Cinema-going in the 1940s/50s

In stark contrast to today’s soulless, extortionately-priced multiplexes, the cinemas of the 1940s and 50s were a much more homely affair - cheaper, more local, and definitely more individual in style. They formed an important part of the cultural life of any town and were a place where indelible memories were made…

1940s cinemagoers

Before TV took over our lives, cinema was the main form of mass entertainment from the 1920s to the
late 1950s with attendances peaking around 1946 at over 31 million visits to the cinema each week. Although nowadays it would be considered an unheard-of extravagance, it would not have been uncommon during the war, and in the years following, for people to go to the pictures several times a week. A survey of young Londoners in 1947 revealed that 21% had been to the cinema the previous evening and in 1949 41% of London’s youth went to the pictures every weekend.

 

The Granada, Tooting

Cinemas were a nice place to spend time. Intended to mimic the exotic, many London cinemas were (and some still are) prime examples of fantasy architecture – the Finsbury Park Astoria was made to resemble a Moorish walled city, the Kilburn State was a mock-up of the Empire State Building and the Carlton in Islington had stunning Egyptian features. These were ‘people’s palaces’ in every sense of the word, where people could relax in a wonderland for a few hours a night. As well as stunning exteriors, no expense was spared on interior features: marble staircases, walnut-panelled walls, huge mirrors and often chandeliers were very much the order of the day. Cinema designer Theodore Komisarjevzky (creator of the amazing Venetian Gothic Tooting Granada of 1931) wrote: “The picture theatre supplies folk with the flavour of romance for which they crave.”

The Forum, Kentish Town

But it wasn’t just the larger picture palaces that fulfilled this need. Even the most modest of ‘flea-pits’
provided warmth, privacy, a comfy seat, deep carpets and wall-to-wall escapism - a marked contrast to most people’s day-to-day existence in cramped, draughty accommodation with only a radio for entertainment.

Gaisford listings May 1945

And there were plenty of them within a small radius. Growing up in the Camden Town/Kentish Town area of north London, Pat August remembers having plenty of choice as to where to go to see the latest movie. Within a short walk from her home were: the Court, the Gaisford, the Forum and the Tolmer… to name just a few.  

Court cinema listings Sept 1937

 Pat recalls happy days spent at these local cinemas in the 1940s and 50s: “I started going to the cinema aged about 9. I didn’t go with my mum but a friend (Kathleen Daly) who lived near Queen’s Crescent. We went every week – if it was an ‘A’ certificate that was showing (no unaccompanied under-twelves) we just asked a stranger to take us in! There were several cinemas in our local area: Our favourite was the Court cinema in Malden Road, Kentish Town. Tickets cost about 9d and we paid out of our pocket-money. 

The Great Caruso (1951)

For your money you generally got two films with a newsreel in between. Most of the films were black and white - Technicolor was not so good and usually reserved for musicals (which I hated!). We always sat downstairs, upstairs was too dear. Smoking was allowed and all the adults puffed away during the films. There were choc ices and tubs of ice-cream but we couldn’t afford them. And sweets were still rationed at that time. Films I can remember enjoying were ‘Stagecoach’ with John Wayne and ‘The Great Caruso’ (1951) starring Mario Lanza. We had lots of favourite stars, pretty much all American: Alan Ladd, Joan Crawford, George Raft, Burt Lancaster and Barbara Stanwyck, to name just a few. We considered English films a bit corny and the leading men (like Dirk Bogarde, James Mason and Stewart Grainger) were old-fashioned, not particularly handsome and wore terrible clothes!”

Despite the widespread popularity of American movies, some top-quality British films were made

It Always Rains... (1947)

however, many set in London. One of these, the 1947 Film ‘It Always Rains on Sundays’ starring Googie Withers, was actually filmed on Pat August’s doorstep and caused much excitement in the neighbourhood. Set in the ‘East End’ , it is a tense and exciting thriller set against a realistic working-class background.

In fact, only some of the scenes were filmed in the East End, in and around Petticoat Lane. Much of the rest of the film was shot in the Camden Town area, with Hawley Road, Clarence Way (where the Sandigates’ house is located) and Holy Trinity Church making several appearances. Pat August recalls watching the film being made as a young teenager and the fun of seeing the star John McCullum having to be soaked several times by the fire brigade called in to spray ‘rain’, due to a lack of the real thing during filming!

Clarence Way, NW1

 

Sadly, of Pat’s local cinemas only one still exists, albeit not showing films. The Gaisford, on the corner

The Tolmer in 1972

of Gaisford Street and Kentish Town Road was demolished in 1960. The Tolmer in Hampstead Road (originally the Tolmers Square Congregational Church) had a large seating capacity (1,050) and in the 1940s programmes were changed three times a week, with ticket prices ranging from 6d to 1s 6d. It was demolished in 1972. The Court in Malden Road was Kentish Town’s earliest picture-house. Seat prices were low (1s for adults and 6d for kids) and the films were usually second-run features. It closed in 1958 and the land is now occupied by the Court Service Station. The Forum in Highgate Road, Kentish Road is now Grade II-listed. It opened in 1934 with a seating capacity of 2,175 and a large first-floor tea-lounge and dance hall. It ceased to be a cinema in 1970 but is now a thriving music venue.

 

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References:

London in the 20^th century Jerry White (2001)

Bright Lights, Big City: London Entertained 1830-1950 Gavin Weightman (1992)

The Cinemas of Camden Mark Aston (1997)

Video clip: https://www2.bfi.org.uk/introducing-ealing-studios/it-always-rains-sunday

Interview with Patricia August, aged 86, originally from Camden Town

 

 

 

The Festival of Britain

Having enjoyed a couple of (virtual) walks along the South Bank recently, and with its 70^th anniversary coming up this year, I thought it might be a good time to write about the Festival of Britain which took place along this stretch of the Thames riverside in the summer of 1951. Only the Royal Festival Hall remains as a reminder of this hugely successful initiative, conceived (and generally welcomed) as an antidote to the drabness of post-war London.

 

After the Second World War much of London lay in ruins and morale, unsurprisingly, was low. Despite the Allied victory, the war had been costly, decent housing was hard to come by and stringent rationing was still very much in force.

The Festival of Britain was an attempt to raise the spirits of Londoners and at the same time promote top-quality design in the rebuilding of a new, modern capital city. In both those aims the Festival was a success.  Historian Kenneth Morgan described how people: “flocked to the South Bank site, to wander around […] and generally enjoy a festival of national celebration. A people curbed by years of total war and half-crushed by austerity and gloom, showed that it had not lost the capacity for enjoying itself. Above all, the Festival made a spectacular setting as a showpiece for the inventiveness and genius of British scientists and technologists.”

Official FOB programme

From the outset (as with most big projects!) the Festival quickly became a party political issue. Although Herbert Morrison, the Labour minister behind the whole idea, declared it not to be his intention, the Festival quickly became associated with the Labour Party (who had won the 1950 election) and was opposed by the Conservative Party who saw it as some kind of suspect Socialist propaganda mission!

Festival site plan

Although the Festival did feature events at other locations in the city, the main exhibitions and attractions were on the South Bank which, in contrast to the bustling hub we know today, was at that time an area blighted by derelict warehouses and dilapidated housing, much of it bomb-damaged. The site, covering 27 acres, was cleared to make way for a series of structures in the International Modernist style, little seen in Britain before the war, and at the same time open up views of the river.

 

The Skylon

 Chief among the visitor attractions, and ever after   the symbol for this iconic event in London’s history,  was undoubtedly the vertical feature known as the   Skylon - a cigar-shaped aluminium-clad steel tower   supported by cables. The base was nearly 50 feet   from the ground, with the top nearly 300 feet up.   The frame was clad in aluminium louvres lit from   within at night.

 

 Equally futuristic was the Dome of Discovery, at the   time its giant self-supporting dome was the largest   such structure in the world, standing 93 feet tall with   a diameter of 365 feet. The Dome featured   exhibitions on such themes as: discovery of the New   World, the Polar regions, the Sea, the Sky and Outer   Space. The emphasis here, as indeed throughout the

The Dome of Discovery

Festival, was on British rather than world achievements. As well as exploration, the Dome also focused on industrial advances with a display of over 10,000 items – well-designed, mass-produced and affordable. New styles in interior design also featured prominently with new furniture and colourful textiles attracting much interest among people more used to drab, monochrome surroundings.

Sadly, the cost of entry to the Dome, at five shillings, was a bit steep for most ordinary people and this aroused much criticism at the time. Fifty years later this futuristic structure was to provide the inspiration for New Labour's Millennium Dome in Greenwich. 

Film was an important medium for the Festival and was used to great effect to explain scientific and technological concepts to the general public. There was a purpose-built film theatre on the South Bank,  (the 400-seat "Telekinema"), which showed documentary and experimental film using stereo technology. It was one of the most popular attractions, drawing in 458,693 visitors. When the Festival ended, the facility was handed over to the BFI for use as a members-only cinema club, re-opening in 1952 as the NFT, and still going strong in 2021 as the BFI Southbank repertory cinema.

 

The Royal Festival Hall

 The centrepiece of the Festival was undoubtedly the   Royal Festival Hall, a state-of-the-art 2,900-seater   venue which officially opened on 3 May 1951.   Modernist in style, it was one of the first concert   halls in the world to be built using the application of   scientific principles: the acoustic behaviour of the   seats was measured and tested in a laboratory and   careful consideration was given to the elimination of   external noise from nearby Waterloo station. Design   features included a sweeping staircase, airy and     spacious foyers, and a suspended auditorium.

The exterior of the building was bright white, intended to contrast with the blackened city surrounding it. Large areas of glass on its façade let light flood into the interior and, at night, the glass let the light from inside flood out onto the river. The journalist Bernhard Levin gave the following impression of his first visit: “I was overwhelmed by a shock of breathless delight at the originality and beauty of the interior. It felt as if I had been instantly transported far into the future and that I was on another planet.”

 

The Festival Pleasure Gardens, Battersea

Although the South Bank dominated the Festival’s programme, there were events elsewhere in London, notably the Festival Pleasure Gardens in Battersea, modelled on the Pleasure Gardens of the 18^th century. This was an amusement park unlike any other and survived well into the 1970s as Battersea Fun Fair. As well as rides, it boasted a miniature railway, a restaurant with a terrace overlooking the river, foaming fountains, a wine garden surrounded by miniature pavilions, a wet weather pavilion (with a stage facing two ways so that performances could take place in the open air) and an amphitheatre seating 1,250 people.  

 

The Lansbury Estate

 Another Festival attraction away from the riverside was the       architecture ‘exhibit’, the model Lansbury Estate in Poplar.   Poplar, so close to the East End docks, had suffered severe   damage in the war and so was an obvious candidate for the   provision of new and affordable social housing. The first houses   on the Lansbury were completed and occupied by February 1951   and people came from all over London to visit the Estate. They   were greeted by pavilions demonstrating new ideas and   construction techniques and given the opportunity to look round   show homes. Priority for the new homes was given to Poplar   residents. The estate offered spacious flats and maisonettes with   inside bathrooms and gardens allowing residents to hang their   washing outside. The homes were a far cry from the     overcrowded slums that many would have come from.

 

 

So was the Festival of Britain a successful venture? It certainly wasn’t cheap to put on – around £10.5 million – but there was plenty of money taken at the turnstiles with an incredible 8.5 million people visiting during the five months it was open.  Always planned as a temporary exhibition, the Festival finally closed its doors in September 1951. In the month that followed the closure, a new Conservative government got straight to work demolishing the South Bank site and removing almost all trace of the Festival of Britain – some say with unseemly haste. The only feature to remain was the Royal Festival Hall, designated a Grade 1 listed building in 1988, the first post-war building to be thus protected. And yet the Festival leaves a cultural legacy in the regeneration of the  South Bank area from an industrial wasteland to a destination of choice for locals and tourists alike. And it marked the beginning of a more affluent period in Britain’s history.

 There has been occasional discussion of the possibility of holding a 21^st-century Festival of Britain. Indeed, in 2018 Theresa May announced that the government was planning a ‘Festival of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, to be held in 2022. However, the proposed event, intended to unite the United Kingdom after Brexit, was widely criticised as the date coincided with the centenary of the Irish Civil War and risked inflaming tensions. Given the torrid events of 2020 it now seems even more unlikely that any project of this kind will get off the ground any time soon.

 

References:

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vmzq1s7xgE&ab_channel=MagneticVision

Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_of_Britain

Website: https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Festival-of-Britain-1951/

Pleasures of London F.Barker and P. Jackson (2008)

London: the Illustrated History C. Ross and J. Clark (2008)

Website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Festival_Hall#The_original_building