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The History of Cinema Exhibition in Exeter 1895 - 1918

Alex Rankin

(The text of this dissertation is copyright Alex Rankin, 2001. No part of it may be reproduced without the permission of the author.)

Chapter Four:

Official Regulation and the Purpose-built Cinema (1909–1914)

...the early purpose-built cinemas were not built in great numbers before the Cinema Act, 1909, which became operative on I January, 1910…(103)

Official regulation of the cinema had been somewhat lacking in its first few years. In 1909 this was set to change. In Exeter alone the council began to take an interest in film showings in July when they drew up a sub-committee to consider and report on cinematograph fires.(104) Since there had been no fires in Exeter picture presentations this clearly shows that the Exeter authorities were taking an interest in the general, national concern. As well as fires, another concern for the authorities was the number of children attending the pictures. In October the Watch Committee addressed this by reminding those present that previous legislation regarding the safety of children at entertainments also applied to cinematograph performances and that stricter checks would be made to ensure that the performances conformed to these constraints. Thus, all film presentations would have to have adult attendants present whenever the audience was comprised mainly of children, had more than a hundred children in the audience or when a significant number of the seats were accessed by stairs.(105) Whilst these local motions show that the cinematograph in Exeter was now a significant part of the local society, they probably had little bearing on the way that the film presentations were run. However, the Cinematograph Act of 1909 was a far more significant piece of legislature and had a massive impact on actual film presentations. This Act, which came into effect on January 1st, 1910 ruled that:

An exhibition of pictures or other optical effects by means of a cinematograph, or other similar apparatus, for the purpose of which inflammable films are used, shall not be given unless the regulations made by the Secretary of State for securing safety are complied with...(106)

The regulations were all geared towards the safety of the patrons should a fire break out and included details that ensured that the projector was kept separate from the audience with a fire-proof casing. Whilst the Act itself was purely concerned with physical safety, it was accepted that it made allowances for individual councils to add their own regulations to it:

... licenses are granted by the local authorities who may also attach to them any reasonable conditions, not necessarily concerned with the safety of the audience.(107)

Exeter Council was one of the many Councils across the country who took advantage of this provision when, in April 1910, they – at the recommendation of the Sunday Defence Committee – used the license to prevent there being any film presentations on Sundays.(108) Whilst the film industry had welcomed the initial laws, Council actions like this were seen as unfair methods of virtual censorship that took the focus from physical safety and onto personal, moral values:

... the granting of six-day licenses shifted the centre of attention from the physical danger of fire to the superficially moral question of Sunday opening...(109)

With the Cinematograph Act in place, the Hippodrome was the first of the established Halls to apply for a license. This was granted in January 1910 after a number of small alterations were made to the building. Other Halls must have followed suit since in early 1910 the Barnfield Hall provided “Kinematography and Colour Photography”(110) and the Victoria Hall opened for its picture season again, this time as the “Victoria Hall Picture Palace”.(111)

Presumably the Act had forced these companies, like the Hippodrome, to make alterations in order to conform to the new regulations. However, the Cinematograph Act did more than just cause established film outlets to change the layout of their buildings since it also acted as a catalyst to the construction of purpose-built film venues:

Cinema owners had to spend more on their buildings and upon improving them, and the protection of the new Act proved to be an incentive to erect many more new purpose-built cinemas that could be advertised as complying with the new regulations.(112)

In Exeter the situation was no different with the first purpose-built cinema opening in August 1910. This cinema, The Empire Electric Theatre, seemed to have no problem in conforming to the necessary legislation:

The proprietors of the Empire Electric Theatre in High Street, having applied for a license under the Cinematograph Act, 1909, your Committee inspected the premises on 16th August, 1910, and the City Surveyor and City Electrical Engineer having certified that the buildings and apparatus are constructed and fixed in accordance with the regulations of the Secretary of State, the Committee granted a license subject to compliance with the Council’s conditions, the license to expire on the 31st December, 1910.(113)

The Empire was a small, white building with a large archway entrance topped by the slogan “You know one half of the world, we show you the other”. The building itself had previously been a cheap restaurant and although a new front had seemingly been added, it could not disguise the rather ordinary building behind it. This was not an unusual situation and large numbers of these simple venues were constructed across the country:

These early cinemas [1909–c. 1913] cannot be said to possess any particular architectural merit, and they were mostly plain halls with an ornate facade, derived from fairground presentation, simply stuck on the front.(114)

Inside, the Empire was rather narrow at just nineteen feet and had just over three hundred seats. The decoration inside of walls hung with tapestries, flowered alcoves either side of the screen and ‘tip-up’, cloth-covered seats was also part of a national trend aimed at pleasing the patrons:

More and more effort was spent in impressing the audience with comfort and elegance, and proving the pictures worthy of better-class audiences. Red plush and marble, ferns in brass pots and plenty of electric light were guaranteed to give that “air of cosy refinement”.(115)

The entrance to the theatre was beside the screen,(116) a layout that had found favour, despite the obvious problems of light interference when people arrived late or left early, since the introduction of the Cinematograph Act:

Quite a number of designers reversed the orientation of the building so that the audience entered either side of the screen with the projection room at the far end of the hall. Thus the projection room was isolated safely from the public entrance and exit...(117)

The Empire was not the only Exeter theatre to adopt this method of keeping patrons away from the potential danger. At the Theatre Royal, for example, the Cinematograph Act forced the inclusion of a permanent projection box. As well as constructing this, the Theatre also appears to have closed the exits to New North Road, London Inn Square and Longbrook Street, these being at the back of the hall by the cinematograph equipment. The result of this would presumably have been increased queuing at the close of a performance to get to the remaining exits, a solution that hardly seems to increase the safety standards.

As can be seen, the plan on the left, showing the addition of the cinematograph box, does not indicate that there are any exits onto New North Road, London Inn Square or Longbrook Street. Image from the City Theatre Fire collection in the Devon Record Office, and reproduced with their permission.

As with the previous years, newspaper advertising of cinema presentations was limited throughout 1910 with little more than the Victoria Hall shows gaining attention. Even the opening of the Empire apparently failed to merit mention in the Flying Post, a fact that could be explained by the Empire’s lack of advertisement in the paper.(118) Traditional policies in the newspaper industry meant that editorial space would often only be given to places that paid money, through advertising, to the paper.(119) ln 1911 this lack of information in the papers changed slightly. Poole’s Myriorama returned in February, this time to the Theatre Royal since the Victoria Hall was busy operating a roller-skating rink. Their advertisements promised the latest Bioscope pictures but these were not included in the reviews of the show. By the summer, the Empire must have decided to start a new advertising campaign since they took out a large advert in the Flying Post:

Quite why it took the Empire eleven months of operation before they advertised in the paper is difficult to say. Most likely, however, is that newspaper advertising would have represented a massive outlay for a small, new business and, as such, the owners could not justify it. Certainly other forms of advertising, such as handbills, posters and so on would have been employed and the apparent success of the Empire suggests that, initially at least, these were sufficient to fill the building. Another reason could lie with the fact that competition in the city was increasing. As well as the established Halls offering picture seasons, another cinema, the Franklin Picture Palace(120) on Fore Street, had opened a few months before(121) and was presumably a worry for the older venue. The information contained within the Empire’s advert seems to have been fairly standard; individual films were often not included simply because with the regular change of programme it would have meant substantially more work, and perhaps more cost. Almost exactly a year after the Empire first opened it closed for a week of cleaning and re-decoration. This fact was well advertised, presumably not to prevent disappointed patrons turning up to a closed theatre, but rather because in theatre advertising the public’s opinion of the establishment was seen to be as important as the programmes it provided:

... remember that your house is as well worthy of advertisement as your bills. Your house is a permanent feature. Films are transient. Take some of your advertising space to tell about your house.... Advertise all your features.(122)

Certainly advertisements after this week of cleaning kept to the same style as the earlier ones, but added that “The Empire is luxurious, warm, and comfortable”. Advertising this would make perfect sense since, at the time, “the commodity that most patrons wanted to buy from the exhibitor was not access to an individual film, but time in the auditorium”.(123) The more comfortable the auditorium then, the more customers a theatre could expect to attract.

In January 1912 the advertising campaign for the Empire stepped up again. In addition to their basic, front page advert, a brief listing began to appear in the ‘Local News’ section of the Flying Post that gave details of some of the films that would be screened that week. This appears to have been a popular tactic of the time, although the Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly did not see it as the best method:

Some managers do not change their display advertisement at all, but give a list of films as news items in another part of the paper, while others change their display every time they change the films. To our mind the latter course is the wiser.(124)

While the Kinematograph and Lantern Weekly may not have seen the wisdom in the Empire’s choice of advertising, it certainly does have benefits over the alternative when it is considered that more can be said in a news item than on an advert. Whilst the average film programme would not have needed more than a simple description as to whether the films were dramatic, comic, or so on, the exceptional films certainly benefited from the extra word allowance. Thus, in March, when the Empire featured a submarine film, the Flying Post could note the exceptional coincidence of the booking given that the Royal Navy submarine A3 had recently been raised following its sinking in February.(125) Likewise, in the wake of the Titanic disaster, the films at the Empire could be far more sensitively reviewed than an advert would have allowed:

A sober note is struck by the programme at the Electric Theatre this week. There is a series of scenes showing some of the Titanic’s survivors prior to and after their rescue, and an elaborate set depicts the work of bringing the sunken American battleship Maine to the surface and its final committal to deep water.(126)

Whilst the Empire in early 1912 dominated the advertising spaces of the Flying Post, it was certain not the only theatre to be offering films. Indeed, the Watch Committee’s report for January indicates that there was considerable competition:

Cinematograph licences have been renewed to 31st December, 1912, in respect of the following places:– Victoria Hall (upper hall), Queen’s Hall, Franklin Hall, Theatre Royal, Hippodrome, Empire Electric Theatre and Barnfield Hall.(127)

Obviously, most of these – with the exception of the Franklin and the Empire – were general-purpose halls that would not offer films all the time. However, many of them still offered “picture seasons” and with their large capacities these must have affected the smaller, purpose-built cinemas. This continued use of the established venues despite the presence of the new cinemas was part of a national trend:

As films became better and their attendant variety turns more elaborate, so public demand for venues to see the film shows far outstripped the supply. In the early days purpose-built cinemas were still not all that numerous, and hired or converted public halls were the most popular solution with the showmen. But it was nothing like as satisfactory an arrangement as using the existing theatres, with their ready made ‘fantasy’ atmosphere and sense of occasion...and comfortable seating for the patrons.(128)

Whilst the idea that the halls provided cinema programmes because the public demanded more screenings than the new cinemas could provide is a valid explanation, it fails to appreciate the driving force behind this process. The established halls, in Exeter at least, had noticed that the competition from the cinemas would adversely affect their own profits. In an attempt to counter this, they provided film programmes themselves and hoped that this would keep the customers coming to their venues. Seemingly then, the halls were not just looking to satisfy excess demand as Atwell implies, but rather were actively fighting the cinemas for the customers. At the Exeter Theatre Company’s annual report in 1912 this competition was made clear:

To meet the growing demand for moving pictures an iron-cased room has been fitted and a first-rate cinematograph apparatus provided out of income. The competition in this class of entertainment is a matter of serious concern to the management, and it has been found advantageous to meet it by providing exhibitions of the character demanded by the public at times when the Theatre would have been otherwise closed.(129)

Thus the Royal in the early part of 1912 offered a season of moving pictures that, according to the press, proved to be highly enjoyable. Interestingly, this occasional use of moving pictures and variety shows that the Royal had been adopting in recent years was apparently enough to so confuse a guide book publisher that they believed it to be the Hippodrome.(130) Seemingly, the Victoria Hall also provided a similar entertainment at the same time although this was not advertised or reviewed in the Flying Post. The management at the Victoria Hall ran into problems with their show, however, as it appears that their license did not cover the entire building and a new license had to be (belatedly) issued:

A Cinematograph License has been granted for the large room in the Victoria Hall. The room was used for cinematograph performances before the issue of the Council license and before the requirements of the Council Officials and the Home Office Regulations had been observed. Legal proceedings were taken for these offences, and fines of 20s. and 10s. against the Victoria Hall Company, and 10s. against the Cinematograph Company were imposed.(131)

What this does show is the two different approaches to offering films at established venues. The Theatre Royal purchased their own equipment whilst the Victoria Hall seemingly hired out their room to another company (and hence the fines for both the hall and the cinematograph company). Purchasing one’s own equipment obviously demanded a far higher initial outlay, but did mean that all profits went directly to that company. For the Victoria Hall this would probably not have been an attractive option since their profits were already declining significantly and a costly purchase would have meant a very low dividend for the shareholders.

In April 1912 it was announced in the Flying Post that there was soon to be another purpose built Exeter Cinema:

The City of Exeter Palaces, Ltd, a new company formed locally, has acquired Nos. 80 and 81, Fore Street, lately occupied by Messrs. Shephard and Co., for the purpose of a Picture Palace. The front will be reconstructed in the Georgian style and the building remodelled, the latest seating, heating, ventilation and safety arrangements being embodied.(132)

In response to this forthcoming cinema with its “remodelled” interior, the Empire seemingly updated its own equipment to ensure that it could compete, making sure in the process that patrons were aware of its new purchase:

The comfort of patrons has been extended by the installation of a new type of mural electric fan, which continuously rotates on its base to the extent of half a circle, and by thus radiating its energy over a larger area than is possible with a fixed axis, keeps the air of the Theatre in gentle motion.(133)

The details here are clearly made to impress and remind potential customers that the Empire was a comfortable place to watch films. The mere fact that the manager at the Empire felt the need to do this shows how intense the competition was beginning to be and the implication from this seems to be that the City of Exeter Palace opened around the time of the Empire’s upgrade. Certainly by August the Palace had already been granted its cinematograph license and had already set about improving its design, applying to the Council for permission to change their operating box.(134)

Towards the end of the year the Queen’s Hall also ran an extensive picture season that operated a publicity policy akin to that of the Empire. Although both the adverts and the ‘listings’ in the “Local News” of the Flying Post were sporadic throughout September, October and November they were comprehensive enough to show that the run was popular. To further their publicity the Queen’s Hall also ensured that their second anniversary screenings were well documented by running a “Grand Souvenir Night”. On this night “every Lady attending the evening performance will be presented with a souvenir” whilst every child who went to the matinee was also given a present.(135) Quite what these souvenirs were was not documented but the ruse – which was a popular one with film entrepreneurs across the country – seems to have worked as the press certainly covered the promotion well. Whilst the Queen’s Hall was operating a relatively high profile picture season, the King’s Hall was also showing pictures but without the publicity. Indeed, the only mention of it in the Flying Post comes in an article that showed that whilst cinema had an almost national appeal, there were still those who did not approve:

When Mr J. Tucker asked St Thomas Guardians yesterday to be allowed to take the children to a picture entertainment at the King’s Hall, Rev. O. J. Reichel opposed on the ground that they were rather overdoing entertainments for the children in the town.... The Chairman (Rev. F F Buckingham) said there was a more important matter.... Did they think it advisable, seeing there was so much scarlet fever in the city, that the children should go to a place of entertainment?(136)

The reasons given to prevent the children attending the show seem rather lame and there is the suspicion, seemingly even shared by the journalist who covered the article, that they are merely excuses to prevent the children attending moving pictures. Certainly children made up a considerable proportion of the Exeter audiences with the Empire finding it necessary in May 1912 to discontinue child discounts after six o’clock, presumably because so many were attending evening performances that their profits were suffering. This was the case across the country and the issues surrounding it were frequently raised. Indeed, just several months after the children had been refused permission to attend the King’s Hall an article appeared in The Times that suggested that the picture palaces were just another craze and, as such, were far from dangerous and deserved the patronage of people from all social backgrounds.(137) Coming from The Times this blatant approval of the cinemas must have caused a shock to its upper-class readership and within days a long letter in response was published.(138) This letter made it apparent that the picture shows were dangerous, most notably to children, and cited examples of crime directly occurring as a result of them, of children who had been too scared to walk home alone and of children who could not work in class as a result of having been up at the cinema the previous evening. Whilst some of the educated class were beginning to approve of the pictures (including, it seems, a large proportion of those in Exeter) there was always someone with rather dubious facts to counter them. With concerns over the suitability of the cinema for children it is perhaps not surprising that some cinema owners chose to avoid any possible confrontation. When the Queen’s Hall, for example, showed “Dante’s Infemo” in January 1913 – a film they saw as important enough to warrant additional advertisements – they avoided any potential trouble by banning anyone under the age of sixteen from attending.(139) With the theatres continuing to offer special prices for children, however, it was not long before the Council recognised that action needed to be taken. By May of the following year they agreed a resolution and sent it to the Home Secretary:

That having regard to the fact that Cinematograph Exhibitions are largely attended by children, this Committee is of the opinion that the time has arrived when there should be appointed by the Government an Official Censor (or Board of Censors) of cinematograph films, and when Statutory provisions should be made for the prevention of exhibition of any picture or film not authorised to be exhibited by such Censor or Board.(140)

Importantly, however, the Council did not choose to operate their own form of censorship under the allowances made by the Cinematograph Act. It would have been very easy for them to ban children altogether, or at least insist on certain programmes having an ‘adults only’ classification and yet they were prepared instead to monitor the situation without taking drastic action. This lack of a melodramatic response (with the exception of the Sunday closing amendment), which plagued exhibitors in some parts of the country, indicates that, on the whole, the Exeter officials were content with the way cinema operations were run. Whilst this is no guarantee that the officials were themselves regular patrons of the venues, they were well enough informed on the issue – indicating surely that they had attended at least a number of film presentations – to avoid making ‘high-brow’ criticism.

For most of 1913 the small, new cinemas seemed to avoid publicity and all mention of films in the Flying Post were in regard to the established venues, presumably, in part, as a result of the cinemas failing to advertise in the first place. For the established venues that had regularly used the Flying Post’s advertising columns this was not a problem. Thus the Theatre Royal’s picture season during the months of February, March, April and May was quite well documented, the Kinemacolor pictures and the largest screen in the city combining to form a popular entertainment. Likewise the pictures provided at the Queen’s Hall and the Victoria Hall were, whilst less frequently, sporadically mentioned in the press. The Victoria Hall at this time was, however, suffering from the competition. At their Annual Meeting in May, the directors of the Victoria Hall Company had to record a monetary loss for the first time in twenty years. The blame for this change in fortune was placed onto the other halls and picture palaces in the city:

The hall was suffering severely from the competition of other halls and places of amusement. Before the existence of those places the directors were able to let the Victoria Hall for two or three weeks at a time, but such lettings were now a thing of the past. With the Hippodrome and the picture palaces in the city, it did not pay a company to come to Exeter and take the hall for a long period. During the first few years cinematograph entertainments were popular the company reaped a good harvest, but special picture palaces interfered with that now.(141)

Even Poole’s Myriorama had chosen to move to the Hippodrome for the 1912/13 tour, a year that produced one of their most popular subjects in The Titanic:

If the competition was intense from the other places of entertainment then things hardly improved when a local chemist and Kodak supplier opened up a cinematograph hire service:

In reality, of course, this home entertainment would barely affect the cinemas, perhaps only occasionally meaning that a group – perhaps part of a school or society – would hire a machine instead of attending the theatre. What it did show, however, was that films had achieved a popularity, and a popularity with all members of society, large enough for a company to hire them out to individuals at a profit. Presumably the cost of hire was too great for the average working class family to employ a lanternist and his equipment for the evening, but it would not have been beyond the reach of the middle class. If the middle class were prepared to put a cinematograph into their living room, then it is not too hard to imagine that they would attend the cinema. Certainly the Empire had a balcony containing higher priced seats that would have allowed separation between the classes, just as they were kept apart at the legitimate theatre. Thus it is almost certain that not only had the Victoria Hall lost much of its working class audience to the cinema, but that the middle classes had gone with them. This situation was not limited to Exeter – although it seems that Exeter was particularly forward thinking in regard to this issue – and social acceptance of the cinema on a national scale had certainly begun:

Everything suggests that by 1913, with an unprecedented visit to the cinema by the then Prime Minister (the Liberal Asquith)... a decisive step had been taken in the fight for the creation of a socially mixed audience...(142)

With the problems encountered by the Victoria Hall presumably a factor with all general-purpose halls, the Queen’s Hall, despite its successful picture seasons, could not have been operating at a particularly high profit. This could well have been a major consideration behind the decision that prompted the hall’s managers to turn entirely to films and convert the building into a picture palace:

As exclusively announced in the Flying Post last week, the Queen’s Hall, Paris-Street, has been acquired for the purposes of a picture palace, to be known as the Palladium, where the well known Albany Ward films will be shown. The hall has been reseated and otherwise adapted to its new purpose and will be opened on Boxing Day, the pictures being interspersed with variety entertainments. There will be two performances each evening, at 7 and 9, and matinees will be given daily.(143)

The venture was an immediate success and the opening Boxing Day performances seem to have played to a full house. This surely indicates both that moving pictures were an established part of society and that they provided entertainment for the family to enjoy together since, presumably, people were not keen to attend without their relatives on such an important public holiday. The press were also impressed and the Flying Post gave the Palladium show one of the largest film reviews it had carried for several years:

There are several factors which tell heavily in its favour.... Mr Ward possesses the largest film circuit in the country, and the only one which owns and controls its own film-renting service and printing works, and his facilities for presenting the finest films are unsurpassed. This week “Robinson Crusoe” tops the bill with a 3,000-feet film of the highest merit.... The hall has been perfectly adapted to its new use at a heavy expense, the changes including the sloping of the floor, re-seating throughout, new lighting plant, and redecoration. The admirable ventilating and heating of the building make it an ideal place of entertainment.(144)

The choice of feature film for this opening week is interesting since the Theatre Royal had just started its pantomime season, the production on the stage also being Robinson Crusoe. As at other times in recent years then, the films were set up in direct competition to the stage.

The publicity that surrounded the opening of the Palladium continued long after the novelty of a new venue would have died down. This was partly due to the fact that the management maintained a strong advertisement campaign in the press, but also through the quality of the programmes that the Palladium put on. On top of the high quality films – which, in the first few weeks alone, included The Last Days of Pompeii, Quo Vadis and the Exeter V. Aston Villa Cup Tie,which the Palladium had filmed especially – there was also a selection of high class vaudeville. This type of venue was well known in America from 1907 onwards and comes under a category that Robert Allen labels “small-time vaudeville”.(145) These venues with their mix of films and variety were partly responsible for the demise of the nickelodeon and, as such, the Palladium must have been a major threat to the other, smaller, cinemas in town. Eileen Bowser certainly believes that the ability to offer this type of variety would be a considerable advantage to the management:

... many exhibitors found that vaudeville attracted the much-desired patronage of the middle class at a higher admission price.(146)

Whilst Bowser is concerned with American cinema here, the advantages to the British exhibitor are also clearly there. Vaudeville would give the programme something different, something to break up the “monotony of pictures alone”,(147) and something to fall back on should the selection of pictures chosen for that week’s shows be of a less than average standard. Since the middle class in Exeter were already accustomed to the cinema there was no need to lure them in with variety, but it would certainly have helped attract big, socially mixed, audiences. The other cinemas, being much smaller than the Palladium, clearly did not have the space to put on stage acts and were consequently at a major disadvantage to the new picture palace. Indeed, this size difference would have benefited the Palladium even before it put vaudeville on its programme:

If two theatres are located side by side, the larger and more pretentious house will draw the greater crowds. One reason for this is that they will go where the crowd goes, and they feel that there are better chances of getting a seat in the larger houses.(148)

The Palladium may not have been located next to the Empire, Franklin or City Palace (See Appendix A) but it was obviously close enough to them for Meloy’s theory to apply.

If the size of the venue was indeed a factor in attracting the audiences, then it should be no surprise that the Theatre Royal’s 1914 picture season was a considerable success. Indeed, the size of the theatre was one of the principal reasons given for the unlikely co-operation that went into putting on these massively popular films. The City Palace combined with the Theatre Royal with the directors at the cinema providing the films, whilst the management at the Theatre provided a venue to do them justice. With this co-operation, notions that the cinema was still frowned upon by the upper-classes in Exeter may be dismissed. Not only had films ‘invaded’ the sanctuary of one of the old, privileged, arts, but they had now done so under the direction of employees of a small, local cinema. Perhaps appropriately, however, the first film under this co-operation was something that was seen as quite special:

Next week the cinematograph series “Sixty Years a Queen” will be presented each afternoon and twice each evening. Depicting the life story of Queen Victoria in elaborate fashion, it forms one of the most impressive and instructive moving picture series now before the public, and is being presented at the Theatre Royal in co-operation with the directors of the City Palace. Its educational value is great, and it is expected that large numbers of students and scholars will be present during the week.(149)

The co-operative picture season only lasted a month but during that time succeeded in gaining large, impressive reviews. At the same time, the Palladium was also doing well with at least a small review and an advert listing the coming films to be seen every week in the Flying Post. The films it featured were varied but included West’s Life in the British Army and, in May, Sixty Years a Queen which was brought in to benefit from the massive success it had achieved at the Theatre. The Theatre also put on “Cinematograph Weeks” which included The British Navy, presumably another West series. The other film venues in the city were quiet, with only the Barnfield Hall advertising any films at all(150) and then, for the vast majority of the summer, all advertising and reviews of film venues stopped. What was to start them going again was the declaration of war in August.

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