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Cinema-by-Sea Cover Frontispiece Background photograph of Hove beach by David Fisher; A queue (of extras) in the rain outside the Rothbury stills from Grandma’s Reading Glass (George Albert Cinema, Portslade from Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951) Smith, 1900), Fire! (James Williamson, 1901), Curzon Kinema, Brighton (1936), Brighton Rock (John Boulting, This page 1947) and Jigsaw (Val Guest, 1962) Arrival and Departure of a Train at Hove (George Albert Smith, 1897) CCiinneemmaa--bbyy--SSeeaa FFiillmm aanndd cciinneemmaa iinn BBrriigghhttoonn && HHoovvee ssiinnccee 11889966 DDaavviidd FFiisshheerr TERRA MEDIA Cinema-by-Sea Published by David Fisher was Terra Media Ltd editor of the interna- Missenden Lodge tional media journal Withdean Avenue Screen Digest from Brighton BN1 5BJ 1974 until 2011. He also edited and www.terramedia.co.uk designed around 100 www.brightonfilm.com other publications for Screen Digest. He was Executive Editor of Television—Journal of the First published 2012 Royal Television Society from 1978 to 1982. He was a co-opted member of the Interim 5 4 3 2 1 Action Committee on the British Film Industry and its successor, the British Screen Copyright © David Fisher 2012 Advisory Council, from 1982 to 1989. Among numerous other positions, he served as a All rights reserved. No part of this publication representative on the advisory committee of may be reproduced ot transmitted in any form the European Audiovisual Observatory in or by any means, electronic or mechanical, Strasbourg between 1992 and 2007 and was an including photocopying, recording or any associate fellow of the University of Warwick information storage or retrieval system, 1994-2003, where he taught part of a post- without prior permission in writing from the graduate course in European Cultural Policy. publisher. An award-winning film school graduate, his previous publications include The Craft of The right of David Fisher to be identified as Film (Attic Publishing, 1970), Education and author of this work has been asserted in Training for Film and Television (co-editor, accordance with the Copyright, Designs and BKSTS, two editions: 1973, 1977), Video Disc Patents Act 1988. 77 (Nord Media, 1977), Cinema Production and Distribution in Europe (Council of Design: David Fisher Europe, 1996) with André Lange, and New Set in Minion Pro and Franklin Gothic Information Technology and the Young Medium Condensed (Council of Europe, 2000). He lives in Produced in England by Sussex Print Services Brighton and is working on several local history projects. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-9574449-0-4 4 Cinema-by-Sea Contents 7 Introduction Part 6 Colour 141 The invention of colour cinematography in Part 1 The story so far Southwick and the rivalry that killed it 9 Setting the wider context for film and cinema in Brighton & Hove Part 7 People 147 Biographies of people associated with film and Part 2 Chronology cinema in Brighton & Hove 17 The events in date order 187 Part 8 Companies Part 3 Cinemas and cinema-going Selected businesses associated with film and 27 Introduction cinema in Brighton, Hove and district From the first film shows to the age of the multiplex 191 Part 9 Places 43 The listing A gazetteer of some of the key places associated All the places where films have been shown in with film, cinema, film-makers and actors in Brighton, Hove and district Brighton, Hove and district Part 4 Films: the silent era Part 10 Studios 75 Introduction 201 The film studios of Hove, Shoreham and 87 The listing Brighton All the films made in Brighton, Hove and 206 The lost studios of Whitehawk Shoreham from 1896 to 1929 Part 11 Resources Part 5 Films: the sound era 209 Bibliography, websites, museums, archives and 113 Introduction libraries, film and video, education 117 The listing All films made in Brighton, Hove and Shoreham 213 Index since 1929 136 Music films (feature length) 137 Films set in Brighton (but not filmed there) Hove Fire Brigade hurtles along 139 Short films Cromwell Road in Fire! 140 Newsreels (James Williamson, 1901) Cinema-by-Sea 5 Introduction Introduction You probably know what it’s like when you are GEORGE ALBERT SMITH and JAMES WILLIAMSON, watching a film or television programme and whose film careers began in Hove in 1897 and unexpectedly see a local scene that you continued for a number of years. Both were recognise. There’s that frisson of identifying running businesses in Hove, both built studios your own reality. Well, perhaps not if you live there and both are now regarded as having in Buckingham Palace or 10 Downing Street. made a major contribution to the early But there is a fascination with seeing the development of the film medium. familiar: your town, your neighbourhood, By the end of 1900 at least 184 films had your street. been made in Brighton and Hove, plus a If that can still happen, imagine what it number more shot elsewhere by local film- must have been like for the citizens of makers. Mostly these were single-shot films Brighton & Hove in 1896 who paid their lasting no more than a minute. Any moving sixpences or shillings to see ‘the sensation of picture could excite an audience at that stage. the century’ at the Victoria Hall opposite the By the end of 1904 the total had risen to just West Pier. Among the moving pictures, the short of 300 (these totals being based on the ‘animated photographs’, they saw was the listings in this book). scene on the beach across the road. Long Although some single-shot actuality films before audiences were shown the sights of the were still being issued, the sophistication of California coast, for many around the world production advanced rapidly during this their first sight of the sea was not the surf at period. Editing techniques were added to the Malibu but the shingle at Brighton. developing repertoire of trick shots, such as Brighton & Hove immediately became one superimposition, double-exposure and of the principal centres of film-making running film in reverse. Work being done in activity, not just for the UK but for the world, Hove at this time had an influence on other alongside Paris, New York and London. By the film-makers, notably in the United States. end of the century and for much of the following decade local film-makers made Belated recognition Brighton & Hove (mainly Hove) as important Early cinema history is still being unearthed as anywhere in the world with their ground- and what was once presented as fact has now breaking, sophisticated understanding of been superseded by more recently discovered production and editing techniques. information. In my first term as a film student In the first years of the twentieth century 45 years ago I was lucky enough to spend Britain developed a thriving export market, many hours, several days a week, sitting in a especially to the United States. Indeed, it darkened theatre learning about the history of might have continued longer but for the cinema from the doyen of film historians, efforts of Thomas Edison and his patent- Roger Manvell. We saw films by the great wielding associates to undermine sales of French cinema magician Georges Méliès and European films to American cinemas. the American pioneer of narrative film Edwin S Porter. We did not see films by the English It had to start somewhere cinema magician George Albert Smith nor the Film-making began in Brighton and Hove in British pioneer of narrative film-making James July 1896 when ROBERT W PAUL shot a film on Williamson. They had yet to be assigned their Brighton beach to include in his ‘celebrated rightful place in the story of cinema. animatographe’ programme that began a run The full significance of Brighton’s at the VICTORIA HALL on King’s Road on 6 July. achievement, of what Smith and Williamson He was followed by his colleague Birt Acres in achieved through intuition, analysis or trial- August. The first Brighton film-maker was the and-error, was barely recognised at the time photographer ESMÉ COLLINGS. He seems to they were working, nor acknowledged for have lost interest in moving pictures very many years after. quickly as his film-making barely overlaps It was not until 1945 that the city was put with that of two great names in early cinema, on the media history map in an essay by Cinema-by-Sea 7 Introduction GEORGES SADOUL, who coined the phrase This is a book about film and cinema in ‘l’école de Brighton’ (the Brighton school) to Brighton and Hove. It is not intended to describe the work of Collings, Smith, William- provide a history of cinema and film-making son and ALFRED DARLING. The study and in general. For that the reader is referred to writing of film history and theory was only the many general histories, some of which are just getting into its stride in the mid-1940s, listed in the Resources section at the end of especially in France. the book. So the book does not go into detail Sadoul may have unknowingly trampled about events when what began as local film- on the sensitivities of the good people of making moved away from Brighton—as, for Hove—which is, after all, where most of the example, the production of Kinemacolor films work was done—but eventually this proved to under licence in America and France. be a transformative publication. In 1968 an The intention is to tell the story for the exhibition organised by the British Film general reader, although it is hoped that by Institute (BFI) about the Hove film pioneers assembling so many facts in one place it will was held during the Brighton Festival.