Dougan, Andy (2018) The development of the audience for early film in Glasgow before 1914. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/9088/ Copyright and moral rights for this work are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This work cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Enlighten: Theses https://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The development of the audience for early film in Glasgow before 1914 Andy Dougan Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Culture and Creative Arts College of Arts University of Glasgow May 2018 ©Andy Dougan, May 2018 2 In memory of my father, Andrew Dougan. He encouraged my lifelong love of cinema and many of the happiest hours of my childhood were spent with him at many of the venues written about in this thesis. 3 Abstract This thesis investigates the development of the audience for early cinema in Glasgow. It takes a social-historical approach considering the established scholarship from Allen, Low, Hansen, Kuhn et al, on the development of early cinema audiences, and overlays this with original archival research to provide examples which are specific to Glasgow. By using a variety of local sources, for example, newspaper archives, local authority minutes, and audience recollections, this thesis will show that although there were commonalities between Glasgow and various other centres such as Aberdeen, Manhattan, Knoxville, or London, there were also conditions which were specific and unique to Glasgow. In that sense this thesis is a local insight into a national argument. A secondary aim of this work is the relationship between Glasgow audiences and the moving image. This thesis will examine the sense of civic pride which cinema brought to the city, as well as considering the rise of a new generation of fans. These ‘cinema natives’ as I term them grew up with the moving image and as such had an enduring connection with the movies. The thesis is broadly organised in three parts. The first part (Chapters 1-3) charts the history of entertainment in Glasgow as a city of spectacle and display. The Glasgow Fair holiday played an important part in establishing leisure in the city’s social calendar and led to the setting up of an entertainment quarter. This section will also consider pre-cinema traditions and the growth of Victorian leisure culture. It will also show how cinema in Glasgow spread very quickly so that within 18 months it encompassed a wide demographic range. The mid-section (Chapters 4-6) outlines the regulatory framework in which cinema emerged in Glasgow. Once fixed-site exhibition developed from 1908 there was a moral backlash against cinema with a campaign from Glasgow Parish Council aimed at restricting access for children. At the same time there were also national moves to introduce safety regulation. This section examines how the themes of safety regulation and moral regulation were conflated in an attempt to control the audience. It concludes with the introduction of 4 the Cinematograph Act 1909 and outlines the difficulties of applying this national legislation at a local level. The final part of the thesis (Chapters 7-9) considers the outcomes of the policy initiatives of section two as understood in both architectural and textual forms. The post- Cinematograph Act climate in which cinema operated created expectations in the audience of what they would see and where they would see it. Cinema architecture became as important as content as ‘the cinema-going experience’ began to be defined for a Glasgow audience. Finally this section highlights the recollections of those early 20th century cinema natives in explaining how the seeds of a lifelong cinema-going habit were sown. Overall the study will argue the centrality of the audience to the development of cinema and illustrate the importance of the audience, in terms of class and gender, to the emergence of fixed-site exhibition as a dominant force on the Glasgow entertainment landscape. 5 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisors, Dr Ian Goode and Dr Ian Craven, for their constant encouragement and good advice. I am also grateful to Professor Karen Lury for her support at the beginning of this project. Much of the material gathered here has come from archival sources and I am grateful to the heroic efforts of the staff at the Glasgow Mitchell Library and Dr Irene O’Brien and her colleagues at Glasgow City Archive, as well as staff at the Moving Image Archive, especially Kay Foubister. On the subject of the Moving Image Archive I would also like to thank Janet McBain for her unstinting efforts in gathering material which has proved invaluable here, and also for her early encouragement in the process. Finally I would like to thank colleagues at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland for their support in completing this work. 6 7 Contents The development of the audience for early film in Glasgow before 1914 ............................ 1 Abstract .................................................................................................................................. 3 Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ 5 Contents ................................................................................................................................. 7 List of figures .......................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 11 1 The development of entertainment culture in Glasgow ................................................ 31 2 Early exhibition and the entrepreneurs ........................................................................ 53 3 The move towards permanent exhibition sites. ........................................................... 91 4 A moral backlash and the threat of proscription .......................................................119 5 The threat of fire and the introduction of safety legislation. .....................................155 6 The Cinematograph Act and the problems of national legislation at a local level.....177 7 Architecture, memories, and the rise of the cinema natives. ....................................199 8 The importance of narrative in the early cinema experience. ...................................225 9 The development of film form and the maturing of the audience. ...........................245 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................283 Appendix 1: Licensed Glasgow cinema sites 1913 .............................................................293 Appendix 2: Glasgow cinema programmes 1908-1914 .....................................................297 Appendix 3: Films on release in Glasgow, 1908- 1914 ......................................................349 Appendix 4: Maps of Glasgow cinema sites 1908-1914 ....................................................363 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................373 8 9 List of figures Figure 1: A cartoon from 1825 showing crowds visiting the array of stalls at Glasgow Fair on the edge of Glasgow Green. ........................................................................................... 35 Figure 2: David Prince Miller ............................................................................................... 38 Figure 3: An 1844 playbill for Miller’s Theatre Royal Adelphi ............................................ 44 Figure 4: High Street in Glasgow in 1868 from Thomas Annan's The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow https://www.bl.uk/victorian-britain/articles/the-working-classes-and-the- poor accessed January 29, 2018 .......................................................................................... 47 Figure 5: The kinetoscope in use and a cutaway showing its interior ................................ 56 Figure 6: The Ice Skating Palace c.1896 .............................................................................. 61 Figure 7: Jamaica Street c.1897, Wilson's Colosseum is the tallest of the buildings........... 68 Figure 8: Walter Wilson ....................................................................................................... 69 Figure 9: The Grand Hall and atrium of Wilson's Colosseum .............................................. 71 Figure 10: Coliseum Programme, October 29, 1906 .........................................................100 Figure 11: The Star Theatre of Varieties, which became Pringle’s Picture Palace, Glasgow ............................................................................................................................................107 Figure 12: A newspaper ad for Pringle's Picture Palace dating from April 1908 ..............111 Figure 13: A commemorative postcard issued following the