Richard Farmer - Cinemas and cinemagoing in wartime Britain, 1939–45: The utility dream palace

Cinemas and cinemagoing in wartime Britain, 193945

STUDIES IN

POPULAR
CULTURE

General editor: Professor Jeffrey Richards

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Cinemas and cinemagoing in wartime Britain, 193945

The utility dream palace

RICHARD FARMER

Manchester University Press

Copyright Richard Farmer 2016

The right of Richard Farmer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 9188 9

First published 2016

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset in Adobe Garamond by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

STUDIES IN

POPULAR
CULTURE

There has in recent years been an explosion of interest in culture and cultural studies. The impetus has come from two directions and out of two different traditions. On the one hand, cultural history has grown out of social history to become a distinct and identifiable school of historical investigation. On the other hand, cultural studies has grown out of English literature and has concerned itself to a large extent with contemporary issues. Nevertheless, there is a shared project, its aim, to elucidate the meanings and values implicit and explicit in the art, literature, learning, institutions and everyday behaviour within a given society. Both the cultural historian and the cultural studies scholar seek to explore the ways in which a culture is imagined, represented and received, how it interacts with social processes, how it contributes to individual and collective identities and world views, to stability and change, to social, political and economic activities and programmes.This series aims to provide an arena for the cross-fertilisation of the discipline, so that the work of the cultural historian can take advantage of the most useful and illuminating of the theoretical developments and the cultural studies scholars can extend the purely historical underpinnings of their investigations.The ultimate objective of the series is to provide a range of books which will explain in a readable and accessible way where we are now socially and culturally and how we got to where we are.This should enable people to be better informed, promote an interdisciplinary approach to cultural issues and encourage deeper thought about the issues, attitudes and institutions of popular culture.

Jeffrey Richards

Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyright material, and the publisher will be pleased to be informed of any errors and omissions for correction in future editions.

Unlike other works on British cinema in the Second World War, Richard Farmers book focuses not primarily on films but on the whole cinemagoing experience. Cinema going had become established as the essential social habit of the age by 1939 and it continued throughout the war to provide a source of entertainment, information, escape and emotional comfort, but under drastically altered conditions. Drawing on a wide variety of sources, including newspapers, the trade press, fan magazines, police reports, Mass-Observation, oral history interviews, industry and government records, Farmer analyses and recreates with vivid immediacy the changes effected in the cinemagoing experience by the onset of war. He charts the impact of the blackout, air raids, child evacuation, transport restrictions and the introduction of Double Summer Time on shows and audiences. He examines the influence of the government on the exhibition industry, in particular the Ministry of Information, with its programme of official film propaganda, the Ministry of Food with its Food Flashes and sweet rationing and the Treasury deriving revenue from Entertainments Tax. He analyses the changes in male and female staff, with conscription thinning their ranks, clothes rationing affecting their uniforms and women training as projectionists to replace their male counterparts. He looks at the strategies for promoting films when paper shortages meant fan magazines shrank and merged, the size and number of posters were restricted and advertising space in newspapers was reduced. There was still scope for competitions, stunts and personal appearances as managers ingenuity and inventiveness were tested to the limit. Among the many incidental details which encapsulate the era are the facts that cinemas could refuse entry to anyone not carrying a gas mask, and there was a ban on the manufacture and sale of ice cream between 1942 and 1945. This thoroughly researched, fascinating and evocative account represents a significant advance in our understanding of the phenomenon of cinemagoing. By 1946 the cinemas, which had once prided themselves in being luxurious dream palaces, had become shabby and run down. Many of the shortages and restrictions besetting them would persist until the end of the decade. But 1946 was also the year of peak cinema attendance in Britain, eloquent testimony to the captivating power of film.