Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive

In February 1995, Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain contacted Thornlea Residential Home in Blackley, Greater Manchester, seeking potential participants in the project; and on 4 May six residents took part in a group interview. Two of them, Elizabeth Woods and Lily Sutcliffe, were later interviewed again, joining the project’s twenty-two core informants in the Greater Manchester area. Born in Manchester in 1912, Miss Woods was one of three children; her father was a sheet metal worker and mother took in sewing. She left school at the age of fourteen and worked in a mail order firm for forty years.

Along with Miss Woods and Mrs Sutcliffe, participants in the group interview were Wilfred Sevlin (born 1913), Joe Dowlag (born 1928), Peter McDonough (born 1916), and Nelly (surname unrecorded, born 1915. All six had lived in Manchester all their lives. The interview opens with recollections of participants’ local cinemas, extending to ticket prices, queues, and the typical supporting programme--newsreels, cartoons, and so on--for the main feature. Miss Woods indicates that although there were several cinemas in her neighbourhood, she didn’t go to the pictures very often, though she would occasionally attend live shows or ‘big pictures’ along with workmates. Mrs Sutcliffe recalls enjoying both films and music hall shows. Conversation turns to film stars, with a focus mainly on local celebrities, including Gracie Fields and Robert Donat; and to alternative amusements such as dancing, prompting memories of the Saturday evening ‘dance train’ to Blackpool.

Miss Woods’s solo interview took place at Thornlea on 29 May 1995. After some opening remarks on her health problems and the difficulties brought about by ageing, Miss Woods and the interviewer look through a 1938 film annual together. Although she struggles to recall film titles and names of stars (she insists that cinemagoing was never part of her weekly routine because after working hours she was tasked with household duties), she does remember occasionally going to see live musical theatre shows and ‘big pictures’ like The King and I with her sister or with workmates. In any event, she says, she no longer goes out to either the cinema or the theatre: “It’s not nice in town at night now.”

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