Hitting the High Spots Now,” written by the same trio, from Trouble Brewing, with lyrics that are vaguely reminiscent of the American Depression tune “We’re in the Money,” Formby reminds his audience that optimism is often the key to success. The song is suffused with notions such as “grey skies are turning blue” and that “troubles over—I’m in clover. Everything’s OK.” The character adds that all his “frowns have turned to smiles” and that there are “no wrinkles” on his brow.

I feel like a millionaire, I’m all deluxe, and how!
I’m in the money, tasting the money.
Hitting the high spots now.

The main philosophy of the song is a conclusion that all of this good fortune emerges from a fairly simple attitude:

Life is what you make it, so make it worthwhile.
Whatever comes, just take it.
You’ve got to swing along and get in rhythm.

In so doing, the singer is “on top of the world” and is “making good, and how!” Indeed, he is “living like a lord,” although in a musical aside, he adds “the Lord knows who, or how.” The emphasis, then, is on forbearance, with the clear conclusion that in keeping an optimistic viewpoint, one can be “Hitting the high spots now!”

Even in unashamedly “escapist” features, certain messages implicit in the film’s content could be suggested to the audiences troubled by the economic woes they encountered each day. Because these films were “escapist” in nature, they have not been regarded seriously. Yet the very fact that these features were “escapist,” that is, movies designed to take a viewer out of reality, can often make them more valuable to the social historian than so-called “serious films,” for in this “escapism” can be found the dreams and aspirations of people whose lives are troubled and pain-filled.

The assumption that British films did not address the needs of the working classes, and that they were not appealing to them, therefore must be reevaluated. In many cases, far from ignoring the laboring poor, the movies were directed toward them, focusing in a light-hearted way on their problems, preoccupations, and day-to-day concerns. But such involvement with the working classes ordinarily did not occur in films employing theatrical performers. The proximity of the West End to the British studios meant that many performers in the theaters in the evening could be in films for extra money during the day. The attitude of these stage actors toward the films they were making was at best condescending, and often contemptuous. In his memoirs, George Arliss, for one, openly admitted this elitist attitude: he said that the stage actors were decidedly “snobbish” and felt that they were “superior” to screen actors who had been tempted by the availability of “vulgar money” to appear in the movies. He observed that the London actors were “particularly uppish” because they “appeared before the Best People” and were upholding “the honor of our profession”; indeed, they feared that if they “stepped down into movies,” they would “lose prestige” and never again be regarded as “superior actors.” Not until economic necessity and theatrical unemployment required some income would a stage actor be likely to lower himself to appear in films. This attitude provided opportunities for many non-featured performers. As Arliss put it, “small part” actors “whose ‘profession’ was in the habit of neglecting them for periods of six to nine months at a stretch” often...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 MYTHS AND UNSUPPORTED ASSUMPTIONS
• 3 DEPICTING THE WORKING CLASSES IN BRITISH FILM IN THE THIRTIES
• 4 MISTAKEN IDENTITIES
• 5 MISTAKEN IDENTITIES
• 6 INTER-CLASS ROMANCE
• 7 THEMES IN BRITISH FILMS
• 8 THE EMPHASIS ON COOPERATION AND SELF-SACRIFICE
• 9 PATRIOTISM AND CENSORSHIP
• 10 CONCLUSIONS
• NOTES
• REFERENCES