Tag: Evelyn Waugh

The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh

Source: Michael Davie (ed.), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), p. 176.

Text: Hampstead, Monday 1 September 1924
Most of the day writing this diary. In the afternoon to a cinema. Resolved to go to no more cinemas promiscuously.

Wednesday 3 September 1924
In spite of my earnest resolution never again to waste time at a cinema I have spent both yesterday and this afternoon in that unprofitable way. I am ashamed and more than ever strengthened in my resolution …

Thursday 4 September 1924
Last night I slept ill; I think through excess of cinemas. I went to two yesterday. One, alone, to fill in the time until dinner, and one after dinner with Adrian …

Comment: Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was at this stage in his life an unknown, struggling to complete a first novel (The Temple of Thatch, which he would eventually abandon). He was a regular cinemagoer and had made several amateur dramatic films with friends.

The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh

Source: Michael Davie (ed.), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976), p. 168.

Text: Wednesday, 9 July 1924
I made a pilgrimage to the Coliseum to see a new sort of film called ‘Plastigram’. They claim for it that by means of stereoscopic photography they can obtain an impression of a third dimension. There was an elaborate apparatus of coloured celluloid to fit over one’s nose and so far as we were concerned a most ineffective impression of depth. There were gasps of amazement and admiration behind us, however, so perhaps it seemed better in the more distant seats. The rest of the show was pretty good.

Comment: The novelist Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was a frequent cinema-goer in the 1920s, though this particular show was held at the Coliseum theatre in London. Plastigram was a steroscopic process devised by Frederic E. Ives and Jacob Leventhal for which the audience saw the 3D effect by donning spectacles with coloured cellophane (not celluloid).

The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh

Source: Michael Davie (ed.), The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1976)

Text: Saturday 31 January 1931
Went to Indian cinema with commercial traveller. Old Charlie in transition stage Keystone – Goldrush. Polishes his nails before meals. Food stolen. Eats grass with salt and pepper and delicacy, rinses fingers. In the end handsome lover turns up and Charlie goes off. Followed Indian film; fairy story; very ornamental. Beautiful girl greeted with shouts (no women in building) and is led from her bed to a precipice and thrown over. ‘That is her dream.’ Supposedly beautiful youth gazes at her. ‘He wants to take her into the bushes.’ Later elephant with drunken attendant. ‘That is an elephant.’ Elephant escapes, wicked robber attempts entrap heroine. Her father dies saying he has never kept promise to irrigate desert, etc.

Comment: The writer Evelyn Waugh was a regular cinemagoer (as noted in his diaries), particularly in the 1920s when he also experimented with producing amateur dramatic films. This screening took place in Tabora, then in Tanganyika (now Tanzania) during Waugh’s expedition to Abyssinia to cover the coronation of Emperor Haile Selassie. There was a small Indian population in Tanganyika. The quoted comments in the diary entry are made by Waugh’s Indian companion. The Chaplin film shown is The Gold Rush (USA 1925), but I have not been able to identify the Indian film.