Tag: Performers

British Cinemas and Their Audiences

Source: J.P. Mayer, British Cinemas and their Audiences: Sociological Studies (London: Dennis Dobson, 1948), pp. 50-52

Text: NO. 17
AGE: 18 YRS. 8 MONTHS SEX: F.
FATHER: MECHANICAL ENGINEER, MOTHER: HOUSEWIFE
OCCUPATION: CIVIL SERVICE CLERK P.O. TELEPHONES
NATIONALITY: BRITISH

It was at the tender age of seven, when I first embarked upon the exciting and mysterious adventure of a visit to the cinema, under the supervision of Mother and Father; and ever since then, almost as far back as I can remember, I have had a deep interest in the film world and all concerned with it, an interest which increased in intensity as I grew older. The first film I saw was a silent one, and I remember leaving the cinema feeling rather excited and a wee bit sorry for some poor man, who had fallen head first into a barrel of flower [sic].

Time passed and I became more friendly with the other children in my street, and the excursions to the cinema became frequent and exciting exciting because I began to understand the actors and actresses, and the stories woven around them, which gave us youngsters our regular Saturday afternoon entertainment. To miss even one of these shows with my little playmates was a heart-rending disappointment, because I knew I should miss the next episode in the film serial. The latter was always my firm favourite, whatever the story. I hero-worshipped Larry Crabbe in Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars. At this time I would be about nine years old, and even then I was quite jealous if anyone else had a photograph of Mr. Crabbe.

Films affected our play very much. Our second favourite was a good Western film, with plenty of shooting, fighting and fast riding. After becoming thoroughly worked up about Buck Jones or Ken Maynard, we would enact these films, in versions all our own, after school each day the following week.

Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse followed closely on my list in third place. I adored Walt Disney cartoons, and, if I may be so bold as to admit it – I still do!

I disliked animal pictures intensely, because they all made me weep. They might not have been sad, but still I choked up when one was showing. I think it may be as well to add here that in all these months of picturegoing I was never frightened by any film, indeed every film was such a new thrill and experience that I don’t think I ever thought of fear.

During this time, too, new words crept into my vocabulary, and I remember clearly that my parents were quite shocked when I first used the word ‘scram’ before them! I liked to copy expressions used by my favourite actors, and use them often. One of the latter was Shirley Temple, and I liked to think that I could give a very good impression of her singing ‘Animal Crackers’. She was a firm favourite of mine and my friends.

At the age of thirteen, when I was enjoying second year at high school, and when the Saturday trips to the local cinema had ceased, I was experiencing varied emotions as a result of picture-going. It was then that I first began to pick out the films I wanted to see, and to go not just out of habit or for the sake of going, but because I knew just what it was I had a desire to see. Passionate schoolgirl ‘crushes’ followed each other as new and handsome men made their appearances on the screen. Many were the nights I cried myself to sleep because John Howard, Preston Foster or Robert Taylor was so far away. One glimpse of any of them would have sufficed and I felt I would have been the happiest girl in the world. Possessing a vivid imagination, I had wonderful dreams of being discovered by a Hollywood talent-scout, of visiting Hollywood and perhaps even playing opposite one of my favourite movie stars.

But inevitably I had to put these preoccupations in the background because lessons and homework needed concentration; at the age of sixteen I matriculated, and a little later left school to earn my own living.

An important load off my mind, I was again free to think more and spend more time upon what had once been a cherished hobby. I found I had lost none of the former interest; indeed, I indulged in a little wishful dreaming, and the one temptation was to run away from home and become an actress like Jane Withers. This I knew could never materialise, circumstances would not permit, so I had to be content with regular film-going and collecting pictures and magazines.

Then I once remember having a desperate desire to become a nurse, when I saw Rosamund John act so wonderfully well in The Lamp Still Burns; but it was a mere whim because I liked the film so much, and passed away in a matter of days.

So to the present day. The cinema is my main source of entertainment, and I am not really difficult to please as far as films are concerned. I like most kinds of productions but my favourites are flying epics, such as A Guy Named Joe and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, and straight dramatic stories, of the kind that Old Acquaintance represents. I have a deep admiration for Van Johnson, Irene Dunne, Bette Davis and Spencer Tracy; I envy them because their kind of life is so far beyond my reach, because the work they do is so hard and so very interesting, a job after my own heart.

Films have a great influence upon me. I find myself trying to be original in my method of attire, and copy Hollywood beauty ‘tips’ when using make-up: I find it hard to control the emotions aroused by a touching or very dramatic scene, and I cry very easily. The desire to become an actress is still prevalent and my interest in drama has increased. Thus I have become rather dissatisfied with my present existence and with the neighbourhood in which I live, but I love home life and, until the world is at peace again and our loved ones are safely restored to us, I am content to remain as I am, and just to plan and dream about a long awaited trip to that intriguing city of Hollywood, to see for myself everything and everyone that contributes to the making of the entertainment I love so much.

Comments: J.P. (Jacob Peter) Mayer was a German sociologist at the London School of Economics. His British Cinemas and their Audiences collates motion picture autobiographies submitted through competitions in Picturegoer magazine. This contribution comes from the section ‘Films and the Pattern of Life’. The films mentioned are Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (USA 1938, serial), The Lamp Still Burns (UK 1943), A Guy Named Joe (USA 1943), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (USA 1944) and Old Acquaintance (USA 1943).

Babylon at Brixton

Source: James Agate, extract from ‘Babylon at Brixton’, in Around Cinemas (London: Home & Van Thal, 1946), pp. 52-53 [originally published in The Tatler, 25 September 1929]

Text: … For the Brixtonian, Brixton is clearly the hub of the universe. There is a large railway bridge which bears to the Brixton landscape the same relationship that St. Paul’s bears to Cheapside. But I am convinced that the Brixtonians regard their railway bridge as a thing in itself and serving no purpose save the ornamental. That train should use that bridge to convey people to other parts of the world seems unthinkable There is no other part of the world that matters.

These things being so, it was obvious that Brixton must be provided with a cinema equal to any of those which, if the worlds of travellers might be believed, had been erected on the other side of the big river. But what Brixton wants, Brixton has, and that was why we alighted at a building which was certainly much less of an eyesore than, for example, the Regal Picture Palace, the exterior of which I take to be the biggest blot on the new London landscape. At the same time the architect had made a great mistake in despising the side street down which half his building runs. For this side street, which has no façade, is just as visible as the main Stockwell Road which is plentifully bedizened, with the result that the visitor receives the impression of a building only two-thirds completed. Inside, of course, completion has done her utmost. In the entrance-hall there is a running fountain in whose basin may be seen, disporting themselves, gold-fish, numbering, as Mr Belloc used to say in the old war days, more than fifteen and less than thirty. Marble stairs, lusciously carpeted, lead the giddy visitor into an auditorium alleged to resemble an Italian garden. Stars twinkle; fronds fan the fevered forehead, and, what is more important, the seats are admirably cushioned. The place is one of extraordinary, almost Babylonish magnificence. Tea-lounges abound. There are cubicles where the jaded shopper may repose; and wherever marble has a right to be, there marble is. The Directors, whose mobile, eager, and pleasantly acquiline features decorate the handsome souvenir with which the management presents you, have obviously not demanded any change out of their capital expenditure of £250,000 and will be satisfied, I imagine, with a return of something like 1000 percent on their money. I am not very good at figures, but the house holds over four thousand people at prices from sixpence to three shillings and sixpence, and there are three performances a day, at all of which up to now the house has been crowded out. Well, that is good business, but not better than such enterprise deserves. I guessed correctly the number of charwomen employed, to which must be added twenty-four brass cleaners. I was, however, £8000 out in my estimate of the organ. The instrument would appear even to the unskilled as a noble one, and fit for the performance in the best cinema manner of pieces written for the piccolo, pianoforte, and every instrument except the organ. On the afternoon that I attended, Mr Pattman played a selection from “Peer Gynt,” which I shall say, with bated breath, needs that drama to jog it along. But the reasons why I intend to be outrageously and unfairly favourable to his picture palace are, first, that it has not wholly gone over to the talkies; and second, that it has retained a first-class orchestra, the excellence of which has been made possible by the poltroonery and short-sightedness of those West End houses which have dismissed their orchestras. It is true that there was a talkie on that afternoon, but I took advantage of this to inspect the lighting plant, the drains, and the strictly business side of the venture. The talkie being over, I saw an admirable silent film about a New York journalist. “Get your street scenery on,” said that journalist to a chorus girl. “You’re going up town with God’s gift to literature!” But he had the sense to say it in a sub-title. While Mr Haines was delivering himself of this amiable nonsense, the first-class orchestra played Offenbach’s “Orpheus in the Underworld” Overture, Dowling’s “Sleepy Valley,” Montague Phillips’ “Arabesque (a piece I didn’t know), “Oh, Maggie, What Have You Been Up To?”, and if I mistake not, “The Lost Chord.” And I hereby announce that in the bosom of one cinema fan there is more joy over chords that are lost than over tongues that are found.

Comments: James Agate (1877-1947) was a British theatre and film critic. His film reviews, mostly written for The Tatler, often mention the cinema in which he saw the film. The cinema described here is the Brixton Astoria, London, built in 1929 and now the Brixton Academy. The architect was Edward A. Stone. The film about a New York journalist was Telling the World (USA 1928 d. Sam Wood), starring William Haines.

Family Life and Work Experience Before 1918

Source: Extracts from interview with Alfred Gotts, interview no. 366, Thompson, P. and Lummis, T., Family Life and Work Experience Before 1918, 1870-1973 [computer file]. 7th Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], May 2009. SN: 2000, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-2000-1

Text: Q: Everybody wasn’t in bed by then?

A: Yes, everything was alive. You used to see – see there was no electric lights – it was all gas. And darkness, and when anywhere where they lit up with all these little gas jets they used to have – rows and rows of little gas jets burning, with no mantle. Just the jets. And that used to light up the place. Oh everything was lit up – any shops opened you see, then when the – when I was – getting on, say round about fourteen, they started – letting you in picture palaces, you could go in some for a penny, some for a ha’penny. There was one round here you could go – Silverland they call it – ha’penny – go and see the pictures for a ha’penny, Bioscope they called – or whatever they called it. See it was no – talkie pictures, nothing like that.

Q: These were just the silent ones with the piano?

A: But there you could – they show the show and then that – you all went out you see. There was – they started one up at Aldgate next to Houndsditch there. I think it’s a photo shop called – or barbers shop, something now there. And – that was a penny pictures, oh it was a – great treat to see a penn’orth of pictures see. See trains on the pictures, you know, I’ve seen it – I’ve seen ’em – on one occasion – we’re sitting down, the train come along on the bioscope and all the people got up and ran out because they thought the train was coming in the room to ’em see, ’course it’s coming on the picture. But it put – and there’s no noise and it – they used to play in all those pictures that time – pianos or organ. They had all music for the pictures, see, and play – always play music to the pictures they did. And that’s – what used to go on. There was all – you’d see a woman there, tattooed lady, go in for a penny you could. Or you could go an see a man swallowing a sword for a penny. It’s – you know, but the tattooed lady, and a – I remember one tattooed lady, she must have weighed about eighteen stone – from her – right down to her ankles she was tattooed all over her body …

A: … or they – used to have a street organ come out – every now and then, go round, stop outside the pub and turn it, all the children’d be dancing outside the pub to the street organ see. That was the pleasure they had, that’s all, nothing else. ’Course – in later years as I say the penny pictures started coming, you could go to pictures for a penny or tuppence, in these here little places, threepence was top. I used to go to a – in Cambridge Road, the Foresters music hall, that was only tuppence for the gallery. We we wasn’t interested in the rich people that went downstairs in the pit for fourpence. We – there was tuppence threepence and fourpence see. I think a sixpenny seat would be top of the house, one of the boxes. Yes. Tuppence we used to pay at the Foresters …

Q: … Would you go to the pictures on a Sunday?

A: Yes, yes, Sunday and the Saturday, yes.

Q: That wasn’t frowned upon?

A: No, no no. You – there was – hundreds of little places where you could go for a penny or ha’penny, see – pictures …

A: … Pubs. There was a – here in Stepney Green here was a pub called the Mulberry Tree. And they they – they – up in the clubroom of the pub see they opened it as a little picture place. Pay a penny to go in – that time. And then – then – then further down here in Stepney Way here, was the Green Dragon, a – another little – was an old music hall what they had in them pubs, you know, they used to have benefits for – keep the clubroom see, like it’s a little music hall – of Saturday night mostly it was. And that. Make these leagues as they call them. Yeh, but the pictures they showed in them was little – ’cos they had a big clubroom you see and – they fixed up their bioscope there and – ’til the – what they call – I reckon – that time – the – when the – the depression came along. When the pictures started them bioscope that was when – these here little – picture palaces opened everywhere, some were a ha’ – as much as a ha’penny in Commercial Road here was one, they called it – Silverland, you could go in for a ha’penny children see, or anybody. And they they – they – you see the performance then they had a – then they’d have a fresh – send them out then there – there’d be fresh people come in. And that went on all – oh – a long long time.

Q: If you went to the cinema who would you go with? When you were a boy?

A: Well with a – a friend – a friend. Oh a friend or – friend you know, you got a lot of boys, the local boys always. We used to go …

Q: … Did you ever take your sisters out?

A: Well, if they’d have wanted to go I – I suppose we would have taken ’em. See we I we had a – a – two variety places here, one was the – Mile End Empire, opposite Stepney Green. And there was the Forrester’s Music Hall in Cambridge Road. They used to have a lot of drama there, and that was a cheaper place, it was tuppence, up in the – Paragon was only threepence. Then – then when – of course the bioscope came along, the pictures came along, everywhere was picture palaces. You could go where you liked see, see what picture was showing. Charlie Chaplin or who – when he first started you see. When I was young, he was a – only a young man as well.

Q: Were people quite excited by films when they first came out?

A: Oh yes. Yes, yes. Yes, I saw a film in Whitechapel Road – then – only paid a penny to go in there – and – opposite Whitechapel chutch and as this bio – like the train came in, so all the people got up and ran out, they thought it was coming on top of ’em. See the train come along, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch – like, see and that was – they thought – thought the train was coming into this here – fairly – a big size – room where you was all sat in side by side. Yeh, all the people got up and run out they thought the train was coming in the room to ’em. Yeh, never seen such a thing before like that. Oh yes, they was – good old times.

Comments: Alfred Gotts was born in Silver Street, Stepney, London in 1894, one of thirteen children, nine of whom survived. His father was a City carman, his mother was a cigar maker. His interview is embellished with creative elements, such as the memory of an audience panicked by film of an approaching train, which probably owe more to second-hand knowledge of a cinema history myth than they do to reality (Gotts was too young to have seen the first cinema shows with approaching trains in any case). Silverland was at 273 Commercial Road, Stepney. He was one of 444 people interviewed by Paul Thompson and his team as part of a study of the Edwardian era which resulted in Thompson’s book The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975).

Family Life and Work Experience Before 1918

Source: Extracts from interview with Alfred Gotts, interview no. 366, Thompson, P. and Lummis, T., Family Life and Work Experience Before 1918, 1870-1973 [computer file]. 7th Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], May 2009. SN: 2000, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-2000-1

Text: Q: Everybody wasn’t in bed by then?

A: Yes, everything was alive. You used to see – see there was no electric lights – it was all gas. And darkness, and when anywhere where they lit up with all these little gas jets they used to have – rows and rows of little gas jets burning, with no mantle. Just the jets. And that used to light up the place. Oh everything was lit up – any shops opened you see, then when the – when I was – getting on, say round about fourteen, they started – letting you in picture palaces, you could go in some for a penny, some for a ha’penny. There was one round here you could go – Silverland they call it – ha’penny – go and see the pictures for a ha’penny, Bioscope they called – or whatever they called it. See it was no – talkie pictures, nothing like that.

Q: These were just the silent ones with the piano?

A: But there you could – they show the show and then that – you all went out you see. There was – they started one up at Aldgate next to Houndsditch there. I think it’s a photo shop called – or barbers shop, something now there. And – that was a penny pictures, oh it was a – great treat to see a penn’orth of pictures see. See trains on the pictures, you know, I’ve seen it – I’ve seen ’em – on one occasion – we’re sitting down, the train come along on the bioscope and all the people got up and ran out because they thought the train was coming in the room to ’em see, ’course it’s coming on the picture. But it put – and there’s no noise and it – they used to play in all those pictures that time – pianos or organ. They had all music for the pictures, see, and play – always play music to the pictures they did. And that’s – what used to go on. There was all – you’d see a woman there, tattooed lady, go in for a penny you could. Or you could go an see a man swallowing a sword for a penny. It’s – you know, but the tattooed lady, and a – I remember one tattooed lady, she must have weighed about eighteen stone – from her – right down to her ankles she was tattooed all over her body …

A: … or they – used to have a street organ come out – every now and then, go round, stop outside the pub and turn it, all the children’d be dancing outside the pub to the street organ see. That was the pleasure they had, that’s all, nothing else. ’Course – in later years as I say the penny pictures started coming, you could go to pictures for a penny or tuppence, in these here little places, threepence was top. I used to go to a – in Cambridge Road, the Foresters music hall, that was only tuppence for the gallery. We we wasn’t interested in the rich people that went downstairs in the pit for fourpence. We – there was tuppence threepence and fourpence see. I think a sixpenny seat would be top of the house, one of the boxes. Yes. Tuppence we used to pay at the Foresters …

Q: … Would you go to the pictures on a Sunday?

A: Yes, yes, Sunday and the Saturday, yes.

Q: That wasn’t frowned upon?

A: No, no no. You – there was – hundreds of little places where you could go for a penny or ha’penny, see – pictures …

A: … Pubs. There was a – here in Stepney Green here was a pub called the Mulberry Tree. And they they – they – up in the clubroom of the pub see they opened it as a little picture place. Pay a penny to go in – that time. And then – then – then further down here in Stepney Way here, was the Green Dragon, a – another little – was an old music hall what they had in them pubs, you know, they used to have benefits for – keep the clubroom see, like it’s a little music hall – of Saturday night mostly it was. And that. Make these leagues as they call them. Yeh, but the pictures they showed in them was little – ’cos they had a big clubroom you see and – they fixed up their bioscope there and – ’til the – what they call – I reckon – that time – the – when the – the depression came along. When the pictures started them bioscope that was when – these here little – picture palaces opened everywhere, some were a ha’ – as much as a ha’penny in Commercial Road here was one, they called it – Silverland, you could go in for a ha’penny children see, or anybody. And they they – they – you see the performance then they had a – then they’d have a fresh – send them out then there – there’d be fresh people come in. And that went on all – oh – a long long time.

Q: If you went to the cinema who would you go with? When you were a boy?

A: Well with a – a friend – a friend. Oh a friend or – friend you know, you got a lot of boys, the local boys always. We used to go …

Q: … Did you ever take your sisters out?

A: Well, if they’d have wanted to go I – I suppose we would have taken ’em. See we I we had a – a – two variety places here, one was the – Mile End Empire, opposite Stepney Green. And there was the Forrester’s Music Hall in Cambridge Road. They used to have a lot of drama there, and that was a cheaper place, it was tuppence, up in the – Paragon was only threepence. Then – then when – of course the bioscope came along, the pictures came along, everywhere was picture palaces. You could go where you liked see, see what picture was showing. Charlie Chaplin or who – when he first started you see. When I was young, he was a – only a young man as well.

Q: Were people quite excited by films when they first came out?

A: Oh yes. Yes, yes. Yes, I saw a film in Whitechapel Road – then – only paid a penny to go in there – and – opposite Whitechapel chutch and as this bio – like the train came in, so all the people got up and ran out, they thought it was coming on top of ’em. See the train come along, ch-ch-ch-ch-ch – like, see and that was – they thought – thought the train was coming into this here – fairly – a big size – room where you was all sat in side by side. Yeh, all the people got up and run out they thought the train was coming in the room to ’em. Yeh, never seen such a thing before like that. Oh yes, they was – good old times.

Comments: Alfred Gotts was born in Silver Street, Stepney, London in 1894, one of thirteen children, nine of whom survived. His father was a City carman, his mother was a cigar maker. His interview is embellished with creative elements, such as the memory of an audience panicked by film of an approaching train, which probably owe more to second-hand knowledge of a cinema history myth than they do to reality (Gotts was too young to have seen the first cinema shows with approaching trains in any case). Silverland was at 273 Commercial Road, Stepney. He was one of 444 people interviewed by Paul Thompson and his team as part of a study of the Edwardian era which resulted in Thompson’s book The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975).

Rod: The Autobiography

Source: Rod Stewart, Rod: The Autobiography (London: Arrow Books, 2012), p. 10

Text: Mary and Peggy, my sisters, would take me to watch speedway at Harringay, which was hugely popular then. And Mum and Dad sometimes treated me to a trip to the cinema – the Rex, in East Finchley, where the stalls took a big dip in the centre: the front rows were higher than the rows in the middle, and the back rows were higher still. Maybe it was war damage. One day, where I was eight, my mum said, ‘We’re going to see Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday. This will be the funniest thing you’ve ever seen’ – a big build-up to give a film. But she was absolutely right. It was slapstick, but so subtle in the way it went about it. We sat there in the Rex’s battered stalls, and I had never laughed as hard as I laughed at Jacques Tati, haplessly creating havoc. Even today Ronnie Wood and I remain huge Tati fans.

Comments: Rod Stewart (born 1945) is a British rock singer. Ronnie Wood was guitarist with Stewart in the band The Faces before joining The Rolling Stones. Les Vacances de M. Hulot (France 1953) starred and was directed by Jacques Tati. It was a considerable international hit. The Rex was established in 1910 as the Picturedrome and continues today as the Phoenix. The slope in the floor was an original feature, caused by the lie of the land. Acknowledgments to Lisa Kerrigan for spotting this reference and tweeting about it.

Links: Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley

Nights in London

Source: Thomas Burke, Nights in London (New York: H. Holt & Company, 1918 – orig. pub. 1915), pp. 78-79

Text: Then baby goes in care of the maid to bed, and Mother and Father and Helen, who is twelve years old, go to the pictures at the Palladium near Balham Station. There, for sixpence, they have an entertainment which is quite satisfying to their modest temperaments and one, withal, which is quite suitable to Miss Twelve Years Old; for Father and Mother are Proper People, and would not like to take their treasure to the sullying atmosphere of even a suburban music-hall.

So they spend a couple of hours with the pictures, listening to an orchestra of a piano, a violin, and a ‘cello, which plays even indifferent music really well. And they roar over the facial extravagances of Ford Sterling and his friends Fatty and Mabel; they applaud, and Miss Twelve Years Old secretly admires the airy adventures of the debonair Max Linder – she thinks he is a dear, only she daren’t tell Mother and Father so, or they would be startled. And then there is Mr. C. Chaplin – always there is Mr. C. Chaplin. Personally, I loathe the cinematograph. It is, I think, the most tedious, the most banal form of entertainment that was ever flung at a foolish public. The Punch and Judy show is sweetness and light by comparison. It is the mechanical nature of the affair that so depresses me. It may be clever; I have no doubt it is. But I would rather see the worst music-hall show that was ever put up than the best picture-play that was ever filmed. The darkness, the silence, the buzz of the machine, and the insignificant processions of shadows on a sheet are about the last thing I should ever describe by the word Entertainment. I would as soon sit for two hours in a Baptist Chapel. Still, Mr. C. Chaplin has made it endurable.

Comment: Thomas Burke (1886-1945) was a British writer of stories and essays about London life, whose worked was twice adapted by D.W. Griffith for the films Broken Blossoms (1919) and Dream Street (1921). Nights in London is a series of essays on the night-life in different parts of London. The section above comes from the chapter ‘A Domestic Night (Clapham Common)’. Ford Sterling was the lead comedian at the Keystone Studios before Charlie Chaplin.

Links: Copy on the Internet Archive

Movies and Conduct

Source: ‘Female, 15, white, high-school sophomore’, quoted in Herbert Blumer, Movies and Conduct (New York: Macmillan, 1933), p. 37

Text: I have attempted to imitate the manners of several actresses, but I have never received any satisfactory results. I bobbed my hair when I was only eight years old, as a result of seeing someone in the movies doing likewise. I try to walk and move with ease and grace, but I find that it is a little difficult to act like others if I can’t see how I look. I remember one movie star, Mabel Normand, who had large eyes, and from the admiring of them I gradually began to stare at others with wide eyes. My friends thought there was something wrong with my eyes because I did this, and perhaps I did acquire poor eyesight as a result. At other times I curled my hair, manicured my fingernails, and dressed like my favorite stars. Of course my attempts never brought any pleasing results, so I abandoned my imitations and became original. Sometimes I posed for hours at a time before my dressing table mirror, posing with my hands about my face, and moving my arms as gracefully as I could. In the movies, it always seems that the innocent, wide-eyed girls have the most suitors, and that shyness promotes respect and adoration on the part of the opposite sex. When I went to parties I tried to be a meek little maid, but it proved to be a failure in attracting sweethearts; only gay and vivid types are wanted by the modern generation.

Comment: American sociologist Herbert Blumer’s Movies and Conduct presents twelve studies of the influence of motion pictures upon the young, made by the Committee on Educational Research of the Payne Fund, at the request of the National Committee for the Study of Social Values in Motion Pictures. The study solicited autobiographical essays, mostly from undergraduate students of the University of Chicago, and presented extracts from this evidence in the text. Most of the evidence relates to picturegoing in the 1920s. The interview above comes from the chapter ‘Imitation by Adolescents’.

Links: Copy on Internet Archive

Working with the Working Woman

Source: Cornelia Stratton Parker, Working With the Working Woman (New York/London: Harper & Brothers, 1922), pp. 160-161

Text: Outside of the gayety during working hours, there was little going on about the Falls. Movies – of course, movies. Four times a week the same people, usually each entire family, conscientiously change into their best garments and go to the movie palace. The children and young people fill the first rows, the grown folk bring up the rear. Four times a week young and old get fed on society dramas, problem plays, bathing girl comedies. Next day it is always:

“Sadie, did ya saw the show last night? Wasn’t it swell where she recognized her lover just before he got hung?”

Just once since movies were has the town been taken by storm, and that was while I was there. It was “The Kid” that did it. Many that day at the bleachery said they weren’t going – didn’t like Charlie Chaplin – common and pie-slinging; cheap; always all of that. Sweet-faced Mamie, who longs to go through Sing Sing some day – “That’s where they got the biggest criminals ever. Wonder if they let you see the worst ones” – Mamie, who had thrilled to a trip through the insane asylum; Mamie, who could discuss for hours the details of how a father beat his child to death; Mamie, to whom a divorce was meat and a suicide drink – Mamie wasn’t going to see Charlie Chaplin. All that pie-slinging stuff made her sick.

Usually a film shows but once at the Falls. “The Kid” ran Monday matinée. Monday night the first time in history the movie palace was filled and over two hundred turned away. Tuesday night it was shown to a third full house. Everyone was converted.

Comment: Cornelia Stratton Parker wrote six pieces from Harper’s Magazine June-December 1921 which recorded how she had mixed with low-wage-earning women in America to learn about their lives. The articles were then turned into a book Working With the Working Woman. This passage comes from her chapter ‘No. 536 Tickets Pillow Cases’ on the workers in a New York bleachery (original article title ‘Labeling pillow cases in a bleachery’). Chaplin’s feature film The Kid was released in 1921.

Links: Copy on Internet Archive

Family Life and Work Experience Before 1918

Source: Excerpt from interview with Mrs Hannah Myers, C707/401/1-2, Thompson, P. and Lummis, T., Family Life and Work Experience Before 1918, 1870-1973 [computer file]. 7th Edition. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [distributor], May 2009. SN: 2000, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA-SN-2000-1

Text: A: But this is how I used to work it, I used to say – you help me – and then I’ll take you out for the afternoon. But any – used to queue up for hours. But it wasn’t a continuous performance. There were certain houses. You see. Until –

Q: What kind of films would they have?

A: Oh – cowboy pictures, and – they used to have serials. And you know – we – he used – if he used to go on a Sunday – to the fair, pictures for a penny, and we used to see Pearl White, and she’d be hanging to the – to the roof of a train by her teeth. And another train’s coming through, we’re all cringing, and then it would come up on the sheet, next week – you see, you see the continuation next week. And we were all – tensed up you know. And – Harold Lloyd.

Q: What day of the week would that be?

A: Well it – any day you could go, for a penny. And over this fair for a penny … You know Mile End Station? At the back of Mile End station was known as the fairground. During the winter there was all sideshows, but – Mr Forest had this – first of all he used to go under a tent. They used to call it the flea pit. Used to be a ha’penny. But when he had it built it was a penny. See, and you used to go in, and you used to get a card. And – it was a lucky number. If you had a lucky number on it – you either won boots or a sack of coal – or – you know, some – articles of clothing. See, the – what this man used to buy for prizes. And it used to be chock-block full. And used to sit on forms. And although it was chock-block full they’d still say, come on, shift up there, shift up there, we were all huddled together and when we used to get these serial pictures you know – and the hair raising stuff that they used to do – we’d all cringe and cringe and cringe, and the kids – and – and people at the back used to say, look behind, look behind, he’s behind the door, he’s behind – of course it used to be silent pictures. Look behind the door. And then it used to come up, continuation next week. And we’d say – aaaah. Will you come next week, will you come next week? Yes, if we can save our farthings. We used to get a farthing a day – for spending …

… What about cinemas when you were at school? I didn’t go often, I did go once with my mother and father and I was terrified. It was the earthquake. The San Francisco Earthquake and I was glad to come out. I was terrified. I remember that.

Comment: Hannah Myers was born 1900 in London E3, seventeenth child of 18, parents Jewish. Her father was street trader selling fruit, then opened his own shop. She considered that they were middle class. She was interviewed on 28 July 1972, one of 444 people interviewed by Paul Thompson and his team as part of a study of the Edwardian era which resulted in Thompson’s book The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975).

The Haunted Bookshop

Source: Christopher Morley, extract from Chapter 8 of The Haunted Bookshop (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1919), pp. 153-161

Text: A few doors from the bookshop was a small lunchroom named after the great city of Milwaukee, one of those pleasant refectories where the diner buys his food at the counter and eats it sitting in a flat-armed chair. Aubrey got a bowl of soup, a cup of coffee, beef stew, and bran muffins, and took them to an empty seat by the window. He ate with one eye on the street. From his place in the corner he could command the strip of pavement in front of Mifflin’s shop. Halfway through the stew he saw Roger come out onto the pavement and begin to remove the books from the boxes.

After finishing his supper he lit one of his “mild but they satisfy” cigarettes and sat in the comfortable warmth of a near-by radiator. A large black cat lay sprawled on the next chair. Up at the service counter there was a pleasant clank of stout crockery as occasional customers came in and ordered their victuals. Aubrey began to feel a relaxation swim through his veins. Gissing Street was very bright and orderly in its Saturday evening bustle. Certainly it was grotesque to imagine melodrama hanging about a second-hand bookshop in Brooklyn. The revolver felt absurdly lumpy and uncomfortable in his hip pocket. What a different aspect a little hot supper gives to affairs! The most resolute idealist or assassin had better write his poems or plan his atrocities before the evening meal. After the narcosis of that repast the spirit falls into a softer mood, eager only to be amused. Even Milton would hardly have had the inhuman fortitude to sit down to the manuscript of Paradise Lost right after supper. Aubrey began to wonder if his unpleasant suspicions had not been overdrawn. He thought how delightful it would be to stop in at the bookshop and ask Titania to go to the movies with him.

Curious magic of thought! The idea was still sparkling in his mind when he saw Titania and Mrs. Mifflin emerge from the bookshop and pass briskly in front of the lunchroom. They were talking and laughing merrily. Titania’s face, shining with young vitality, seemed to him more “attention-compelling” than any ten-point Caslon type-arrangement he had ever seen. He admired the layout of her face from the standpoint of his cherished technique. “Just enough ‘white space,'” he thought, “to set off her eyes as the ‘centre of interest.’ Her features aren’t this modern bold-face stuff, set solid,” he said to himself, thinking typographically. “They’re rather French old-style italic, slightly leaded. Set on 22-point body, I guess. Old man Chapman’s a pretty good typefounder, you have to hand it to him.”

He smiled at this conceit, seized hat and coat, and dashed out of the lunchroom.

Mrs. Mifflin and Titania had halted a few yards up the street, and were looking at some pert little bonnets in a window. Aubrey hurried across the street, ran up to the next corner, recrossed, and walked down the eastern pavement. In this way he would meet them as though he were coming from the subway. He felt rather more excited than King Albert re-entering Brussels. He saw them coming, chattering together in the delightful fashion of women out on a spree. Helen seemed much younger in the company of her companion. “A lining of pussy-willow taffeta and an embroidered slip-on,” she was saying.

Aubrey steered onto them with an admirable gesture of surprise.

“Well, I never!” said Mrs. Mifflin. “Here’s Mr. Gilbert. Were you coming to see Roger?” she added, rather enjoying the young man’s predicament.

Titania shook hands cordially. Aubrey, searching the old-style italics with the desperate intensity of a proof-reader, saw no evidence of chagrin at seeing him again so soon.

“Why,” he said rather lamely, “I was coming to see you all. I–I wondered how you were getting along.”

Mrs. Mifflin had pity on him. “We’ve left Mr. Mifflin to look after the shop,” she said. “He’s busy with some of his old crony customers. Why don’t you come with us to the movies?”

“Yes, do,” said Titania. “It’s Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew, you know how adorable they are!”

No one needs to be told how quickly Aubrey assented. Pleasure coincided with duty in that the outer wing of the party placed him next to Titania.

“Well, how do you like bookselling?” he asked.

“Oh, it’s the greatest fun!” she cried. “But it’ll take me ever and ever so long to learn about all the books. People ask such questions! A woman came in this afternoon looking for a copy of Blasé Tales. How was I to know she wanted The Blazed Trail?”

“You’ll get used to that,” said Mrs. Mifflin. “Just a minute, people, I want to stop in at the drug store.”

They went into Weintraub’s pharmacy. Entranced as he was by the proximity of Miss Chapman, Aubrey noticed that the druggist eyed him rather queerly. And being of a noticing habit, he also observed that when Weintraub had occasion to write out a label for a box of powdered alum Mrs. Mifflin was buying, he did so with a pale violet ink.

At the glass sentry-box in front of the theatre Aubrey insisted on buying the tickets.

“We came out right after supper,” said Titania as they entered, “so as to get in before the crowd.”

It is not so easy, however, to get ahead of Brooklyn movie fans. They had to stand for several minutes in a packed lobby while a stern young man held the waiting crowd in check with a velvet rope. Aubrey sustained delightful spasms of the protective instinct in trying to shelter Titania from buffets and pushings. Unknown to her, his arm extended behind her like an iron rod to absorb the onward impulses of the eager throng. A rustling groan ran through these enthusiasts as they saw the preliminary footage of the great Tarzan flash onto the screen, and realized they were missing something. At last, however, the trio got through the barrier and found three seats well in front, at one side. From this angle the flying pictures were strangely distorted, but Aubrey did not mind.

“Isn’t it lucky I got here when I did,” whispered Titania. “Mr. Mifflin has just had a telephone call from Philadelphia asking him to go over on Monday to make an estimate on a library that’s going to be sold so I’ll be able to look after the shop for him while he’s gone.”

“Is that so?” said Aubrey. “Well, now, I’ve got to be in Brooklyn on Monday, on business. Maybe Mrs. Mifflin would let me come in and buy some books from you.”

“Customers always welcome,” said Mrs. Mifflin.

“I’ve taken a fancy to that Cromwell book,” said Aubrey. “What do you suppose Mr. Mifflin would sell it for?”

“I think that book must be valuable,” said Titania. “Somebody came in this afternoon and wanted to buy it, but Mr. Mifflin wouldn’t part with it. He says it’s one of his favourites. Gracious, what a weird film this is!”

The fantastic absurdities of Tarzan proceeded on the screen, tearing celluloid passions to tatters, but Aubrey found the strong man of the jungle coming almost too close to his own imperious instincts. Was not he, too – he thought naively – a poor Tarzan of the advertising jungle, lost among the elephants and alligators of commerce, and sighing for this dainty and unattainable vision of girlhood that had burst upon his burning gaze! He stole a perilous side-glance at her profile, and saw the racing flicker of the screen reflected in tiny spangles of light that danced in her eyes. He was even so unknowing as to imagine that she was not aware of his contemplation. And then the lights went up.

“What nonsense, wasn’t it?” said Titania. “I’m so glad it’s over! I was quite afraid one of those elephants would walk off the screen and tread on us.”

“I never can understand,” said Helen, “why they don’t film some of the really good books – think of Frank Stockton’s stuff, how delightful that would be. Can’t you imagine Mr. and Mrs. Drew playing in Rudder Grange!”

“Thank goodness!” said Titania. “Since I entered the book business, that’s the first time anybody’s mentioned a book that I’ve read. Yes – do you remember when Pomona and Jonas visit an insane asylum on their honeymoon? Do you know, you and Mr. Mifflin remind me a little of Mr. and Mrs. Drew.”

Helen and Aubrey chuckled at this innocent correlation of ideas. Then the organ began to play “O How I Hate To Get Up in the Morning” and the ever-delightful Mr. and Mrs. Drew appeared on the screen in one of their domestic comedies. Lovers of the movies may well date a new screen era from the day those whimsical pantomimers set their wholesome and humane talent at the service of the arc light and the lens. Aubrey felt a serene and intimate pleasure in watching them from a seat beside Titania. He knew that the breakfast table scene shadowed before them was only a makeshift section of lath propped up in some barnlike motion picture studio; yet his rocketing fancy imagined it as some arcadian suburb where he and Titania, by a jugglery of benign fate, were bungalowed together. Young men have a pioneering imagination: it is doubtful whether any young Orlando ever found himself side by side with Rosalind without dreaming himself wedded to her. If men die a thousand deaths before this mortal coil is shuffled, even so surely do youths contract a thousand marriages before they go to the City Hall for a license.

Aubrey remembered the opera glasses, which were still in his pocket, and brought them out. The trio amused themselves by watching Sidney Drew’s face through the magnifying lenses. They were disappointed in the result, however, as the pictures, when so enlarged, revealed all the cobweb of fine cracks on the film. Mr. Drew’s nose, the most amusing feature known to the movies, lost its quaintness when so augmented.

“Why,” cried Titania, “it makes his lovely nose look like the map of Florida.”

“How on earth did you happen to have these in your pocket?” asked Mrs. Mifflin, returning the glasses.

Aubrey was hard pressed for a prompt and reasonable fib, but advertising men are resourceful.

“Oh,” he said, “I sometimes carry them with me at night to study the advertising sky-signs. I’m a little short sighted. You see, it’s part of my business to study the technique of the electric signs.”

After some current event pictures the programme prepared to repeat itself, and they went out.

Comment: Christopher Morley (1890-1957) was an American journalist, novelist, poet and essayist of prolific output. His 1919 novel The Haunted Bookshop features Aubrey Gilbert, an advertising man, who tracks down a German spy who is using a New York bookshop as a dropping-off point in preparation for plans to assassinate President Woodrow Wilson. Mr and Mrs Sidney Drew were a comedy team, popular on stage and film. Sidney Drew died in 1919, shortly after Morley wrote the chapter. My thanks to Philip Carli for bringing this passage to my attention.

Links: Complete text at Project Gutenberg