1. Cinema-going experiences

While all cinema experiences include the act of watching a projected film in a specially defined space, what it means to go the cinema has changed significantly since the first moving images were screened in the late nineteenth century. By the time cinema attendance peaked in 1946, cinema-going was a long-established social habit with its own rituals, customs and conventions. Despite the precipitous post-war decline in admissions and the changing nature of attendance, it remained a profoundly important cultural practice for millions of UK citizens. Scholars such as Sue Harper, Robert James and Mark Jancovich have investigated cinema-going habits in various regions, foregrounding age, class and gender as key determinants of attendance.¹ These studies consistently show that while similar mass cultural products were shown in venues across the UK, cinema-going habits were geographically diverse.

What follows is an investigation of cinema-going experiences told principally from the perspective of the cinema-goer. It draws from oral history testimony to examine four key aspects of post-war cinema attendance: the social and economic distinctions patrons made between cinemas, changes in cinema-going habits over the course of the life cycle, responses and reactions to films, and audience behaviour both in and outside the cinema auditorium. This analysis builds on the recent spatial turn in new cinema history, developing the interest in ‘the relationship between memories of cinema-going, and geographical and topographical space’.² In adopting this approach, it looks beyond the physical venues of film exhibition to examine the relationship of cinema to everyday life and rituals, assessing how it was structured by attachment to neighbourhoods, communities and cities. According to Kuhn et al., oral history research aims ‘not to objectively reconstruct the past based on subjective memories of respondents, but to look at how memories of cinema-going are constructed and how they complement (or contradict) institutional, economic or text-based approaches to the historical study of film reception’.³ By combining personal narratives with evidence from trade journals, local newspapers and sociological studies, it is possible to show how these experiences were shaped by wider external factors such as government legislation or the provision of cinemas in local neighbourhoods.

Social and economic distinctions

Within industrial cities such as Belfast and Sheffield patrons made clear distinctions between venues and frequented cinemas for various social and economic reasons. A comparison of two working-class communities – the Holyland in Belfast and Heeley in Sheffield – shows how the range of venues available in local neighbourhoods created distinctive cinema-going practices. The Holyland was a largely Protestant working-class community located about one mile south of Belfast city centre.⁴ Though interviewees described the area as distinctly working-class, they also claimed it was ‘respectable’ and ‘upwardly mobile’. Their nearest cinema, the Apollo, opened in October 1933 and was the first of two local cinema-going options available for Holyland residents. It was the first cinema constructed in Belfast since 1923 and, following the transition from silent cinema to ‘talkies’, advertised itself as the ‘the first cinema in Belfast built for sound’.⁵ The second option, the Curzon, opened three years after the Apollo. Its higher prices, larger seating capacity and grander décor marked it out as one of the more glamorous art deco suburban picture palaces built in 1930s Belfast.

While interviewees recollected attendance at both the Apollo and the Curzon, they emphasized the contrast between the two cinemas and highlighted the Apollo’s convenience, cheaper ticket prices, favourable location and geographical accessibility. For Norman Campbell, the Apollo was a mid-market cinema: It ‘wasn’t quite a fleapit, but it wasn’t just to the same standard [as the Curzon]’.⁶ Other participants were less complimentary, using adjectives such as ‘grim’ to describe its plain, unadorned interior. George Brown added that it ‘was very downmarket. It was sort of a working-class cinema’.⁷ Liz Smyth’s comments highlight the perceived higher status of the Curzon: it ‘was slightly more expensive and a wee bit more upmarket … the Apollo was a bit of a dump, but it was at the corner’.⁸ Ann Gorman’s remark that the Curzon was ‘a little bit closer to bigger houses than what you would have had close to the Apollo’ shows that it attracted patrons with greater amounts of disposable income and from a wider geographical area.⁹ Both cinemas were recalled as mixed social spaces and participants highlighted socioeconomic rather than religious or national divisions. As Liz Smyth recalled, the Apollo ‘was definitely a slightly rougher [cinema]. They were rougher boys who went of all religions’.¹⁰

A distinctive feature of the Holyland was its proximity to Queen’s University and the Belfast Museum, which both offered alternatives to the mainstream commercial films shown in the local cinemas. Though membership of the Queen’s University Film Society reached 858 during its first season in 1952 and rose to 1,200 in 1954, no participants recalled attendance at its screenings, held in the university’s Whitla Hall.¹¹ Many Holyland residents, however, attended screenings at the museum. From November to March, free Saturday screenings in its lecture room provided an alternative cinema-going option and by 1949, 15,900 (11,950 ‘juveniles’ and 3,910 adults) admissions were recorded.¹² It exhibited a range of educational films and emphasized the didactic nature of these screenings on subjects such as natural history, food supply and geography.¹³ In 1954, the museum boasted that the screenings were ‘well patronised by children and adult audiences and on a number of occasions we have had to turn members of the public away through lack of accommodation’.¹⁴ Tickets for Saturday morning screenings were distributed to local primary schools and Ann Gorman recalled that ‘we would have a mental arithmetic test at the end of class … the first ten hands in the air with the correct answers won the ten tickets’.¹⁵

Heeley is an inner-city area located one mile south of Sheffield city centre. Like the Holyland, it housed a largely working-class population and, in 1960, it was described as a ‘thickly populated area of old houses on a steep hill not far from the city centre’.¹⁶ There were three cinemas in the local area: the Heeley Coliseum, the Heeley Green Picture House and the Heeley Palace. In a similar fashion to residents of the Holyland, the Heeley interviewees made clear social and economic distinctions between these cinemas. Several participants recalled that the Heeley Palace was more expensive than the Heeley Coliseum, which was described as both a ‘fleapit’ and a ‘working-class cinema’. The 1,450-seat Heeley Palace opened in 1911 and the 900-seat Heeley Coliseum opened in 1913.¹⁷ The Coliseum was slightly more expensive than the Heeley Green Picture House and was described by David Ludlam as ‘a bit of a bug hut’.¹⁸ The proximity of the Coliseum and the Palace to the tram line on Chesterfield Road meant that they were likely to attract patrons from a wider geographical area.

Heeley residents recollected attendance at a range of cinemas in adjacent areas including the Abbeydale, the Woodseats and the Chantrey. The 1,512-seat Abbeydale cinema, located one mile west of Heeley, opened in 1920.¹⁹ Interviewees described it as ‘probably the best local cinema house’ and as an upmarket alternative to the Heeley cinemas.²⁰ Many interviewees, however, favoured local cinemas for their convenience and geographical accessibility. While many participants frequented the Heeley cinemas in childhood, they were deemed as unsuitable for the teenage rituals of courtship. When Carol Palmer entered adolescence, she forgot ‘about the Heeley Coliseum and poor Heeley Palace, they were childhood places’.²¹ In a similar fashion to Belfast’s Curzon, the upmarket status of the Abbeydale meant that it attracted patrons from a wider geographical area. Several participants’ memories connected their perceptions of the Abbeydale to its architecture and Bill Allerton described its décor as ‘muted grandeur … [it] was sort of this really nice halfway house where you felt you were having an experience something other than just going to watch something’.²² David Ludlam’s memories also emphasize its architectural features: ‘it was magnificent, the décor was excellent. The standard of seating and so on was good … certainly better than most other cinemas in the outlying districts’.²³

In both cities, interviewees made clear distinctions between local neighbourhood cinemas and their often larger and grander city centre counterparts, which were noted for their different clientele, upmarket reputation and better facilities. Sheffield’s Gaumont cinema was commonly described as ‘posh’ and its status was defined further by its large seating capacity (2,300) and high prices. Margaret Bruton grew up in the Parson Cross area of Sheffield and described her three local venues – the Forum, the Ritz and the Capitol – as ‘working-class cinemas’. The Gaumont, meanwhile, ‘was bigger and more classy … It were in the centre of town and you would have got all middle-class people going into town’.²⁴ Helen Carroll added that ‘the Gaumont was the one to go to … but then there were some that were a bit grotty and you wouldn‘t go there unless you were desperate’.²⁵ Sheffield University newspaper Darts noted the lack of upmarket cinemas in Sheffield city centre, warning the new student whose ‘first thought is the down-town cinemas’ that he is ‘bound to make pretty invidious comparisons with his home town’. It commented that there were only two modern downtown cinemas and that the other three were outdated theatres with aged décor and uncomfortable seating.²⁶ The arrival of a new ABC cinema in May 1961 changed perceptions of the cinema hierarchy in Sheffield. Robert Heathcote was born in 1950 and claimed that it was the most upmarket cinema in Sheffield city centre, with better seating than its 1930s counterparts and an undercover area for queuing.²⁷

In Belfast, interviewees recalled the Ritz (renamed the ABC in 1963) as the most upmarket cinema and, like the Gaumont, its status was related to its large seating capacity, programming practices and suitability as a courtship venue. Noel Spence contrasted the Ritz to local neighbourhood cinemas, stating that its reputation was defined by its lighting, advertisements, restaurant and organ. Its well-attired manager, commissionaires and usherettes contrasted with smaller cinemas where ‘the manager would arrive on a bike and he’d go inside and then the lights would flicker on and you’d go in and he’d sell you your ticket and then he’d come round the other side of the box and tear it in two and then he’d run down with a torch and show you to your seat if he could be bothered’.²⁸

Patrons further defined cinemas by their programming practices. Some venues were simultaneously associated with high-brow foreign language films and low-brow ‘continental’ sex films. The fact that the Rank Organisation did not produce or exhibit ‘X’ certificated films meant that other producers had to rely on more specialized cinemas, with The Economist claiming that some venues ‘will not accept films that they consider to be insufficiently pornographic’.²⁹ While Darts advised students that the Wicker cinema exhibited European films, interviewees emphasized its reputation for risqué ‘X’ certificated films. Comments such as ‘the nude films were at the Wicker’ and ‘they used to do a lot of sex films’ were common.³⁰ In 1958, the manager rejected the cinema’s unsavoury reputation, claiming that it attracted a diverse range of respectable patrons: ‘Doctors, dons, business men, working men and the usual teenage regulars make up the Wicker’s patrons for the most part’.³¹ In Belfast, the Mayfair cinema held a similar reputation and interviewees highlighted its reputation for subtitled films and salacious content. Meanwhile, student newspaper The Gown remarked that ‘it is certainly a great joy to have the Mayfair, which is concerned almost entirely with Continental pictures’.³² The 1959 conversion of the Mayfair into the News and Cartoon Cinema reflected the lack of popular appeal for foreign language films and the increased competition of television. Kine Weekly reported that this conversion meant ‘that there is now no outlet in Belfast for Continental films. This seems a pity as there is a nucleus of film-goers in the city who want to see good Continental product’.³³ Belfast Telegraph reporter Martin Wallace added further that ‘[s]ub-titles have always been a problem but, if a foreign film was successful at the Mayfair, it had a chance of being shown in several towns in Ulster. Now the market has virtually closed’.³⁴ In 1962, it hosted the International Cinema Club and from 1964 to 1966, screened late night films for the Belfast Festival.³⁵ Journalist Barry White thought it was ironic that the films were being shown at the News and Cartoon Cinema, which, as the Mayfair, was the ‘last home of the Continental cinema in Belfast before it succumbed’.³⁶

Cinemas were multifunctional spaces that appealed to a variety of different audiences. A small number of cinemas screened foreign language films to cater for the increasing number of migrants making their homes in Britain’s industrial cities. The 1961 census revealed that that 4 per cent of Sheffield residents were born outside of England, and its small but growing migrant population were catered for by special Sunday screenings.³⁷ From the mid 1950s, for example, the News Theatre screened a series of Indian films for members of the Sheffield Indo-Pakistan Society, the Wicker showed ‘educational and cultural films’ to members of the Pakistan International Friendship Society and the Star cinema hosted Polish film screenings for the Polska Young Men’s Christian Association.³⁸ These screenings attracted migrant communities from a wide geographical area, with a 1961 report suggesting that Indian and Pakistani films were so popular at the Adelphi that up to 1,000 people regularly travelled from towns such as Barnsley, Chesterfield, Doncaster and Rotherham.³⁹ In contrast, by 1961, only 1 per cent of Belfast’s population were born outside of the British Isles and the opportunities for migrant screenings were further limited by conservative attitudes towards Sunday screenings.⁴⁰ In 1963, the general secretary of the Belfast Pakistani Association stated that ‘there are about one hundred Pakistanis living in Ulster and most of them in Belfast’. He requested permission for Sunday screenings of Indian and Pakistani films’ in a similar fashion to other UK cities, ‘to enable our folks to have some sort of contact with our domestic surroundings and environments’.⁴¹ There is no evidence that these screenings came to fruition and there are no further press reports of screenings for migrant communities in the period under review.

Cinema-going and the life cycle

The oral history testimony shows a strong connection between time, place and memories of cinema attendance. The fact that all the interviewees were born between 1925 and 1950 provides the basis for an investigation of changes in cinema-going habits over the course of the life cycle, from childhood, to adolescence and into adulthood. Early experiences of cinema-going were linked to a small geographical area and children were confined often to the cheaper and more accessible venues available in their local neighbourhoods. These memories often display links to parental supervision and are associated with family and domestic life. For instance, Anne Gorman recalled that cinemas provided a convenient space for young mothers to take children and women often took babies in shawls.⁴² The cinema was frequently used as a substitute for childcare and parents commonly provided money for cinema trips: ‘my father would have given me the money … most of the kids I grew up with were the same. Everybody had the money to go’.⁴³ Children who were taken to the cinema by family members often had a different experience, and Mike Higginbottom’s memories of Saturday night cinema trips with his parents highlight both the inter and intra-class distinctions of cinemas in Attercliffe, a working-class area in east Sheffield. He was only taken to the higher-priced balcony seats at the Adelphi and Pavilion cinemas. The Globe and the Regal, meanwhile, were considered unsuitable venues.⁴⁴ Childhood memories of cinema-going highlight the lack of mobility and movement from local neighbourhoods. Derek Yeardley, for instance, was born in 1949 and claimed that he ‘never went into the town centre’ until the early 1960s.⁴⁵ Margaret Mitchell added that travelling to Sheffield city centre was like ‘going to other side of world’.⁴⁶ In working-class communities, such as the Holyland, cinemas like the Apollo ‘tended to serve their districts, their communities … it was the people in the area who went to the local picture house’.⁴⁷ Norman Campbell added that the Apollo was a ‘very local cinema. People wouldn’t have travelled across town unless there was a particularly good film’.⁴⁸

Cinemas understood the need to cater for younger audiences and Saturday children’s matinees were an important part of their programme. By 1953, 42 per cent of British cinemas ran these screenings, constituting 4 per cent of admissions.⁴⁹ For many interviewees, trips to children’s matinees represented their first visits to the cinema away from parental supervision, providing an opportunity to socialize with other children and adopt new attitudes and behaviour. Many interviewees recalled the misbehaviour of children in inner-city cinemas, including firing spud guns, dripping ice from the balcony and letting in friends through the emergency exit. In 1957, the Belfast Gaumont manager claimed that while matinee screenings were noisy, there was no ‘rowdyism’: ‘If a film does not raise some excitement in a bunch of kids, then it’s not for them. We never have to check them for being too boisterous’.⁵⁰ In 1960, one Sheffield cinema manager ejected three hundred children following an egg-throwing incident, though he claimed that ‘there has been no trouble at all in the past and I am sure there will be no further incidents at matinees’.⁵¹ These findings correspond with Robert Shail’s oral history study of Saturday morning cinema clubs, in which interviewees recalled memories of noisy audiences, misbehaviour, the role of usherettes, club songs, competitions, talent shows and birthday prizes. Shail observed that ‘overshadowing the films themselves was the attraction of the clubs as a social event’.⁵²

From 1953, the Belfast Curzon named its children’s cinema club after Roy Rogers, the ‘king of the cowboys’, whose films appeared regularly at children’s matinees. Manager ‘Uncle’ Sidney Spiers was recalled fondly, and participants highlighted the regular routines and social activities of the club. These recollections of innocent fun at children’s matinees contrast with newspaper reports revealing them as sources of parental concern. One Belfast Telegraph reader commented that ‘the attention of the public should be drawn to the practice in a Belfast cinema of admitting children to matinees on Saturday afternoons after all available seats are occupied’. A cinema manager replied that, while he believed that standing for long periods was not good for the children’s health, ‘it was easier to let them in than turn them away. Children surround the place on Saturdays, their only free afternoons and their only opportunity to see a show at a matinee price’.⁵³ The short multi-part serials shown at children’s matinees routinely ended in cliff-hangers, ensuring that the audience returned the following week. They also had a clear influence on behaviour and dress. Derek Yeardley, for instance, recalled imitating Zorro, the masked vigilante, stating that following screenings of these films, children with duffel coats used to ‘fasten the collars up with a hood on, and go rushing out, flying through like they’d got a cape on’.⁵⁴ Similarly, David McConnell recalled that ‘you could tell what kind of film it was by the way we came up Agincourt Avenue. Because if it was a western you shot your way up, if it was swashbuckler you buttoned your coat to make it a cape and fenced your way up’.⁵⁵ In the 1950s, greater affluence and amounts of disposable income meant that children were increasingly able to indulge these fantasies through the purchase of consumer goods, such as cowboy outfits (see Figure 1.1).⁵⁶ The influence of these western serials later waned and, in 1960, Heeley Coliseum manager Peggy Blaskey commented that ‘[s]pecial matinees put on for them do not appeal, they prefer a good “U” programme and do not like second feature Westerns – they see too many of them on television’.⁵⁷

Figure 1.1. Children in Botanic Gardens, Belfast, 1950s (courtesy of Norman Campbell).

As children moved into adolescence, press reports linked the cinema to poor academic performance and school truancy. In March 1953, a ‘worried mother’ wrote to The Star to complain that her child was doing poorly at school and thought only of the cinema. ‘Live letters’ columnist Christine Veasey advised her not to ban her child from the cinema as ‘this might lead to great temptation on her part’.⁵⁸ The fact that some adolescents were absconding from school was a source of concern for the Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council and its 1954 report on juvenile delinquency stated that ‘[t]he fact that cinemas may afford truant children sanctuary from school welfare officers creates a problem deserving consideration’.⁵⁹ George Brown recalled that, to avoid playing rugby at school, ‘I used to sneak out on a Wednesday afternoon out of the game so I could go to the Apollo’.⁶⁰ Noel Spence recalled absconding from school to see Psycho (US, 1960): ‘I was only about fifteen so I shouldn’t have been allowed into it anyhow but it hadn’t really taken the cinema-going public by storm at that stage … I went into the cinema in the afternoon for the one o’clock show and I was the only one in the whole cinema’.⁶¹

From 1959 to 1960, sociologist M. P. Carter interviewed 200 Sheffield secondary modern school leavers to investigate the transition from school to work. He found that cinema attendance increased and ‘[i]nstead of just meeting friends in the neighbourhood and around the streets and parks, children got into the habit of dressing up and “going out”. Cinema-going and dancing increased considerably whilst attendance at youth clubs fell off: the former were adult activities, the latter childish’.⁶² During adolescence, greater amounts of disposable income and access to public transport led to greater geographical mobility and attendance at the often larger, grander and more expensive city centre cinemas. Carter stated that young females especially preferred city centre cinemas as ‘they had been given the taste by boyfriends who escorted them there, and it was in any case more of an occasion to dress up and parade in town instead of just slipping round the corner’.⁶³ He also revealed racial tensions in cinemas, interviewing one female who avoided a cinema ‘because it is full of coloured people’.⁶⁴

The comfortable, dark and warm space of the cinema auditorium had long made it a convenient venue for meeting members of the opposite sex. It was, as Claire Langhamer observed, the ‘archetypal public space with a private dimension’.⁶⁵ Interviewees recalled sitting on back-row double seats and Malcolm Ayton’s remark that ‘the back row was predominantly the place to be’ was typical of many male participants.⁶⁶ Carter observed that the cinema was a site for ‘kissing and petting’ and the foyer ‘a meeting place for youths and girls who lounge about in groups, with some horseplay. The youths whistle at the girls, or jeer at their friend who is skulking shyly in a corner awaiting the arrival of his first date’.⁶⁷ As admissions fell in the 1950s, cinemas retained their status as sites for courtship. In 1958, Belfast journalist Gordon Duffield commented that adolescents would always favour the cinema as ‘it provides an escape from parental authority and is a recognised phase in the conventional pattern of courtship’.⁶⁸ For Norman Campbell, ‘courting was a big adventure that didn’t start really until we were teenagers’. This also provided a means to impress the opposite sex and ‘you tried to show off by taking the bus’. While the balcony at the Grand Opera House was popular with courting couples, a local neighbourhood cinema like the Apollo ‘wasn’t the sort of place that you would have taken your girlfriend, had you been trying to show off to her what sort of a good guy you were’.⁶⁹ In Sheffield, the local press reported that males often misbehaved to impress girls. One manager observed that they ‘use the cinema as a giant picking-up ground … Of course the lads show off, trying to outdo each other. And the girls lap it up’.⁷⁰ Carter interviewed one female who stated that ‘if there are boys sitting behind you, they torment you and ask if you have got any sweets. Then you get talking, and the boys ask if they can take you home’.⁷¹ While children’s matinees were easily affordable, using public transport such as buses or trams to travel to grander city centre cinemas required greater expenditure. Lack of money meant that many males attempted to evade payment for their partner’s admission. Ann Slater stated that ‘If you had a date with a lad, they used to say they’d meet you inside so they didn’t have to pay for you to go’.⁷² Noel Spence linked this social practice to post-war austerity, claiming that ‘we couldn’t afford to be too romantic’.⁷³

Courting couples generally frequented evening screenings and there were clear generational differences in the time and day of cinema attendance. In 1952, one cinema employee commented that ‘there are fewer crowds in the afternoon than in the evening, but this is a favourite time for women of all ages – particularly if a domestic film, either comedy or drama is being shown. Children also enjoy the afternoon show, but their taste is for cartoons and westerns’.⁷⁴ Sylvia Fearn confirmed this, stating that, at the Crookes cinema, the first house was frequented by younger people and ‘young mothers who wanted to get back to put the kids to bed’. In the second house, meanwhile, ‘you could see that it was more older ones and courting couples’.⁷⁵ Friday and Saturday evenings were popular with adolescents and young adults. In their 1954 study of Sheffield’s Wybourn estate, Mark Hodges and Cyril Smith noted that cinema-going ‘on Friday evening is a regular routine for the young people. Most of them go once again during the week, and it is not infrequent to find adolescents who go as many as four times’.⁷⁶

Entry into the workplace and greater amounts of disposable income affected cinema-going habits. Between the ages of thirteen to sixteen Bill Allerton frequented the Abbeydale twice a week: ‘after that there was a huge gap in my cinema-going because I bought a motorbike when I was sixteen and a half. And I think that, unless you’d got a girl or a girlfriend to take, that was the end of my cinema-going for quite some time’.⁷⁷ For young female wage earners, cinema attendance depended on domestic responsibilities. During her training at Sheffield’s Royal Infirmary Hospital, Helen Carroll stayed in Young Women’s Christian Association accommodation: ‘we could often finish work, quickly go and have our meal and then get out to the cinema. We had no washing up to do or anything like that’.⁷⁸ The cinema-going habits of young women were further determined by the working practices of male wage-earners, as Valerie Lowe recalled:

In Sheffield, the leisure habits of young males were disrupted by the introduction of the 1948 National Service Act, which led two million men from England, Scotland and Wales to serve in the armed services between 1949 and 1963. Due to fears of civil unrest, men in Northern Ireland were excluded from this legislation. Adrian Horn’s research shows how National Service created a period of limbo between school and work for young males and created a ‘generational consciousness’ among those who had shared similar experiences. His call for further research on the impact of National Service on youth culture, spending patterns and social activities is brought to bear by oral history testimony that highlights its impact on cinema-going habits.⁸⁰ Alan Lockwood was one of the ‘hundreds of thousands [who] jumped before they were pushed and volunteered for regular service’.⁸¹ While this disrupted his cinema attendance in Sheffield, he frequently attended the Astra Cinema, built to serve RAF servicemen working on the British nuclear test programme at Christmas Island.⁸² The fact that a large number of young males left Sheffield to serve in the armed forces affected the social habits and courtship rituals of young females. In July 1956, as ‘all lads my age were in the forces’, sixteen-year-old Valerie went to the Abbeydale cinema with her future husband, twenty-four-year old Pete Lowe. He had failed his National Service medical and went ‘to the pictures continuously’ after his friends were conscripted.⁸³

In 1960, the Screen Advertising Association claimed that from the age of twenty-five to thirty-four many ‘young adults who have remained single so far get married. Families are started, homes established, and purchasing broadens to meet these challenging conditions. Even now, marriage does not break the cinema habit. Two-thirds of this group are cinema-goers and on average, they go to the cinema once a fortnight’.⁸⁴ It claimed that in the average audience 39 per cent were aged sixteen to twenty-four, 21 per cent were aged twenty-five to thirty-four, and 13 per cent were aged thirty-five to forty-four.⁸⁵ In 1957, one Sheffield cinema cashier commented that ‘[w]omen who have been in the house all day want a change of scene at night. They want to dress up and go out so I don’t think television will have any great effect on cinema audiences’.⁸⁶ The interviews revealed, however, that the decline in adult cinema attendance of this generation was a result of increased television ownership, the poor service provided by cinemas and the onset of marriage and children. With the arrival of television, many adults no longer visited the cinema due to the increased comfort and ease of home-centred entertainment. Patrons increasingly criticized the service that cinemas provided. In 1957, one Star reader complained of cinema queues when seats were available, excessive advertising, poor second features and the sale of food and drink in an under-ventilated environment. He wanted proprietors to ‘think of their customers as people and not as so many three-and-ninepences’.⁸⁷ The behaviour of fellow cinema-goers also deterred patrons and in 1960, one ‘disgusted patron’ complained that ‘we paid 2s 6d each for balcony seats, but we were unable to enjoy the performance due to hooliganism in the stalls below … I for one will join the band of stay-away patrons until hooligans in the cinemas are controlled’.⁸⁸ In Belfast, W. Davidson complained of ‘bad seating, too many intermissions, no assistance in trying to find a seat and no courtesy whatsoever’.⁸⁹

Motherhood often meant that women were no longer able to attend the cinema. Childcare was a key issue for Belfast Ritz employee Stella Wilson: ‘On her evenings off, and when a baby-sitter can be arranged for [her son] John, she and her husband may be found ice-skating, at the pictures, or as partners at an occasional dance. On her evenings at home, when the housework is done, Stella finds relaxation in a serious novel’.⁹⁰ The oral history testimony reveals the extent to which marriage and children disrupted cinema-going habits. Andrew Palmer commented that, after marriage, ‘you had to start saving, so you couldn’t really afford to go out … We used to stay in a lot and watch television then’.⁹¹ Rosemary Topham was born in 1935. She married in 1959 and her eldest daughter was born in 1962. Before her wedding, she attended the Hippodrome with her future husband: ‘after we got married we didn’t go to the cinema at all because I guess the children came along and that was it’.⁹² The closure of many local neighbourhood cinemas limited the possibilities for parents’ attendance. In his 1962 report on the decline of cinema-going, John Spraos commented that ‘distance involves time and leisure time is a commodity in short supply and therefore valuable. In computing the true cost of travel to the cinema, the actual fare is a minor component; the value of the time spent in travelling is by far the greatest’.⁹³ Stuart Hanson later confirmed this finding, arguing that, as cinemas closed, the ‘inconvenience of having to go out of one’s area to visit the cinema may have deterred many people’. This, added to the deterioration in public transport services and the rise in car ownership, highlights that ‘the location of the cinema in a neighbourhood was important in the formation and maintenance of the cinema-going habit’.⁹⁴ Sylvia Fearn was born in 1937 and married at the age of nineteen. While she previously attended the local Crookes cinema, it closed in 1960 and she rarely went to the cinema after the birth of her children:

In the 1950s, the sociologists who studied life on new housing estates observed the impact of marriage upon cinema-going habits. In Belfast, Dorita Field and Desmond Neill suggested that in ‘the large poorer family, the higher rent and fares reduce the amount of money available for bought entertainment, and in all the families the larger house and garden make extra demands on the time and energies of the housewife’.⁹⁶ On Sheffield’s Wybourn estate, Hodges and Smith observed that the cinema ‘continues to be very popular with young housewives until they have small children to look after’.⁹⁷ They reported that one well-to-do single-child family kept their house to a standard ‘which would more than meet the standards of a middle-class suburb’. Both parents spent their money on household goods such as their television and ‘they never went to the pictures as they did not want to leave their son in anyone else’s charge’.⁹⁸

Film memories

Annette Kuhn has shown ‘the extent to which interviewees’ memories of cinema have revolved far more around the social act of cinema-going than around the films they saw. Memories of individual films have played only a small part in … recorded cinema memories’.⁹⁹ This observation applies equally to this oral history project where interviewees spoke at length about their cinema-going habits and behaviour. Given that attendance was often habitual and the films themselves were often seen only once, it is, Matthew Jones observed, ‘perhaps understandable that the texts would fade away while the sociality of the activity remains prominent in memory’.¹⁰⁰ Participants were just as likely to recall the programming practices of cinemas as they were to remember particular films or film stars. These memories were often divorced from the content of films and focused on the regular routines of cinema attendance, such as the practice of continuous programming, whereby cinemas played their programme on a loop with patrons free to enter at any time. ‘This is where we came in’ was a commonly repeated phrase. Alongside the main and supporting features, programmes often contained adverts, cartoons, shorts and newsreels, though as the 1950s progressed the latter became a less valuable source of information. It is no surprise that after the BBC introduced regular news bulletins from 1955, Paramount News and Gaumont-British/Universal closed in 1957 and 1959 respectively.¹⁰¹

One of the difficulties of using oral history testimony to assess the popularity and impact of individual films is that there is often a contrast between those that were box-office successes and those that are subsequently remembered. Films that were reissued, later shown on television or released on other platforms are more likely to remain vivid in the public imagination. This, Jones claimed, means that that memories of individual films are better suited to telling us how films are now recalled than providing information on how they were understood at the time of their release.¹⁰² In this project, memories of individual films were often connected to family life or important stages of the life cycle. For instance, Norman Campbell’s first memory of cinema-going was seeing The Desert Rats (US, 1953) with his aunt, who took him because ‘one of my relations had been involved in the attempt to kill Rommel’.¹⁰³ Memories of individual films were also linked to traumatic events and personal tragedy. Bill Allerton’s father died of leukaemia at the age of forty-two. He recalled a hospital visit prior to his death:

Several films which received significant press coverage at the time of their release did not feature in the oral history testimony. In 1954, for instance, the upcoming release of Martin Luther (Germany/US, 1953) led the Belfast Telegraph to comment that:

One Roman Catholic reader responded that while Catholic-themed films such as Going My Way (US, 1944) ‘did not falsify history or misrepresent the official teaching of any Protestant religious body. Catholics contend that the film Martin Luther is so inaccurate as to be anti-Catholic’.¹⁰⁶ Commercial cinemas did not screen the film, but it was shown at the centrally located Grosvenor Hall, a 2,000-seat Methodist hall which often held film screenings accompanied by ‘illustrated hymns’ and a ‘silver service collection’. During its five weeks of exhibition in early 1955, 100,000 patrons saw Martin Luther. Exhibitor George Lodge claimed that this was twice as many patrons as he expected and attendance was especially high given the recent poor weather.¹⁰⁷

Memories of films were often linked to the impact they had on behaviour and dress. Historians such as Mark Glancy and Adrian Horn qualify the impact that Hollywood films had on British audiences and demonstrate that the reception of American mass cultural products was mediated by local circumstances.¹⁰⁸ Leanne McCormick has also shown how women’s impressions of the US troops who arrived in Northern Ireland in the Second World War ‘were largely based upon national stereotypes, which in turn were derived mainly from Hollywood films’.¹⁰⁹ In the immediate post-war years, the absence of money limited the capacity of young people to impersonate their favourite film stars. David Ludlam, for instance, claimed that young people would ‘affect an American drawl from time to time … not clothing so much, because that was always in short supply … But in gestures, in attitudes, the way you leaned against a pillar with your arm’.¹¹⁰ In 1952, the Belfast Telegraph interviewed a female cinema employee who imitated ideas from the cinema screen: ‘This, she recommends as an ideal way of keeping up to date. With one proviso – copy only the simpler styles and those worn by everyday characters like yourself ’.¹¹¹ While the cinema provided a template for behaviour and dress, it was limited by parents’ conservative attitudes towards gender, sexuality and respectability. Sylvia Fearn recalled that she permed her brother-in-law’s hair ‘because he wanted to look like Tony Curtis … His mother went crackers when he got home with all these massive curls’.¹¹² Adrian Horn noted that as ‘home dressmaking was commonplace there were limitless individual adaptations of standard fashions … which were shown in the cinema’.¹¹³ This was evident in the oral history testimony and several interviewees stated that austerity led them to make their own clothes. Jean McVeigh stated that seeing Doris Day on screen made her ‘feel like going home and setting fire to my wardrobe because it was just so beautiful’.¹¹⁴ There was a stark contrast between the sartorial aspirations of young cinema-goers and the accessibility and affordability of clothing in their home cities. Malcom Ayton commented that while American film stars often had multiple suits, ‘the average man at the time probably had one suit that wanted to be patched up for work’.¹¹⁵

The affluence and glamour presented in Hollywood films provided a fantasy space that contrasted with the austerity that residents of Belfast and Sheffield experienced on a day-to-day basis. American culture was particularly influential and Stuart Hanson argued that, for those in working-class neighbourhoods, ‘identification with the pleasurable, seemingly classless and optimistic world of Hollywood films was easier than with that of a hidebound and rarefied British cinema’.¹¹⁶ In her study of post-war female spectators, Jackie Stacey observed that interviewees often recalled the cinema ‘as a physical space in which to escape the discomforts of their everyday lives’.¹¹⁷ Anne Connolly recalled that she believed ‘everything was wonderful in America … I was a child just after the war, I mean anything American, they just had everything. You know, the style and the beautiful houses and it just seemed to be everybody had it all in America’.¹¹⁸ Ann Slater added that ‘the musicals were the thing that we really liked as well. Anything that were a bit of a fantasy or just a dream. You had to pretend it were you it were happening to’.¹¹⁹

In contrast to Hollywood films, interviewees tended to connect their memories of British films to everyday life and personal experience. John Ramsden estimates that 100 British war films were produced between 1945 and 1960, far larger in number than Empire films or Ealing comedies.¹²⁰ These films were popular in Belfast and Sheffield: The Cruel Sea (UK, 1953), for instance, was the best attended film at the Sheffield Gaumont in 1953.¹²¹ Malcolm Ayton served in the RAF and commented that ‘the British films were pretty true, pretty accurate. Whereas the Americans glamorized them too much and they always seemed to add a love story to it’.¹²² The reception of these films was often linked to class identity; Alan Lockwood also served in the RAF and claimed that British war films ‘were a bit hoity-toity. They don’t talk like that in forces. They call you all things under the sun’.¹²³ Ann Gorman’s testimony reveals generational differences in the reception of war films: ‘I absolutely hated anything to do with the Royal Navy … I know it wasn’t long after the war and there might have been older people who were interested but ... that was not for us’.¹²⁴ The emphasis of these films on the winning of a just war and male bonding in dangerous situations meant that depictions of the Second World War were overwhelmingly masculine.¹²⁵ This accounts for Ann’s comment that these films depicted ‘too many men talking with pointers up at a board’. Participants, however, perceived tonal shifts in British films and she remarked that the ‘kitchen sink’ movies of the early 1960s ‘were better because at least they spoke like normal people. I mean all the British movies, originally, everybody spoke like they were working for the BBC’.¹²⁶

Audience behaviour

Participants frequently offered vivid descriptions of the communal experience of cinema attendance, recalling both the atmosphere of shows and the kinds of behaviour that occurred before screenings, within the auditorium and on the journey home. By assessing these recollections alongside further primary source material, it is possible to show how activities that were recalled as an innocent and everyday part of the cinema-going experience were often a source of great concern to exhibitors. For instance, several participants recalled the attempts by children to gain underage entry to the cinema. A common childhood experience was asking strangers to accompany children to gain entry to ‘A’ certificated films and several participants recalled getting into these films without an adult. Ann Slater was one of many interviewees who recalled the phrase ‘will you take me in mister?’¹²⁷ Andrew Palmer added that ‘if you went to see an ‘A’ film and you went without your mum and dad, and you didn’t go with your parents, you had to wait in a queue obviously and you used to be asking people if they’d take you in because you weren’t allowed to go in unless you’d got a parent with you or an adult’.¹²⁸ Local press reports reveal that this behaviour created a great deal of concern for exhibitors, who were often fined for allowing underage children into their cinemas. For instance, in June 1950, Scala Cinemas were fined £20 for allowing eighty-three unaccompanied children to a screening of Whispering Smith (US, 1948) at the Woodhouse Picture Palace. Manager Harold Booth was fined a further £4 and claimed that although he had done everything possible to comply with regulations, he received no co-operation from the public and ‘received insults and abuse from parents when he tried to keep children out’.¹²⁹ Sylvia Fearn recalled both gaining underage access to the cinema and paying for younger children to enter:

Kine Weekly summed up the long and short of the matter when Sheffield CEA Chairman Frank S. Neale commented that ‘some children turned up in long trousers for certain pictures and short ones for others’.¹³¹

As children reached adolescence, they often tried to gain entry to ‘X’ certificated films, a practice associated with smaller, local neighbourhood cinemas. Norman Campbell recalled that ‘the standards were more lax in the Apollo than they would be in the Curzon, which was very correct. So certainly the first ‘X’ film that I ever saw was in the Apollo, and I was well under age. There’s no way I could have passed for the age, but they were quite happy to take my money’.¹³² In March 1962, Star reader Mrs D.B. complained that children who lied to gain access to ‘X’ certificated films were placing cinema operators in jeopardy. She suggested that the law regarding these films ‘should be the same as the law regarding under-age drinking’ and under-sixteens should be fined for purchasing tickets under false pretences. Columnist Richard Wilson replied that he believed ‘the best solution to this problem lies with parents – not with a change in the law’.¹³³ In January 1961, Sheffield CEA discussed the penalties applied to cinemas for allowing entry to underage patrons. Peter Blake said that ‘the ones to be charged should be those who got in under false pretences and lied about their ages’. Arnold Favell added ‘It seems the law can prosecute those who let in, but not those who get in. It sounds silly to me’.¹³⁴

Queuing was another everyday aspect of the cinema-going experience recalled by participants. John Mitchell remembered that ‘It was part of the experience. You had to do it and it was just natural and you’d probably meet half a dozen friends and stand in this great big long queue for an hour, provided it wasn’t raining’.¹³⁵ Margaret McDonaugh recalled that ‘cinemas were always busy, you always had to queue. And no matter how many cinemas there were, you always seemed to have to queue outside and possibly wait in the rain’. Andrew Palmer’s comments reveal that the length of queues was a key determinant of attendance: ‘if there was a big queue and it was the best film, you used to wait a while. But if it was too big, then you used to go off somewhere else to another cinema and watch that one instead … you had to come early in the evening to try and miss the queue’.¹³⁶ His memories of queuing also show the popularity of particular screenings and he recalled that Sunday queues at the Gaumont were particularly large.¹³⁷

Not all memories of queues were positive. Bill Gatt recalled that he nearly got crushed in the crowd: ‘it was one of my experiences of queuing for the cinema that’s lingered on in my mind for a long time because somebody saved me from being crushed. They actually rose me, they heard me screaming. I was going to be trampled’.¹³⁸ In Belfast, cinema queues were also sites of criminal activity. In 1948, cinema workers sought ‘improvement in regulations concerning queues inside and outside Belfast cinemas’. Trade union representative W. H. McCullough stated that ‘one or two serious incidents had occurred recently, when cinema attendants were mishandled while supervising queuing’.¹³⁹ In December 1951, the Northern Whig reported that a Woolworth’s window was smashed ‘when a crowd of people attempted to “crash” a queue which was filing into the Alhambra cinema … For a short space the crowd looked like getting out of control of the policeman on duty, and extra police had to be summoned before order could be restored’.¹⁴⁰

Elements of audience behaviour, habits and dress were associated with certain days of the week. Despite opposition from the Belfast Corporation Watch Committee, the Army Act permitted cinemas to open on Sunday for uniformed members of the armed forces. In 1944, the Kelvin and the Imperial were the only cinemas to open on Sunday and ‘the stern Presbyterian grip on the Northern Ireland Sabbath’ remained strong.¹⁴¹ In 1947, soldiers were granted permission to attend the Imperial in plain clothes with their families ‘with the proviso that their identities would be checked by the Royal Military Police’. Colonel E. V. Lang claimed that this prevented soldiers ‘standing or strolling aimlessly about the streets of Belfast’.¹⁴² In 1949, the Belfast Corporation Police Committee expressed concerns that people other than those in the armed forces were being admitted to Sunday screenings and voted in favour of changing the rules so that only uniformed members of the forces were allowed entry.¹⁴³ In 1952, the Deputy Town Solicitor told the Police Committee that Sunday opening for the forces was legislated for in the Army Act and ‘the Corporation had no jurisdiction in the matter’. The Committee voted by four to two against the motion that ‘representations be made to the Military Authorities to discontinue the use of the Imperial Cinemas on Sunday evenings’.¹⁴⁴ James Doherty recounts the testimony of a RAF radar technician, who in 1955 leant his pass to a young relative:

In Sheffield, the first licence for Sunday cinema exhibition was granted in 1944. Despite opposition from the Sheffield Free Church Federal Council, the Sheffield Sunday School Union and the Lord’s Day Observance Society, 27,199 voted in favour and 15,186 voted against retaining Sunday exhibition in a 1947 referendum. The number of Sheffield cinemas licenced for Sunday exhibition increased from nine in 1947 to twenty-seven in 1956.¹⁴⁶ Adolescent cinema-goers were frequently associated with rowdyism and misbehaviour, particularly in Sunday screenings. Children under school-leaving age were not permitted to enter cinemas on Sunday, though the oral history testimony suggests that many did enter these screenings.¹⁴⁷ One cinema manager commented that ‘Sunday night cinema-goers are by far the worst offenders’ and he bemoaned that up to forty slashed cinema seats weekly led to a £500 annual repair bill.¹⁴⁸ Coliseum manager Harry Gent lamented the use of razor blades to slash seats and claimed that ‘[t]he law is far too lenient in matters of vandalism. It costs the small local cinemas packets to put the damage right. And it drives the respectable patrons away’.¹⁴⁹ Alan Lockwood recalled misbehaviour (though not criminal damage) at Sunday screenings, stating that teenagers ‘used to take football rattles. They used to take whistles. They used to take anything that would make a noise. They used to go in and make as much noise, and some of my mates they used to take bags of rice. Take a bag of rice and spray the audience’.¹⁵⁰ Another cinema manager noted a direct correlation between disturbances and the film shown: ‘Action and comedy films result in little misbehaviour in the cinema … It is the film with a love theme that causes “restiveness” in this cinema where perhaps 70 per cent of the audience are “teen-agers”’.¹⁵¹ Several Sheffield cinemas took measures to control this behaviour; the Plaza introduced ‘a mad fifteen minutes to “clear the air”’ and the Gaumont allowed teenagers to ‘sing, dance, whistle or spread out and go to sleep’ before Sunday screenings.¹⁵² In Belfast, limited Sunday opening meant that Monday and Thursday were considered the worst nights for misbehaviour.¹⁵³

From the mid 1950s, press reports of violent behaviour increased and this was often associated with the emergence of Teddy Boys. These reports should be treated with caution, for as Patrick Glen observed, the press created moral panic about young people who deviated from social mores and newspapers often ‘represented discourses around teenagers rather than the voices of teenagers themselves’.¹⁵⁴ Despite the efforts of Sheffield cinema managers to control misbehaviour, a 1955 report highlighted that:

In September 1955, the severity of this behaviour led the Wicker and the News Theatre to refuse entry to Teddy Boys.¹⁵⁶ In November, the former claimed that ‘[t]he ban has had its desired effect and we are not now keeping out any youngsters who appear in Teddy Boy clothes … But we know of a crowd of about 50 trouble-makers who are now never allowed through the doors’.¹⁵⁷ Another manager believed that hooliganism had ‘been on the up ever since the war. The trouble is now that organised gangs of toughs are coming out into the suburbs with the sole purpose of causing trouble’.¹⁵⁸ In July 1960, Sheffield City Council passed a by-law to counter rowdyism in cinemas and in the following year CEA secretary Arnold Favell claimed that it had led to improved behaviour.¹⁵⁹

Memories of the rock ‘n’ roll films released from the mid 1950s offer an example of memories of (mis)behaviour that were directly linked to the images shown on screen. Alan Lockwood recalled watching Blackboard Jungle (US, 1955) at Sheffield’s Phoenix cinema and claimed that ‘people were up and dancing in aisles. In some cases they were ripping seats out. The manager used to come up on stage doing his nut’.¹⁶⁰ Ann Slater added that at one screening ‘everybody were up dancing, they were doing rock ‘n’ roll in aisles’.¹⁶¹ It is unsurprising that such conspicuous behaviour was widely reported in the press as it reflected contemporary concerns over youth culture and changing leisure habits. Several interviewees made a distinction between the behaviour of patrons in city centre cinemas and their local neighbourhood counterparts. John Mitchell recalled that, during screenings of Blackboard Jungle in city centre cinemas, Teddy Boys ‘just went mad, they were ripping up seats and going crazy with all this rock and jive music’. When the film arrived at the local Crookes cinema ‘there was a policeman stood outside and nothing happened. Everybody was getting ready for punch ups and things like this … there was just a policeman stood outside, looking left, looking right. What’s it all about?’¹⁶² In Belfast, John Campbell recalled seeing Blackboard Jungle at the Mayfair, where: ‘when the boys heard the first blast of Rock around the Clock, a few of them threw their hats up in the air … the guy came down with a flash torch and threw the whole lot of us out, so we never seen the picture. They didn’t stand for that sort of stuff up there.¹⁶³

In his assessment of juvenile delinquency in Northern Ireland, David Fowler claimed that ‘Teddy Boys were not prominent in Belfast in the late 1950s. In the local press they were treated as a novelty as late as April 1957 – four years after they had appeared in London’.¹⁶⁴ While concerns related to Teddy Boys reached Belfast later than many other parts of the United Kingdom (including Sheffield), by September 1956 Kine Weekly reported that though the ‘Teddy Boy craze was slower in catching on in Belfast than in most cross-Channel cities … it has reached alarming proportions in some areas’.¹⁶⁵ Several members of the Northern Ireland CEA proposed to ban Teddy Boys from Belfast cinemas and the Forum’s adverts stated that ‘persons in Teddy boy dress or jeans’ would be refused entry. A Rank official hoped that ‘others will follow our lead and ban the lot’.¹⁶⁶ From 1957, local press reports suggest that there were increasing concerns about this youth subculture’s behaviour. In 1958, Belfast Resident Magistrate R. M. Campbell went as far to describe ‘Teddy-boyism’ as a ‘civic cancer’ after twenty juveniles were either jailed, fined or sent to training school. These prosecutions related to several incidents of gang violence, including an altercation outside the downmarket Clonard Picture House.¹⁶⁷ In 1960, while Kine Weekly stated that hooliganism was ‘not yet a major problem in Belfast’, according to the Belfast Telegraph incidents ‘involving gangs of young people are becoming commonplace in a number of city cinemas’.¹⁶⁸ It reported that disturbances were created by both sexes and confined largely to the front stalls. The newspaper claimed, however, that ‘the blame cannot be laid entirely on rock ‘n’ roll and crime films. Trouble crops up no matter what is on the screen’.¹⁶⁹

This conspicuous behaviour was a source of concern for the police, local authorities and cinema exhibitors, receiving considerable attention in the columns of newspapers and trade journals. Cinema-goers, however, were just as likely to recall everyday aspects of the cinema-going experience, such as smoking. In 1957, one Sheffield cinema manager estimated that 95 per cent of his patrons were smokers.¹⁷⁰ A 1960 survey found that 72 per cent of male and 52 per cent of female adult cinem-agoers were smokers, and that this was significantly higher than the proportion of smokers in the general population.¹⁷¹ For adolescent cinema-goers, the cinema provided a space to hide their smoking habits from parents. In 1959, one third of fifteen-year-old boys and 5 per cent of fifteen-year-old girls were regular smokers. Rates of smoking were higher in secondary modern than grammar schools.¹⁷² David McConnell recalled that his pocket money of 2s 6d would ‘get you in to the front stalls at the Curzon on a Friday night, and five cigarettes as well. And I just remember the smoke in the beam, and we must have stank when we came home. Which was good of course, because that way it was more difficult to be accused of having smoked yourself ’.¹⁷³ While the smoke-filled environment of cinemas was often described as ‘atmospheric’, it was not always remembered fondly.¹⁷⁴ ‘I never liked the smoke. So I tried not sit near anybody … that was smoking’, recalled Sylvia Fearn.¹⁷⁵ ‘With everybody smoking’, added David Ludlam, ‘sometimes it was difficult trying to see what was on the screen’.¹⁷⁶ In 1957, one Belfast Telegraph reader asked ‘when do our cinema proprietors propose to do something for the convenience of non-smokers?’ He claimed that, during a recent cinema he sat next to a woman, who ‘smoked no fewer than seven cigarettes … my earnest wish was that she would burst into flames’. If cinemas were unable ‘to set aside certain nights for non-smokers’, he added, ‘they should at least, issue goggles and antismog masks to alleviate our discomfort’.¹⁷⁷

Following increasing concerns of the medical dangers of smoking and the launch of the first public health campaigns about this topic in the 1950s, the possibility of introducing a smoking ban was discussed in both Belfast and Sheffield. Cinema managers protested that any ban on smoking would inevitably lead to lower attendances. In 1957, one Sheffield cinema manager stated that a ban on smoking would be both impracticable and bad for business.¹⁷⁸ In 1962, Sheffield City Council discussed the possibility of a ban, though reports suggested that cinema-goers were generally against such legislation. ‘No smoking, no cinema’, asserted one accountancy student. Steelworker Alec Ainsworth added that he could not ‘enjoy a film if [he] couldn’t smoke’. Newer Sheffield cinemas such as the ABC and the Odeon were against a ban on the grounds that their modern facilities prevented disturbance to other patrons: ‘With the kind of air-conditioning you get in the best modern cinemas the only person who feels the effect of the cigarette is the smoker himself ’.¹⁷⁹ In 1962, the Sheffield City Council Watch Committee decided not to ban smoking at local cinemas, except during performances wholly or mainly for children.¹⁸⁰ Alderman Harold Gent stated that no ban would be forced unless there was national legislation and commented that ‘It would be impractical in the semi-darkness to find out who was smoking and the managements had no powers to enforce non-smoking’.¹⁸¹ In 1964, a journalist claimed that eleven out of twelve patrons, nine of whom were smokers, felt that smoking should be banned in cinemas. John Wainwright stated that:

In 1957, Belfast Rural District Council discussed the possibility of introducing no-smoking nights. It wrote to the Alpha cinema, Rathcoole, and pointed out the link between smoking and lung cancer. A CEA spokesman responded that ‘the branch was unanimous in the opinion that the recommendation was unrealistic because non-smoking nights would be bad for business’.¹⁸³ During the Stormont debate on the 1959 Cinematograph Bill, nationalist Cahir Healy again mooted the idea of non-smoking nights, claiming that smoke-filled auditoriums forced some people to leave the cinema.¹⁸⁴ Minister of Home Affairs W. W. B. Topping responded that it was an uneconomical policy restricting the rights of individuals.¹⁸⁵ Nationalist Harry Diamond added that the revenue generated from the sale of cigarettes aided cinemas at a time of declining attendances and increasing overheads. It would, he said, ‘be unwise to interfere with the liberty of the majority’.¹⁸⁶ While the issue of smoking was discussed, no provisions for non-smoking nights were included in the final bill. The fact that tobacco company Gallahers were significant employers in Ballymena and Belfast may also have been a consideration.

At the end of the evening’s performance, it was common for cinemas to play God Save the Queen (commonly referred as ‘the Queen’ by interviewees). While this was uncontroversial in a provincial English city such as Sheffield, it is understandable that cinemas in largely nationalist areas of Belfast refrained from this practice. It was a custom often associated with a rush to leave the cinema. In 1952, Kine Weekly reported that ‘[w]e all know there is a scramble to beat the playing of the National Anthem by many patrons, but in most cases … this is not due to disloyalty as much as the sheer necessity of catching the last bus home’.¹⁸⁷ In Belfast, many of those from a Protestant background shared similar sentiments and defiance of this practice was linked to youthful rebellion or a desire to return home, rather than disrespect for the monarchy or British institutions:

Margaret McDonaugh stated that people:

Other participants from a Protestant background recalled minor tensions: ‘if there was a guy standing or sitting beside you, who didn’t want to be there, and tried to get out, you stopped him. You just stood there’.¹⁹⁰ David McIlwaine grew up in a working-class area of west Belfast and recalled that in ‘Catholic areas, only a quarter of them would have stood and the others would have very pointedly pushed past them to get out.¹⁹¹ Participants often underplayed these tensions and Noel Spence recalled that at the Coliseum – located between Unionist and Nationalist communities – ‘there was the potential for some sort of sectarian clashes but it never really came to anything’.¹⁹² Peter Smyth claimed that the city centre Gaiety evolved a protocol whereby its patrons came from the largely nationalist Falls Road on three nights a week and the largely unionist Shankill Road on the other three, and this kind of behaviour perhaps prevented further trouble.¹⁹³

Roman Catholic interviewees offered a greater sense of communal tension in their testimony and their memories display similar characteristics to the oral history testimony collected by Anna Bryson in mid Ulster. She investigated the ways that Protestants and Catholics presented their own past and observed ‘two distinct communal narratives, each carefully reinforced with reference to both the recent and distant past’. While many Protestants depicted the post-war period as a ‘golden age of community relations … many Catholics opened their recollections of the post-war period with references to both public and private discrimination against their community’.¹⁹⁴ This kind of ‘golden age thinking’ is not unique to Belfast and other oral history studies have shown how memories of the post-war years are filtered through subsequent events.¹⁹⁵

One incident at the Strand cinema highlights the divisive nature of God Save the Queen. In 1954, the Belfast Education Committee arranged for 20,000 schoolchildren to view The Conquest of Everest (UK, 1953). One Belfast Telegraph reader complained that after a screening, a group of Roman Catholic children, under the instruction of two Christian Brothers, remained seated during the playing of God Save the Queen. They claimed that this action displayed disregard for the Crown and asserted that ‘there is something here more deadly than the flying of a tricolour – an insidious canker that will take more than the shibboleth of the Border to cure when the children who successfully made their gesture yesterday have grown up’.¹⁹⁶ One Roman Catholic mother was ‘disgusted and horrified by this behaviour … with threats of Communism and the atomic bomb hanging over us, I think our children should, at least, be taught tolerance and good manners’.¹⁹⁷ The incident was even debated by the parliament of Northern Ireland. Ulster Unionist Harry Midgley dismissed nationalist suggestions that Northern Irish cinemas should stop playing the national anthem when mixed audiences were present. He responded that, as local education authorities received grants, they should expect ‘a greater measure of recognition for the patriotism and loyalty of this democratically-elected and administered part of the United Kingdom’.¹⁹⁸ While these debates were ostensibly concerned with the welfare of the children present, it is clear that they were used as a cipher to discuss Northern Ireland’s position within the United Kingdom. In 1964, ABC introduced a ruling to play the national anthem at the start of performances, though it was not put into operation in Northern Ireland. ABC’s Belfast manager Don Mackrell stated that ‘[w]hen I first came here I sensed a certain amount of sensitivity to the playing of the National Anthem. The people in Northern Ireland seem to respect it much more than they do in England and because of this I did not think a change was necessary’.¹⁹⁹

In Sheffield, Mike Higginbottom’s comments suggest generational divisions and he described the ‘Gadarene rush to get to the top of the stairs before the music started … the rush was to get out before the music started because otherwise the old folk would glare at you’.²⁰⁰ Ernest Walker recalled that, as a child, his aunt used to take him to the Unity cinema: ‘they used to play the national anthem at the end of the showing. Most people couldn’t be bothered and ran for the entrances. But Aunt Lisa was a patriot and we had to stand for “the Queen”, much to our chagrin’.²⁰¹ In his letter to The Star, James Challis wrote that the behaviour of those who left during the anthem ‘not only angers one, but embarrasses as well to think that a true Englishman could show such bad manners. This sort of behaviour will soon pull Sheffield down in the eyes of visitors’.²⁰² In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, there was often tension between adolescent cinema-goers and those who had served in the armed forces. Bill Allerton stated that his girlfriend’s father ‘thought he was Nelson … he ended up falling out with someone in the cinema because he tried to get past him and he wouldn’t let him pass. And people used to climb over the seats to get past people who were stood. It was a real division in local society at that time’.²⁰³ Margaret Mitchell’s father served in the navy, and she stated that during the anthem ‘I laughed and so I got a swipe’.²⁰⁴

Conclusion

The use of two local case studies offers fresh insights into the geographical diversity of cinema attendance during a period of declining audiences and instability in the film exhibition industry. Audience behaviour was rooted in place and there is a clear link between changing leisure habits, the evolving use of cinemas and the nature of post-war industrial cities. While social customs such as queuing or smoking were adopted by cinema-goers in both Belfast and Sheffield, these cities had distinctive local cinema cultures shaped by a range of wider social, economic and political factors. Disparities between these cities, such as responses to the national anthem or attitudes towards Teddy Boys, reveal the full extent of these factors on everyday leisure habits. Attitudes towards cinema-going practices also varied widely and were linked to local concerns about behaviour, morality and identity. This corroborates Richard Maltby’s statement that ‘close historical investigations of the everyday nature of local cinemagoing reveal how the resilient parochialism of individuals and communities incorporated and accommodated the passing content that occupied their screens to their local concerns and community experiences’.²⁰⁵ More broadly, a comparison of Belfast and Sheffield challenges preconceptions of the former’s post-war social history, affirming Marianne Elliott’s observations that neighbourhood identity was often more important than sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland society.²⁰⁶

One of new cinema history’s key characteristics is its ‘acknowledgement of the diversity of the social experience of cinema and a concomitant resistance to compress that diversity into a single overarching account of the “cinema audience”’.²⁰⁷ The use of local case studies further highlights the lack of a single, homogenous cinema-going experience – behaviour and social habits were diverse, shaped by the streets and neighbourhoods where people lived, the range of cinema-going options available to them and the films that were shown. A focus on space and place in oral history testimony confirms the findings of Pierluigi Ercole et al. that people ‘persistently emphasize the spatial dimensions of those narratives, focusing on local topographies, travel to and from cinemas and the spaces of the remembered experience’.²⁰⁸ Assessing these narratives alongside text-based archival sources such as newspaper reports or trade journals allows us to compare and contrast the views of cinema-goers to exhibitors, local authorities and other citizens. Only by doing this is it possible to provide a rounded picture of post-war cinema-going experiences across the United Kingdom.

_______________

¹ For instance, see S. Harper, ‘A lower middle-class taste community in the 1930s: admissions figures at the Regent cinema, Portsmouth, UK’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television, xxiv (2004), 563–88; R. James, ‘‘‘A very profitable enterprise’’: South Wales miners’ institute cinemas in the 1930s’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, xxvii (2007), 27–61; R. James, ‘Cinema-going in a port town, 1914–1951: film booking patterns at the Queens cinema, Portsmouth’, Urban History, xl (2013), 315–35; H. Richards ‘Memory reclamation of cinema going in Bridgend, South Wales, 1930–1960’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, xxiii (2003), 341–55; M. Jancovich, L. Faire and S. Stubbings, The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption (London: 2003).

² P. Ercole, D. Treveri Gennari and C. O’Rawe, ‘Mapping cinema memories: emotional geographies of cinemagoing in Rome in the 1950s’, Memory Studies, x (2017), 63–77, at p. 64.

³ A. Kuhn, D. Biltereyst and P. Meers, ‘Memories of cinema-going and film experience: an introduction’, Memory Studies, x (2017), 3–16, at p. 10.

⁴ For further details on the Holyland, see S. Manning, ‘Post-war cinema-going and working-class communities: a case study of the Holyland, Belfast, 1945–1962’, Cultural and Social History, xiii (2016), 539–55.

⁵ Belfast Telegraph, 27 Oct. 1933.

⁶ Interview with Norman Campbell, Belfast, 4 June 2014.

⁷ Interview with Anne Connolly, Belfast, 28 May 2015; interview with George Brown, Belfast, 26 Aug. 2014.

⁸ Interview with Ronnie and Elizabeth Smyth, Spa, County Down, 27 Aug. 2014.

⁹ Interview with Ann Gorman, Belfast, 23 Oct. 2014.

¹⁰ Interview with Ronnie and Elizabeth Smyth, Spa, County Down, 27 Aug. 2014.

¹¹ Belfast Telegraph, 29 May 1952; Irish News, 14 June 1954.

¹² City and County Borough of Belfast, Report of the Committee of Belfast Museums and Art Gallery: for Year Ending 31^st March, 1946 (Belfast, 1946), p. 3; City and County Borough of Belfast, Report of the Committee of Belfast Museums and Art Gallery: for Year Ending 31^st March, 1949 (Belfast, 1949), p. 3 ; City and County Borough of Belfast, Report of the Committee of Belfast Museums and Art Gallery: for Year Ending 31^st March 1952 (Belfast, 1952), pp. 4–5.

¹³ City and County Borough of Belfast, Report of the Committee of Belfast Museums and Art Gallery: For Year Ending 31 st March, 1949 (Belfast, 1949), p. 3.

¹⁴ Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery, The Museum in Pictures: Museum & Art Gallery, Stranmillis, Belfast, Souvenir (1929–1954): Illustrated Souvenir to Commemorate the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Opening of the Museum and Art Gallery, Stranmillis, Belfast, in the Summer of 1929 (Belfast, 1954), p. 15.

¹⁵ Interview with Ann Gorman, Belfast, 23 Oct. 2014.

¹⁶ Yorkshire Regional Association of the National Association of Youth Service Officers, Adventuring with Youth in Yorkshire, 1960 (1960), p. 22.

¹⁷ Shaw, Sheffield Cinemas, p. 85.

¹⁸ Interview with David Ludlam, Sheffield, 25 June 2014.

¹⁹ Kinematograph Year Book 1958 (London, 1958), pp. 336–8.

²⁰ Interview with David Ludlam, Sheffield, 25 June 2014.

²¹ Interview with Andrew and Carol Palmer (pseudonyms), Sheffield, 7 Aug. 2015.

²² Interview with Bill Allerton, Sheffield, 27 July 2015.

²³ Interview with David Ludlam, Sheffield, 25 June 2014.

²⁴ Interview with Margaret Bruton (b. Sheffield), Belfast, 20 Oct. 2014.

²⁵ Interview with Helen Carroll, Sheffield, 23 July 2015.

²⁶ Darts, 5 March 1959.

²⁷ Interview with Robert Heathcote, Sheffield, 30 July 2015.

²⁸ Interview with Noel Spence, Comber, Co. Down, 26 March 2014.

²⁹ The Economist, 1 Jan. 1955.

³⁰ Darts, 10 Oct. 1957; interview with Mike Higginbottom, Sheffield, 20 Aug. 2015; interview with Ann and Bob Slater, Sheffield, 28 July 2015.

³¹ The Star, 24 Jan. 1958.

³² Interview with Noel Spence, Comber, Co. Down, 26 March 2014; The Gown, 12 May 1955.

³³ Kinematograph Weekly, 29 Jan. 1959.

³⁴ Belfast Telegraph, 20 Dec. 1958.

³⁵ Belfast Telegraph, 25 May 1963; Belfast Telegraph, 7 Nov. 1964.

³⁶ Belfast Telegraph, 10 Nov. 1964.

³⁷ W. Hampton, Democracy and Community in Sheffield (London, 1970), p. 36.

³⁸ Sheffield Local Studies Library, minutes of Sheffield City Council Watch Committee, 21 Apr. 1955, p. 713; minutes of Sheffield City Council Watch Committee, 21 July 1955, p. 178; minutes of Sheffield City Council Watch Committee, 1956, p. 528; minutes of Sheffield City Council Watch Committee, 16 May 1957, p. 251.

³⁹ The Star, 17 Nov. 1961.

⁴⁰ Government of Northern Ireland General Register Office, Census of Population 1961: Belfast County Borough (Belfast, 1963), p. xxvii.

⁴¹ PRONI, LA/7/3/E/9/24, Belfast Corporation General Purposes Committee, correspondence with the Belfast Pakistani Association, 1963.

⁴² Interview with Ann Gorman, Belfast, 23 Oct. 2014.

⁴³ Interview with George Brown, Belfast, 26 Aug. 2014.

⁴⁴ Interview with Mike Higginbottom, Sheffield, 20 Aug. 2015.

⁴⁵ Interview with Derek Yeardley, Sheffield, 25 June 2014.

⁴⁶ Interview with Margaret Mitchell, Sheffield, 27 June 2014.

⁴⁷ Interview with George Brown, Belfast, 26 Aug. 2014.

⁴⁸ Interview with Norman Campbell, Belfast, 4 June 2014.

⁴⁹ Kinematograph Year Book 1958 (London, 1958), pp. 509–10.

⁵⁰ Belfast Telegraph, 26 Jan. 1957.

⁵¹ The Star, 21 Nov. 1960.

⁵² R. Shail, The Children’s Film Foundation: History and Legacy (London, 2016), p. 145.

⁵³ Belfast Telegraph, 24 Sept. 1952.

⁵⁴ Interview with Derek Yeardley, Sheffield, 25 June 2014.

⁵⁵ Interview with David McConnell, Belfast, 24 Sept. 2014.

⁵⁶ The Star, 22 Oct. 1954; Belfast Telegraph, 15 Nov. 1956.

⁵⁷ The Star, 5 Feb. 1960.

⁵⁸ The Star, 12 March 1953.

⁵⁹ Government of Northern Ireland, Juvenile Delinquency, Interim Report of the Northern Ireland Child Welfare Council (Belfast, 1954), p. 11.

⁶⁰ Interview with George Brown, Belfast, 26 Aug. 2014.

⁶¹ Interview with Noel Spence, Comber, Co. Down, 26 March 2014.

⁶² M. P. Carter, Home, School and Work: a Study of the Education and Employment of Young People in Britain (Oxford, 1962), p. 291.

⁶³ Carter, Home, School and Work, p. 297.

⁶⁴ Carter, Home, School and Work, p. 298.

⁶⁵ C. Langhamer, The English in Love: the Intimate Story of an Emotional Revolution (Oxford, 2013), p. 113.

⁶⁶ Interview with Malcolm Ayton, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

⁶⁷ Carter, Home, School and Work, p. 298.

⁶⁸ Belfast Telegraph, 14 Feb. 1958.

⁶⁹ Interview with Norman Campbell, Belfast, 4 June 2014.

⁷⁰ The Star, 12 Sept. 1960.

⁷¹ Carter, Home, School and Work, p. 299.

⁷² Interview with Ann and Bob Slater, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

⁷³ Interview with Noel Spence, Comber, Co. Down, 26 March 2014.

⁷⁴ Belfast Telegraph, 6 Dec. 1952.

⁷⁵ Interview with Sylvia Fearn, Sheffield, 1 July 2014.

⁷⁶ M. W. Hodges and C. S. Smith, ‘The Sheffield estate’, in Neighbourhood and Community: an Enquiry into Social Relationships on Housing Estates in Liverpool and Sheffield, ed. T. S. Simey (Liverpool, 1954), pp. 79–134, at p. 93.

⁷⁷ Interview with Bill Allerton, Sheffield, 27 July 2015.

⁷⁸ Interview with Helen Carroll, Sheffield, 23 July 2015.

⁷⁹ Interview with Pete and Valerie Lowe, Sheffield, 28 July 2015.

⁸⁰ A. Horn, Juke Box Britain: Americanisation and Youth Culture, 1945–60 (Manchester, 2010), p. 108.

⁸¹ R. Vinen, National Service: a Generation in Uniform 1945–1963 (London, 2014), p. xxvi.

⁸² Interview with Alan Lockwood, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

⁸³ Interview with Valerie and Pete Lowe, Sheffield, 28 July 2015.

⁸⁴ Screen Advertising Association, Spotlight on the Cinema Audience (London, 1962), p. 5.

⁸⁵ Screen Advertising Association, Spotlight on the Cinema Audience, p. 7.

⁸⁶ The Star, 3 May 1957.

⁸⁷ Belfast Telegraph, 24 Oct. 1957.

⁸⁸ The Star, 6 Jan. 1960.

⁸⁹ Belfast Telegraph, 15 Sept. 1962.

⁹⁰ Belfast Telegraph, 9 Dec. 1952.

⁹¹ Interview with Andrew and Carol Palmer (pseudonyms), Sheffield, 7 Aug. 2015.

⁹² Interview with Rosemary Topham, Sheffield, 17 Aug. 2015.

⁹³ J. Spraos, The Decline of the Cinema: an Economist’s Report (London, 1962), p. 129.

⁹⁴ S. Hanson, From Silent Screen to Multi-Screen: a History of Cinema Exhibition in Britain Since 1896 (Manchester, 2007), p. 101.

⁹⁵ Interview with Sylvia Fearn, Sheffield, 1 July 2014.

⁹⁶ D. Field and D. G. Neill, A Survey of New Housing Estates in Belfast (Belfast, 1957), pp. 60–3.

⁹⁷ Hodges and Smith, ‘The Sheffield estate’, p. 93.

⁹⁸ Hodges and Smith, ‘The Sheffield estate’, p. 88.

⁹⁹ A. Kuhn, ‘What to do with cinema memory?’, in Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies, ed. R. Maltby, D. Biltereyst and P. Meers (Chichester, 2011), pp. 85–97, at p. 85.

¹⁰⁰ M. Jones, ‘Memories of British cinema’, in The Routledge Companion to British Cinema History, ed. I. Q. Hunter, L. Porter and J. Smith (Abingdon, 2017), pp. 397–405, at p. 400.

¹⁰¹ T. Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: the State, Propaganda and Consensus (London, 2001), p. 32.

¹⁰² M. Jones, ‘Memories of British cinema’, pp. 397–405.

¹⁰³ Interview with Norman Campbell, Belfast, 4 June 2014.

¹⁰⁴ Interview with Bill Allerton, Sheffield, 27 July 2015.

¹⁰⁵ Belfast Telegraph, 9 June 1954.

¹⁰⁶ Belfast Telegraph, 15 June 1954.

¹⁰⁷ Belfast Telegraph, 28 Feb. 1955.

¹⁰⁸ Horn, Juke Box Britain; M. Glancy, Hollywood and the Americanization of Britain: from the 1920s to the Present (London, 2014); J. Lacey, ‘Seeing through happiness: Hollywood musicals and the construction of the American dream in Liverpool in the 1950s’, Journal of Popular British Cinema, ii (1999), 54–66; P. Swann, The Hollywood Feature Film in Postwar Britain (London, 1987).

¹⁰⁹ L. McCormick, Regulating Sexuality: Women in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland (Manchester, 2009), p. 152.

¹¹⁰ Interview with David Ludlam, Sheffield, 25 June 2014.

¹¹¹ Belfast Telegraph, 6 Dec. 1952.

¹¹² Interview with Sylvia Fearn, Sheffield, 1 July 2014.

¹¹³ Horn, Juke Box Britain, p. 158.

¹¹⁴ Interview with Jean and Terence McVeigh, 2 Apr. 2014.

¹¹⁵ Interview with Malcolm Ayton, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

¹¹⁶ Hanson, From Silent Screen to Multi-Screen, p. 109.

¹¹⁷ J. Stacey, Star Gazing: Hollywood Cinema and Female Spectatorship (London, 1994), p. 94.

¹¹⁸ Interview with Anne Connolly, Belfast, 28 May 2015.

¹¹⁹ Interview with Ann and Bob Slater, Sheffield, 28 July 2015.

¹²⁰ J. Ramsden, ‘Refocusing “the people’s war”: British war films of the 1950s’, Journal of Contemporary History, xxxiii (1998), 35–63, at p. 45.

¹²¹ A. Eyles, Gaumont British Cinemas (London, 1996), p. 193.

¹²² Interview with Malcolm Ayton, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

¹²³ Interview with Alan Lockwood, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

¹²⁴ Interview with Ann Gorman, Belfast, 23 Oct. 2014.

¹²⁵ P. Summerfield, ‘Public memory or public amnesia? British women of the Second World War in popular films of the 1950s and 1960s’, Journal of British Studies, xlviii (2009), 935–57.

¹²⁶ Interview with Ann Gorman, Belfast, 23 Oct. 2014.

¹²⁷ Interview with Ann and Bob Slater, Sheffield, 28 July 2015.

¹²⁸ Interview with Andrew and Carol Palmer (pseudonyms), Sheffield, 7 Aug. 2015.

¹²⁹ Kinematograph Weekly, 13 July 1950.

¹³⁰ Interview with Sylvia Fearn, Sheffield, 1 July 2014.

¹³¹ Kinematograph Weekly, 1 June 1954.

¹³² Interview with Norman Campbell, Belfast, 30 May 2014.

¹³³ The Star, 29 March 1962.

¹³⁴ The Star, 30 Jan. 1961.

¹³⁵ Interview with John Mitchell, Sheffield, 8 July 2014.

¹³⁶ Interview with Andrew and Carol Palmer (pseudonyms), Sheffield, 7 Aug. 2015.

¹³⁷ Interview with Andrew and Carol Palmer (pseudonyms), Sheffield, 7 Aug. 2015.

¹³⁸ Interview with Bill Gatt, Belfast, 18 March 2014.

¹³⁹ Northern Whig, 5 Nov. 1948.

¹⁴⁰ Northern Whig, 17 Dec. 1957.

¹⁴¹ Kinematograph Weekly, 13 Jan. 1944.

¹⁴² McClay Library, minutes of Belfast Corporation Police Committee, 2 June 1949, p. 13.

¹⁴³ McClay Library, minutes of Belfast Corporation Police Committee, 16 June 1949, p. 13.

¹⁴⁴ McClay Library, minutes of the Belfast Corporation Police Committee, 21 Aug. 1952, p. 240.

¹⁴⁵ J. Doherty, Standing Room Only: Memories of Belfast Cinemas (Belfast, 1997), p. 85.

¹⁴⁶ Sheffield Local Studies Library, minutes of Sheffield City Council Watch Committee, 21 Nov. 1946, p. 30; 17 Nov. 1955, p. 432.

¹⁴⁷ In 1959, Sheffield City Council changed the regulations so that children under school-leaving age were allowed entry ‘when accompanied by and in the charge of a parent or some other person who appear to have attained the age of sixteen years’ (Sheffield Local Studies Library, minutes of Sheffield City Council Watch Committee, 20 May. 1959, pp 49–50).

¹⁴⁸ The Star, 2 Jan. 1953.

¹⁴⁹ The Star, 9 July 1960.

¹⁵⁰ Interview with Alan Lockwood, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

¹⁵¹ The Star, 7 May 1954.

¹⁵² The Star, 25 Apr. 1959; The Star, 11 Dec. 1959.

¹⁵³ Belfast Telegraph, 3 Sept. 1960.

¹⁵⁴ P. Glen, ‘“Exploiting the daydreams of teenagers”: press reports and memories of cinema-going by young people in 1960s Britain’, Media History, xxv (2019), 355–70.

¹⁵⁵ The Star, 14 March 1955.

¹⁵⁶ The Star, 9 Sept. 1955.

¹⁵⁷ The Star, 1 Nov. 1955.

¹⁵⁸ The Star, 12 Sept. 1960.

¹⁵⁹ The Star, 30 Jan. 1961.

¹⁶⁰ Interview with Alan Lockwood, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

¹⁶¹ Interview with Ann and Bob Slater, Sheffield, 28 July 2015.

¹⁶² Interview with John Mitchell, Sheffield, 8 July 2014.

¹⁶³ Interview with John Campbell, Belfast, 30 May 2014.

¹⁶⁴ D. Fowler, Youth Culture in Modern Britain, c.1920–c.1970 (Basingstoke, 2008), p. 109.

¹⁶⁵ Kinematograph Weekly, 27 Sept. 1956.

¹⁶⁶ Kinematograph Weekly, 27 Sept. 1956; Irish Press, 20 Sept. 1956.

¹⁶⁷ Belfast Telegraph, 28 Oct.1958.

¹⁶⁸ Kinematograph Weekly, 7 July 1960; Belfast Telegraph, 3 Sept. 1960.

¹⁶⁹ Belfast Telegraph, 3 Sept. 1960.

¹⁷⁰ The Star, 6 Sept. 1957.

¹⁷¹ Screen Advertising Association, Spotlight on the Cinema Audience, p. 16.

¹⁷² Study Group of the Public Health Department, ‘Smoking habits of school children’, British Journal of Preventative & Social Medicine, xiii (1959), 1–4.

¹⁷³ Interview with David McConnell, Belfast, 24 Sept. 2014.

¹⁷⁴ Interview with Malcolm Ayton, Sheffield, 24 July 2015.

¹⁷⁵ Interview with Sylvia Fearn, Sheffield, 1 July 2014.

¹⁷⁶ Interview with David Ludlam, Sheffield, 25 June 2014.

¹⁷⁷ Belfast Telegraph, 29 Nov. 1957.

¹⁷⁸ The Star, 6 Sept. 1957.

¹⁷⁹ The Star, 27 March 1962.

¹⁸⁰ Kinematograph Weekly, 3 May 1962; The Star, 1 Dec. 1962.

¹⁸¹ Kinematograph Weekly, 6 Dec. 1962.

¹⁸² The Star, 7 May 1964.

¹⁸³ Kinematograph Weekly, 26 Sept. 1957.

¹⁸⁴ Hansard (Northern Ireland), Parliamentary Debates, xlv (29 Oct. 1959), cols. 449–50.

¹⁸⁵ Hansard (NI), xlv (29 Oct. 1959), cols. 451–2.

¹⁸⁶ Hansard (NI), xlv (29 Oct. 1959), cols. 453.

¹⁸⁷ Kinematograph Weekly, 28 Feb. 1952.

¹⁸⁸ Interview with Norman Campbell, Belfast, 4 June 2014.

¹⁸⁹ Interview with Margaret McDonaugh, Belfast, 18 May 2015.

¹⁹⁰ Interview with John Campbell, Belfast, 30 May 2014.

¹⁹¹ Interview with David McIlwaine, Cultra, Co. Down, 9 July 2015.

¹⁹² Interview with Noel Spence, Comber, Co. Down, 26 March 2014.

¹⁹³ P. Smyth, Changing Times: Life in 1950s Northern Ireland (Newtonwards, 2012), p. 73.

¹⁹⁴ A. Bryson ‘“Whatever you say, say nothing”: researching memory and identity in mid-Ulster, 1945–1969’, Oral History, xxxv (2007), 45–65, at p. 51.

¹⁹⁵ Jancovich, Faire and Stubbings, The Place of the Audience, p. 172.

¹⁹⁶ Belfast Telegraph, 26 Feb. 1954.

¹⁹⁷ Belfast Telegraph, 2 March 1954.

¹⁹⁸ Hansard (Northern Ireland), Parliamentary Debates, xxxviii (4 March 1954), cols. 1167–70.

¹⁹⁹ Belfast Telegraph, 16 May 1964.

²⁰⁰ Interview with Mike Higginbottom, Sheffield, 20 Aug. 2015.

²⁰¹ Interview with Ernest Walker, Belfast, 26 Nov. 2014.

²⁰² The Star, 30 Apr. 1955.

²⁰³ Interview with Bill Allerton, Sheffield, 27 July 2015.

²⁰⁴ Interview with Margaret Mitchell, Sheffield, 27 June 2014.

²⁰⁵ R. Maltby, ‘New cinema histories’, in Explorations in New Cinema History: Approaches and Case Studies, ed. R. Maltby, D. Biltereyst and P. Meers (Chichester, 2011), pp. 3–40, at p. 14.

²⁰⁶ M. Elliott, Hearthlands: a Memoir of the White City Housing Estate in Belfast (Belfast, 2017), p. x.

²⁰⁷ D. Biltereyst, R. Maltby and P. Meers, ‘Reflections and comments: introduction’, in The Routledge Companion to New Cinema History, ed. D. Biltereyst, R. Maltby and P. Meers (Abingdon, 2019), pp. 13–5, at p. 13.

²⁰⁸ Ercole, Treveri Gennari and O’Rawe, ‘Mapping cinema memories’, p. 67.