Conclusion

By assessing the people who visited the cinema and the places where they watched films, this book set out to examine and assess regional variations in cinema’s decline across the United Kingdom from the end of the Second World War to the mid 1960s. One of its central aims has been to investigate the importance of place, alongside age, class and gender in shaping the cinema-going experience. In paying close attention to the detail provided by case studies of Belfast and Sheffield, it becomes clear that post-war patterns of cinema attendance were more heterogeneous than scholars such as Hanson, Harper and Porter have previously suggested. The methodological approach adopted in this research is a response to the spatial turn of new cinema history and the call for more empirical work that connects detailed regional findings of cinema-going to broader national developments. This investigation also contributes to the wider social and cultural history of post-war Britain, showing the connection between place, space and changing leisure habits over a period of twenty years.

Between 1945 and 1965, the nature of cinemas and the social function of cinema-going changed dramatically. Richard Farmer’s study of wartime cinema-going showed the impact of the war on leisure habits in the immediate post-war years.¹ Restrictions on other leisure activities inflated cinema attendance and it continued to play a crucial role in the social lives of millions. Though admissions fell from 1948 onwards, they did not fall below their 1939 level until 1957. From 1957 to 1965 UK cinema admissions then fell dramatically from 915 million to 327 million. This decline did not occur uniformly. The fact that Northern Ireland had higher unemployment rates and lower average wages than other UK regions meant that cinema attendance remained buoyant for longer in Belfast than in Sheffield. This book confirms that the arrival of television was significant in cinema’s decline, yet while the 1953 coronation certainly accelerated the growth of television ownership, it was also an important cinematic event that complemented and enhanced the television broadcast. The growth of television ownership should be viewed alongside a range of social and economic factors, all of which were place specific and geographically diverse. In the 1950s, higher wages, greater amounts of disposable income and improved housing led people away from ‘traditional’ commercial leisure activities, such as the cinema, to home-centred activities, such as television viewing. The young urban working class were the most frequent cinema-goers, but the range of social spaces available to them expanded and there was a greater range of consumer goods for them to spend their money on. Simultaneously, greater amounts of disposable income, coupled with increased car ownership and a reduction in public transport services, meant that some citizens preferred to spend their leisure time further from home.

By 1965, cinema-going was more of an occasional activity than a habitual practice. People expected more from programmes and the content of a film became a greater determinant of attendance. As the regional controller for Star Cinemas stated in 1962: ‘Everybody wanted films after the war, whatever they were like. It has never been the same since 1950’.² There were generational differences in cinema’s decline and it became a more youth-oriented leisure activity. In the first chapter, an investigation of cinema’s changing social role during the life cycle showed how its function and meaning changed from childhood to adolescence and into adulthood. Inner-city and suburban cinemas generally served their local communities and their closure made it difficult for those with family commitments and financial constraints to attend. Adolescents, meanwhile, spent greater amounts of their disposable income to travel to city centre cinemas as they provided social spaces for courtship free from the prying eyes of friends and relatives.

This book has shown that perhaps the most significant change of this period was to the place of cinemas in the built environment, a factor determined to a great extent by the actions of the large cinema chains. In 1945, cinemas were a visible presence in most parts of Belfast and Sheffield. By 1965, closures meant that there was a greater concentration of city centre cinemas and the pre-war cinemas that remained were often seen as uncomfortable and outdated relics. In the mid 1950s, the Rank Organisation increased its presence in Belfast by purchasing cinemas from local chains. In the early 1960s it closed many of its smaller inner-city and suburban cinemas, embarking on a programme of modernization and renovation of key sites. The fact that cinema attendance remained strong in Belfast encouraged independent exhibitors to construct cinemas to serve new housing estates on the outskirts of the city. Meanwhile, in Sheffield Rank adopted a different policy and, in 1956, constructed a large city centre cinema on a site it had purchased before the Second World War. Many of Sheffield’s interwar housing estates were served by existing cinemas and exhibitors were unwilling to invest in new sites in suburban areas. ABC adopted a similar policy to Rank and constructed a new city-centre cinema in 1961. As cinema attendance declined, exhibitors had to do more to attract patrons and there was a greater focus on a more comfortable experience in better equipped buildings. In both cities, exhibitors emphasized the advantages of cinema over television through the introduction of new technologies such as CinemaScope. Reports of new cinemas highlighted the comfort, design and technological superiority over their pre-war counterparts. Though these reports were often promotional tools for the cinemas, they show the extent that citizens’ expectations of leisure time had increased. Upmarket city-centre cinemas were the ones best placed to cope with these developments.

The use of oral testimony reveals that many aspects of the cinema-going experience were recalled in both Belfast and Sheffield, and residents no doubt shared similar experiences to cinema-goers in other industrial cities such as Birmingham, Cardiff, Dublin and Glasgow. In both cities a range of factors influenced cinema attendance, including accessibility, affordability, programming, relationships, publicity, travel, weather, work and domestic responsibilities. There was a clear hierarchy of cinemas and patrons made distinctions between local ‘fleapits’ and city centre ‘picture palaces’. There were also intra-cinema distinctions as separate price categories and entrances meant that patrons remained segregated into the 1960s. In contrast, dance halls were more democratic spaces, with one admission price, one entrance and no delineation of patrons along socio-economic lines.³ Patrons in both cities recalled everyday aspects of audience behaviour, such as smoking and queuing, and more conspicuous acts of rowdyism and misbehaviour. Cinemas were also recalled as sites of consumption and the purchase of ancillary items such as sweets, chocolate and ice cream was central to the cinema-going experience.

This research, however, has demonstrated that it is the variations in cinema-going customs between residents of Belfast and Sheffield that offer the greatest insight into the geographical diversity of leisure habits in the United Kingdom. Cinema-going was often determined at the local level by the range of cinemas available in communities and neighbourhoods. An examination of areas such as Heeley or the Holyland shows the importance of communal relationships and the close connection of people to their surrounding district. Decisions made by local governments, such as Belfast Corporation’s refusal to permit Sunday opening, also affected cinema-going habits. There was no single cinema-going experience and patrons brought their own beliefs, values and experiences to each cinema trip. They were active consumers and displayed clear preferences for certain types of films. Though it was largely the same Hollywood fare that predominated in both cities, several films were disproportionately popular in either Belfast or Sheffield. The oral history testimony reveals the regionality of audience responses and it is apparent that Belfast cinema-goers had more distinct preferences than their Sheffield counterparts. Patrons reacted differently to British and American films and connected their memories to life experiences and the places where they lived. It is unsurprising therefore that Belfast cinema-goers displayed a preference for the small number of Irish-themed films that were shown during the period under review.

The most conspicuous difference between the two cities was the impact of Belfast’s cultural conservatism and sectarian divide on the cinema-going habits of its citizens. This book shows that social and religious divisions manifested themselves in aspects of audience behaviour, such as reactions to God Save the Queen at the end of the evening’s performance. Responses to the screening of The Conquest of Everest at the Strand showed the potential for divisions when mixed audiences were present. While social and geographical ties limited interaction between Catholics and Protestants, city centre cinemas were still largely shared leisure spaces. The segregated nature of many neighbourhoods meant that it was socioeconomic differences that were the most noticeable in local cinemas. While sectarian divisions meant that the exhibition of films such as Martin Luther were controversial, they did not prevent unionists from finding pleasure in The Quiet Man, or nationalists from enjoying the spectacle of the coronation in glorious Technicolor. These findings challenge dominant post-war narratives of Northern Ireland and provide a clearer picture of how wider social and economic changes impacted on leisure and social habits in Belfast.

The broad range of qualitative and quantitative sources used in this study have allowed for a detailed exploration of exhibition, programming and audience habits. Many business records and box-office figures of individual cinemas no longer remain, but those that do exist provide tangible evidence of programming strategies and film popularity in regional contexts. By combining these records with other sources it becomes clear that patterns of attendance were shaped by a range of factors other than the films themselves, such as the weather, the day of the week or the occurrence of public holidays. Cinema attendance was temperamental and responsive to local developments. An influenza epidemic could deter patrons or a rival attraction could quickly draw them away. The range of factors that drew patrons to the cinema were often interconnected and the example of Captain Boycott shows the difficulty in disentangling the attraction of the cinema programme from the time and date of exhibition.

This book’s use of existing sources in new ways, such as the works of post-war sociologists, offers new ways to link local patterns of cinema attendance to work, housing and leisure patterns. Local newspapers such as the Belfast Telegraph and the Sheffield Star help us to understand the spatial elements of cinema’s decline as they offered different reasons for cinema closures and discussed these factors at different times. By drawing upon newspapers and trade journals in conjunction with ‘bottom-up’ testimony gathered from oral history interviews, this book has revealed the contrast between industry perspectives and the experiences of ordinary cinema-goers. This combination of sources also shows how the decline in attendance was understood, experienced and perceived in relation to space and place. The oral history testimony presented here shares characteristics with memories gathered by new cinema historians such as Matthew Jones and Annette Kuhn. Recollections of individual films were limited as interviewees emphasized the spatial and social elements of cinema-going and its connection to everyday life. This testimony does not provide a transparent view of the past and there were many aspects of audience behaviour that went unmentioned in the oral history interviews. Newspaper reports, for instance, frequently allude to sexual activity. In the work of Jancovich et al., the authors noted that memories of courtship were both ‘positive and negative – both as a place of sexual awakening or as a place of sexual threat or harassment’.⁴ While almost all the interviewees recalled the cinema as an important courtship venue, many did not expand beyond this. The fact that almost all the interviewees chose to identify themselves may have limited the amount of information they wished to reveal on the subject of sexual activity. There was also a reluctance, and perhaps timidity, on the part of the author to probe too far on the subject of sex in interviews with an older generation that were advertised as discussions of cinemas and cinema-going.

Many of the book’s themes could be productively explored further. In his study of wartime cinema-going, Farmer dedicated a chapter to the men and women who worked in cinemas and ‘who contributed to the production of an experience that was central to many millions of people every day’.⁵ Where cinema employees have been considered in this book, the focus has been on how they provided a service to patrons and a thorough examination of cinema staff is an area for future research, especially as the number of staff employed fell from 78,981 in 1950 to 48,100 in 1961.⁶ What happened to the managers, commissionaires, usherettes and projectionists who were also victims of cinema closures?⁷ The records of Entertainments Duty are extant for many cinemas in Northern Ireland and there is scope for an economic history of cinemas that considers the contrast between cinemas in urban and rural locations, and which would build on current work on cinema-going in smaller towns.⁸ These could also be compared to cinemas in the Republic of Ireland and further afield. In this book, council minutes have been deployed to show how local authorities regulated the cinema-going experience. They could, however, be used to explore regulation and censorship more extensively. Local newspaper reports reveal the high level of criminal activity in cinemas. These crimes include assault and petty theft by patrons, safe robberies during closed hours and exhibitors who were prosecuted for failure to comply with regulations. While examples of these crimes have been used in this book there is greater scope to assess the extent that cinema provided a locus for criminal activity, the role of exhibitors in preventing crime and the responses of the police and local authorities.

The downward curve in admissions continued from 1965 onwards. In Sheffield, cinema closures continued throughout the 1960s and from 1966 to 1969 a further four cinemas shut their doors. In the same period, UK cinema attendance fell from 289 million to 215 million and many venues were converted into dance halls, bowling alleys and bingo halls. The relative power of ABC and Rank increased and by 1965 they operated more than two-fifths of cinema seats. Many cinemas were subdivided and, in 1969, the Sheffield Gaumont became Rank’s fifth two-screen cinema.⁹ In Yorkshire and Humberside, cinema admissions fell from 20.6 million in 1966 to 7.5 million in 1975, and to 3.5 million in 1984.¹⁰ The Odeon and the ABC closed in 1971 and 1988 respectively. In Belfast, the Apollo’s closure in 1962 marked the end of the first wave of cinema closures, though five more cinemas closed from 1966 to 1967. The Troubles then hastened the decline of cinema-going as seventeen cinemas closed from 1969 to 1977. Civil disturbances led Rank to pull out of Northern Ireland in 1974 and in September 1977, the ABC (Ritz), the New Vic (Royal Hippodrome/Odeon) and the Curzon were damaged by the IRA in a multiple firebomb attack.¹¹

In many of the oral history interviews, participants reflected on their experiences in light of subsequent changes in the cities where they lived. While the majority of Sheffield interviewees understandably displayed nostalgia for former cinemas, there were many who viewed their demise as an inevitable part of post-war economic and social changes. David Ludlam, for instance, believed that cinemas:

Local press reports also expressed similar sentiments. In May 1962, journalist Anthony Tweedale claimed that:

These examples show that, for many people who lived during the period under review, the closure of outdated cinemas was simply a result of changing social habits. The evidence presented here, however, paints a more complicated picture linked to the broader social, cultural and economic developments of the United Kingdom.

By placing the leisure habits of Belfast residents in a broader geographical context, this book shows that the period under review was more than an antecedent to the Troubles. Although the interviews focused on the immediate post-war years, interviewees often discussed this period in relation to the later conflict. Noel Spence commented that cinemas:

Brian Hanna added that:

Belfast underwent many of the same social and economic changes as other industrial cities in the twenty years following the Second World War. This testimony, however, shows that cinema’s decline is popularly understood as part of a broader chronology incorporating the Troubles.

In 1945, cinema was the UK’s foremost commercial leisure activity, providing accessible and affordable entertainment to millions of citizens. As the nation moved from austerity to affluence, social habits changed and cinema was forced to compete with a range of other activities. By 1965, there were still over six million weekly cinema admissions, yet cinema was no longer the ubiquitous leisure activity. The closure of many cinemas meant that it was no longer a publicly visible part of communities, neighbourhoods and cities. As independent exhibitors fell by the wayside and large chains increased their share of the market, venues became increasingly uniform. By following the spatial turn in new cinema history to trace these developments, this research foregrounds the importance of place in shaping leisure habits and cinema cultures. The use of detailed case studies adopted here provides one way for new cinema history practitioners to connect local and national developments, and to investigate geographical variations in cinema habits.

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¹ R Farmer, Cinemas and Cinema-Going in Wartime Britain: the Utility Dream Palace (Manchester, 2016).

² Sheffield Telegraph, 24 May 1962.

³ J. Nott, Going to the Palais: a Social and Cultural History of Dancing and Dance Halls in Britain, 1918–1960 (Oxford, 2015), p. 306.

⁴ M. Jancovich, L. Faire and S. Stubbings, The Place of the Audience: Cultural Geographies of Film Consumption (London, 2003), p. 173.

⁵ Farmer, Cinemas and Cinema-going in Wartime Britain, p. 127.

⁶ Kinematograph and Television Year Book (London, 1963), p. 446.

⁷ The subject of post-war female projectionists has received attention in R. Wallace, R. Harrison and C. Brunsdon, ‘Women in the box: female projectionists in post-war British cinemas’, Journal of British Cinema and Television, xv (2018), 46–65.

⁸ M. Jones, ‘Far from swinging London: memories of non-urban cinema-going in 1960s Britain’, in Cinema Beyond the City: Small-Town and Rural Film Culture in Europe, ed. J. Thissen and C. Zimmerman (London, 2016), pp. 117–32.

⁹ Cinema Theatre Association Archive, Clifford Shaw, The Regent.

¹⁰ B. Doyle, ‘The geography of cinemagoing in Great Britain, 1934–1994: a comment’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, xxiii (2003), 59–71, at p. 63.

¹¹ M. Open, Fading Lights, Silver Screen: a History of Belfast Cinemas (Antrim, 1985), pp. 15–16.

¹² Interview with David Ludlam, Sheffield, 25 June 2014.

¹³ Sheffield Telegraph, 24 May 1962.

¹⁴ Interview with Noel Spence, Comber, Co. Down, 26 March 2014.

¹⁵ Interview with Brian Hanna, Belfast, 5 May 2015.