Extract from an essay by Barbara Goulter
In February 1995, Barbara Goulter of Gosport, Hampshire wrote to Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain in response to an article in a monthly newspaper for pensioners. Born in Southsea in 1917, Mrs Goulter lived in the nearby seaside town of Lee on Solent during the 1930s. Her first job on leaving school at the age of fifteen was in trade journalism and she was a housewife for most of her subsequent working life. Along with her letter to CCINTB she enclosed a piece, written some years earlier, that had been submitted to, but rejected by, her local newspaper. It consists of an archly written account of a week-long film shoot that took place in the early thirties on the beach at Lee-on-Solent: “Most of Lee had opted out of its usual occupations to sit on the sea wall and watch the goings-on.” The film, featuring Laurence Olivier and Gloria Swanson, was Perfect Understanding (dir Cyril Gardner, 1933). Later in 1995, Mrs Goulter took part in CCINTB’s postal questionnaire survey.