Tag: Journalism

The Lodger (1927 and 1932)

This post is the second of a two-part mini series about Marie Belloc Lowndes’ story The Lodger. The first post considers the short story and novel Lowndes wrote. This post discusses two film adaptations of the book made in interwar Britain.

Marie Belloc Lowndes novel The Lodger, which appeared in 1913, was twice adapted for the screen during the British interwar period. The first, silent, adaptation was directed by Hitchcock in 1927; a sound remake directed by Maurice Elvey appeared five years later. Building on last week’s post which considered the differences between the short story version of The Lodger and the novelisation, this post unpicks the differences between the novel and the films.

The main difference between the novel and the screen adaptations is the identity of the Lodger. In the novel, there is no doubt that the lodger, Mr Sleuth, is responsible for a series of murders of women across London. The book’s tension is generated by the concern of Mr Sleuth’s landlady, Mrs Bunting, that the police are going to find out her lodger is a murderer, and how that will impact her own position. In both film versions of the story, the lodger is ultimately revealed to be a ‘good’ character, who is trailing the murderer in an attempt to stop him. Whilst Mrs Bunting in both films is equally as suspicious of her lodger, because he keeps leaving the house on nights that murders are committed, he is ultimately revealed to have honourable reasons for this.

Hitchcock has publicly claimed that this softer ending was foisted on him, and that he preferred the book’s ending. One presumes that the sound remake followed the same template for the sake of appeasing audiences familiar with the first film. Whilst the change makes the story feel a lot less sinister, it also aligns it more with expected film plots in which the main male character is revealed as a hero and suitable love interest for the female character.

This female character, Daisy (Mr Bunting’s daughter), is much more fleshed out in both films than she is in the book. The role is played by June Tripp in the first film, and by Elizabeth Allan in the second film. In the novel, Daisy is only present in the house every now and then, and she only meets Mr Sleuth face to face right at the book’s end. Generally, Daisy comes across as a bit dim and easily led. In a reflection of women’s increased participation in the workforce during the interwar years, Daisy has a job in both films. In the 1927 version, she is a mannequin for clothes – it is a job, but still one in which she is expected to be passive and decorative. In the 1932 film her job has changed to that of a telephone operator; in that capacity she overhears one of the murders as the victim desperately tries to ring for help.

In the films, Daisy plays a much more material part in the story, and her relationship with the Lodger is more substantial. In both films, she meets him at several points throughout the story and is on friendly terms with him. The fact that the lodger is played by film star and heartthrob Ivor Novello in both productions helps to present him as a viable love interest for Daisy. In the 1932 film, Daisy goes so far as to reject her original boyfriend in favour of the lodger. Again, these changes, which introduce a conventional young romance into the story, make the source material conform more closely to cinematic genre conventions.

Daisy’s original boyfriend, Joe Chandler in the book, also transforms between films. In the Hitchcock version, Joe is a police officer tasked with hunting down the murder, as he is in the novel. Like in the novel, Joe is oblivious to the possibility that the lodger is the murderer he is after – although of course unlike in the book, in the film the lodger is revealed to be innocent. Hitchcock also used the motif of the police officer who is blind to the guilt of those closest to him in his 1929 film Blackmail, so he perhaps appreciated the irony Lowndes built into the novel.

For the later film, Joe Chandler became John Martin, who is not a police officer but rather a tabloid reporter. By 1932 tabloid journalists had become much more socially visible as circulation figures of newspapers rapidly increased. In films, journalists were often presented as pseudo-detectives, collaborating with the police to investigate crimes. Perhaps it was felt that to change the Joe/John character from a police officer to a journalist was not too much of a change. John Martin is a ruthless reporter; at the start of the film, when Daisy witnesses a murder across the telephone line, he passes a picture of her on to his news desk without her consent. To her horror, Daisy finds the portrait printed on the paper’s front page the next day. John excuses this behaviour as he considers it his duty to present his bosses with all the scoops he gets. John’s inconsiderate behaviour paves the way for Daisy to ditch him for the lodger at the end of the film.

A final significant change between the novel and the 1932 film, specifically, is the identity of the lodger. In the book, Mr Sleuth is presented as a British gentleman, albeit one with possibly some foreign blood in him. In the Elvey film, the character is called Angeloff, and Novello plays him with a thick Ruritanian accent. The film’s resolution reveals that Angeloff has been on the trail of the murderer for many years, and that they have both travelled from a foreign country to Britain. Whereas the novel codes the criminal as domestic, the film explicitly presents him as a foreigner, who has wreaked havoc in Britain. The audience can rest assured that such horrific crimes would not be committed by a fellow citizen.

The Lodger enjoyed considerable popularity for decades after its release. However, throughout those years the story, which was originally closely modelled on the Jack the Ripper murders, developed to increasingly deviate from the original to reflect the changing times. The main element of the story, however – a man roaming around the streets at night killing young women – sadly remains relatable to audiences even to this day.

The Lodger (1911 and 1913) – Marie Belloc Lowndes

This post is the first of a two-part mini series about Marie Belloc Lowndes story The Lodger. This first post considers the short story and novel Lowndes wrote. The next post discusses two film adaptations of the book made in interwar Britain.

Today’s post discusses two texts which were written before the Great War, but which had a great cultural impact in interwar Britain due to their popularity. The writer Marie Belloc Lowndes published her short story ‘The Lodger’ in McClure’s Magazine in 1911.[1] She then expanded the story out into a full-length novel which was published by Methuen in 1913.

The Lodger’s main character is Mrs Bunting, a retired domestic servant who lives with her husband just off the Marylebone Road. Mr and Mrs Bunting are very poor at the start of the story, until a mysterious lodger, Mr Sleuth, rents a room with them. Mr Sleuth pays handsomely, but before long Mrs Bunting gets suspicious that he may be responsible for a spate of murders in the capital. Young women are found murdered at night, and these discoveries seem to coincide with Mr Sleuth going for night-time walks.

After a few weeks, Mr Bunting’s daughter Daisy comes to stay with the family, and Mrs Bunting gets increasingly concerned that Mr Sleuth will harm Daisy if he meets her. In the book-length version of the story, there is a fifth character: Joe Chandler, a young and ambitious police officer who is a friend of the family and who is courting Daisy. As the murders start piling up, Joe often pops into the house to give the Buntings updates on the police investigation, but he never once suspects that Mr Sleuth is the killer.

The short story puts the reader in the middle of events, and then relates the arrival of Mr Sleuth into the Bunting’s house through Mrs Bunting’s internal recollections. Daisy visits the house only very briefly in this version of the story. The novelisation presents the action chronologically, and allows much more time for Mrs Bunting’s suspicions and fears to develop. It also expands on Mr Bunting’s thirst for news, which is presented almost as an addiction.

At the start of the book, when the Buntings find themselves in extreme poverty, Mr Bunting is described as buying a paper with one of his last pennies ‘[w]ith an eagerness which was mingled with shame.’[2] Throughout the book he keeps buying papers, rushing out as soon as the newspaper boys come down the street, and sometimes not even waiting to go back inside before reading them. Yet despite Mr Bunting reading every column of newsprint on the case, he does not suspect Mr Sleuth to be the murderer until he physically bumps into him on a late-night stroll and finds his coat covered in blood. In The Lodger, the newspapers sensationalise the case and function as a potentially harmful distraction for the masses, rather than aiding with the resolution of the case.

The police, also, don’t have any grasp on who the murderer may be. This theme is brought out more in the novel rather than the short story. In this expanded version, the character of Joe Chandler frequently provides the Buntings and the readers with updates on the police’s investigation. There are a few moments in the novel where accurate eye-witness accounts of Mr Sleuth are dismissed by the police. When Mrs Bunting attends the inquest of one of the murders, there is one witness who accurately describes Mr Sleuth, but he is ignored. When he tells the coroner that the murderer left the scene carrying a bag such as the one the reader knows Mr Sleuth to possess, ‘not a single reporter at the long, ink-stained table had put down that last remark of Mr. Cannot. In fact, not one of them had heard it.’[3]

When Joe Chandler follows up on a possible sighting of the murderer, ‘on one evening he described at immense length the eccentric-looking gent who had given the barmaid a sovereign, picturing Mr. Sleuth with such awful accuracy that both Bunting and Mrs. Bunting secretly and separately turned sick when they listened to him, he never showed the slightest interest in their lodger.’[4] It is Mrs Bunting, rather than the police or the reporters, who susses out very quickly that it is her lodger who is committing these crimes. Initially, she does not alert the police because her mind refuses to accept her suspicions. Later on, however, her reluctance to alert the police originates from the perceived shame that it will bring on her household. Bunting has the same fears once he gets suspicious about the lodger:

‘But Londoners of Bunting’s class have an uneasy fear of the law. To his mind it would be ruin for him and for his Ellen to be mixed up publicly in such a terrible affair. No one concerned in the business would give them and their future a thought, but it would track them to their dying day, and, above all, it would make it quite impossible for them ever to get again into a good joint situation.’[5]

Instead, Lowndes allows the Buntings to get rid of the lodger without having to report him, in an ending that is near-identical in both the short story and the novel. Daisy ends up staying with the Buntings for her 18th birthday. Mr Sleuth invites her and Mrs Bunting to come to see the waxworks in Madame Tussaud’s. Inside, a private party which includes the Head Commissioner of the Police, is just exiting the building. As they pass the Buntings and Mr Sleuth, the Commissioner is telling his guests that the police know the murderer is someone who previously committed murders elsewhere in Britain, and who had escaped a lunatic asylum just before the London murders started.

The Commissioner makes it clear he would recognise the man if he saw him again; yet when he crosses paths with Mr Sleuth on his way out of Madame Tussaud’s the Commissioner ‘passed by Mr Sleuth unconcernedly, unaware.’[6] The lodger, however, is furious; he believes Mrs Bunting tried to trap him. With an excuse, he hurries out of the Madame Tussaud emergency exit and is never seen by the Buntings again.

The Lodger was clearly inspired by the Jack the Ripper murders which took place in 1888; and whilst its ending echoes the apparent disappearance of Jack the Ripper; and it allows the Buntings to continue their lives in peace, it does leave a murderer out on the streets, ready to strike again. Throughout the story and book, Lowndes spends virtually no time at all discussing the lodger’s victims; her concern is with how the strain of secrets and suspicion affects the Buntings’ marriage. With Mr Sleuth’s exit from the scene (and, in the book, the engagement of Daisy and Joe), their troubles are resolved.

Yet no thought is spared for the women navigating the streets at night. Although the identities of these women are not made explicit, it is suggested by Mrs Bunting that they are not ‘proper’ (in the short story, she refers to one of them as a ‘hussy’, although this reference is removed in the novel[7]). The implication is that respectable people like the Buntings should look out for themselves and do not need to have qualms about protecting those less fortunate. The Lodger provides a female-centred exploration of the strains of retaining respectability at all cost, written at a time when social status was imperative to many people.

The Lodger (novel) can be read for free at Project Gutenberg.

[1] Marie Belloc Lowndes, ‘The Lodger’, reprinted in Into the London Fog: Eerie Tales from the Weird City, ed. Elizabeth Dearnley (London: British Library, 2020), pp. 199-239

[2] Marie Belloc Lowndes, The Lodger, (London: Methuen, 1913), chapter 1, accessed online: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2014/2014-h/2014-h.htm

[3] Ibid., chapter 19

[4] Ibid., chapter 24

[5] Ibid.

[6] Lowndes, ‘The Lodger’, p. 237

[7] Lowndes, ‘The Lodger’, p. 215

Death in a Taxi

The hansom cab has been a mainstay of the London streets since the 17th century.[1] The black horse-drawn carriages were largely replaced by motorised vehicles by the end of the First World War. The designs of the motorcar taxis were based on the hansom cab that preceded it, which meant that the driver was seated in the open air, or under a canvas roof, and was physically separated from the passengers. This design ensured that the passenger(s) continued to enjoy privacy during their trip and did not have to share it in close proximity to a stranger. It also assuaged any class anxieties about wealthier passengers having to share a space with a driver from a lower socio-economic background.

Taxis occupy a unique position in the transport landscape: they are open to all users who can afford them but provide a private transport experience; they are also essentially urban and predominantly found in big cities. Both these features as well as the separation of passenger and driver all stress the anonymity of the taxi experience. There were no records of who used taxis beyond what a driver could remember of his customers.

It was presumably for these reasons that for some people, the London taxi was the chosen site for murder or suicide. Tabloids reported on a number of such cases in the first half of the 1920s. In November 1923 the Daily Mirror printed the headline ‘Dead Woman in Cab’.[2] The article described that at the end of the afternoon the previous day, a young man had come into a police station in Knightsbridge and said to the officer on duty ‘the woman is in the cab outside’. In the taxi the police found the body of Ethel Howard, with a wound to the throat and a razor lying next to the body.

Daily Mirror, 16 November 1923, p. 2

At first glance this could be a case of either suicide or murder. The man who reported the death remained unnamed in the article but was described as a ‘portrait painter’. This immediately sought to evoke images of bohemia in the newspaper reader’s mind. The romance and mystery of the case was brought crashing down to earth in the follow up article printed the next day, which reported on the magistrate’s inquest on the case.[3]

The ‘portrait painter’ was in fact the 24-year-old butcher’s assistant George William Iggulden. Iggulden and Ethel Howard had been engaged to be married on 16 November. Instead, Iggulden murdered his fiancée the night before the wedding. The Mirror called this ‘the irony of fate’, although the reader may conclude that this was not so much fate as George Iggulden using desperate measures to get out of his commitment. In the taxi, he found a confined space where Ethel would not be able to escape from, and where he was sure not to be interrupted. In this second newspaper article, Iggulden is reported not just to have said ‘the woman is in the cab outside’ but also ‘I did it with a razor’. He was duly remanded to stand trial for murder.

The party who is curiously absent in all this is the taxi driver. The only oblique reference to their presence is in the second article, which described that Iggulden ‘asked to be driven to the nearest police station’ rather than to Chelsea, halfway through the drive. The police are not reported to have spoken to the driver or gotten their statement, and there is no consideration as to what the impact of a murder being committed several feet away from them may have had.

A taxi driver did have a more active role in proceedings in a case in 1925. On 23 April of that year, the Daily Express reported on a ‘Mystery of A Taxicab’.[4] On 21 April, a Sunday, Major Frank Montague Noel Newton had engaged a cab to take him from his club to his hotel. Immediately it is clear to the reader that this passenger is a man of substance, who comfortably moves around the West End. Upon passing the Hotel Metropole (now known as the Corinthia Hotel) just off Trafalgar Square, the driver heard a noise ‘as though someone was knocking on the window with a stick’. The driver was evidentially located outside the cab, with a window separating him and his passenger.

Daily Express, 23 April 1925, p. 9

The driver didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary when he turned to look through the window, so he drove on to Major Newton’s hotel. Once he arrived there, he engaged the help of the hotel porter to try and rouse Major Newton, who appeared to be asleep. Then the men realised that there was a revolver on the floor of the cab, and that the noise the driver had heard was Major Newton shooting himself.

One must make allowances for the noise cars in the 1920s generated, but it still seems extraordinary that a driver would not identify a shot fired within such close proximity. However, the story repeated itself a year later:

On arriving at Charing Cross Station about midnight on Monday the driver of a taxicab found his fare shot dead. The man hailed the driver on Cromwell Road and nothing occurred during the journey to attract attention. When he did not alight at Charing Cross, the driver got down from his seat and found the man lying dead. A revolver was on the floor.[5]

Evidently, for these men, the mobile and anonymous nature of the taxi provided a suitable space for them to commit suicide. They knew they would not be disturbed for the duration of the trip, and that they would be found by a stranger. The man who was driving to Charing Cross was reported to be a Swede visiting London. Like Major Newton, he did not have a fixed address in the city; the locations of their deaths underscore this sense of fluidity and lack of permanency.

For the drivers, finding a dead body in their vehicle appears to have been something they were expected to handle in the course of their employment. They remain anonymous in the reports, their taxis indistinguishable from the rest of the fleet that swarmed London’s streets. It is this anonymity which made their taxis such appealing sites for illicit and illegal behaviour in interwar London.

[1] George N Georgano, A History of the London Taxicab (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1972), p. 110

[2] ‘Dead Woman in Cab’, Daily Mirror, 16 November 1923, p. 2

[3] ‘Dead Girl in Taxi’, Daily Mirror, 17 November 1923, p. 2

[4] ‘Mystery of a Taxicab’, Daily Express, 23 April 1925, p. 9

[5] ‘Shot Dead in Taxi’, Daily Mirror, 3 November 1926, p. 2

Entertainment venues during the 1939 blackouts

Today we are going to venture to the extremity of the interwar period in Britain – September 1939. Britain declared war on Germany on 3 September 1939. In hindsight, this started what is now commonly referred to as the ‘Phoney War’ – a period that lasted until April 1940 during which little actual military action took place. At the time, of course, Londoners weren’t to know that the declaration on 3 September would not lead to immediate hostilities. Accordingly, the city prepared for the worst and much public activity was suspended. As soon as it became clear that the invasion was not imminent, however, restrictions were also loosened again very quickly. After our collective experience of various levels of restrictions and lockdowns over the past 18 months (at the time of writing), this period of rapid closures and re-openings of venues in 1939 resonates.

When reviewing the newspaper coverage of the first weeks of the war, what is striking is the relative prominence articles give to the closure of entertainment venues – specifically cinemas and theatres. On 1 September, the British government implemented formal blackout regulations to obstruct bombing efforts by enemy troops. Next morning’s Daily Mail article described how streetlights, hotels and even Buckingham Palace where thrown into darkness, but tellingly the headline of the piece is ‘London Cinemas, Theatres, Carry On in Dark.’[i] Whilst many cinemas and theatres understandably opted to close completely at night, some businesses attempted to continue business whilst adhering to blackout measures. It is these venues that the Mail celebrates for their determination to continue business as usual despite the circumstances.

On 7 September the Mail followed this up with an article that reassured readers that managers of theatres and cinemas that had been closed for the previous week, were ‘standing by’ in expectation of an imminent return to business as usual.[ii] The message to the reader is clear; no matter what may lie ahead, Londoners should be able to visit the cinema and theatre at night. After only a week of blackout, the entertainment industries were confident that the Government would exempt them from the regulations. As a sector that did not directly support the war effort, this confidence seems remarkable, but it was justified. On 8 September the Government approved that cinemas, theatres and football pitches in ‘safe zones’ could re-open immediately for business.[iii] Cinemas in London’s suburbs followed on 11 September, and Central London cinemas on 15 September.[iv]

For the Mail, it was clear why these spaces should be allowed to operate: they had a ‘job of assisting to maintain a cheerful Britain.’[v] The article presents the night-time entertainment industry as vital for keeping up the morale at the home front. The re-opening was presented as a return to ‘normality’, and a mark of resilience of Britons in the face of grave danger. The news of the first wave of re-opening was considered so welcome that a second article was included in the same issue, which highlighted the scale of the impact of cinema closures in particular. According to the Mail, cinemas served a million customers a week – the real numbers were in fact much higher.[vi]

When central London cinemas and theatres were finally reopened on 15 September it was front page news for the Mail again, and the article immediately listed which films would be showing where. The article ends with the sage reminder that ‘[i]f you do go to the cinema to-night, don’t forget your gas mask.’[vii]  Despite this possible danger, the Mail assumed its readers would rush to visit the cinema, as implied by the listings provided and the considerable coverage the Mail had given the issue over the previous week. Editors understood films to be an important part of their readers’ lives, even in wartime; and encouraged readers to continue with their lives as normal despite the war.

From reading the Mail coverage over these weeks, it appears that there is support for the Government decision to impose the blackout at the start of September, but also that it was considered unnecessary for that blackout to apply to places of entertainment. It was considered imperative for the public’s morale that they should be allowed to go out at night and enjoy themselves, also to show the enemy forces that the British spirit would not be broken.

Of course, entertainment venues were not immune to bomb damage. Once the Blitz started in earnest in autumn 1940, they did become targets – most famously, when the Café de Paris was hit in March 1941 dozens of people died. But during those first months of the Phoney War, entertainment venues were an important symbol of what was considered important to Londoners.

[i] ‘London Cinemas, Theatres, Carry On in Dark.’  Daily Mail, 2 September 1939, p. 10

[ii] ‘Managers ready for the ‘all clear’’, Daily Mail, 7 September 1939, p. 7

[iii] ‘Cinemas, football, start again to-day’, Daily Mail, 9 September 1939, p. 1

[iv] ‘First Two London Theatre Reopen’, Daily Mail, 12 September 1939, p. 5; ‘Cinemas and theatres are open until 10 to-night’, Daily Mail, 15 September 1939, p. 1 and p. 10

[v] ‘Cinemas, football, start again to-day’, Daily Mail, 9 September 1939, p. 1

[vi] ‘3,000 Cinemas Open Today in the “Safe” Areas’, Daily Mail, 9 September 1939, p. 5

[vii] ‘Cinemas and theatres are open until 10 to-night’, Daily Mail, 15 September 1939, p. 1 and p. 10

Comparing two nightclub raids

In the interwar period, London’s nightlife developed rapidly, in a grateful response to the lifting of blackouts and other restrictions imposed during the Great War by the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). Nightclubs in particular, over restaurants, dance halls or cinemas, have captured the imagination and become emblematic of interwar London’s night-time culture. Nightclubs as such were not illegal, but many of them operated on the border of illegality by serving alcohol past permitted hours; not operating a sufficiently strict membership system; or allowing ‘indecent’ behaviour. As Judith Walkowitz has demonstrated, the appeal of the nightclub was largely that they were spaces that allowed people who would not normally come across one another, to mix freely.[1]  

The policing and controlling of nightclubs was a topic of public interest from the mid-1920s onwards. Due to the clubs’ restricted access, surveillance could only be done by undercover police officers. In order not to draw attention to themselves, these constables had to partake in the club’s activities during their observations. The image of the police officer spending his shift dancing and drinking champagne caused public discomfort, particularly as repeated observations were often deemed necessary before a club could be raided.[2] As nightclub owners got more suspect of single men entering clubs, the Metropolitan police started using undercover female officers as well. Female police officers were still a relative novelty; a male and female officer posing as a couple and entering a club together were less likely to raise suspicions.[3]

Nightclub raids were gratefully covered by newspapers; the reports reveal that the social background of the people attending a club to a large extent shaped how cases were dealt with. In March 1932 for example, the Daily Express covered a hearing at Marlborough Street Police Court relating to the Burlington Club, which had been observed and then raided in January.[4] The charge against the club’s owner and secretary was that of selling alcohol outside of licensing hours; this was the most common charge used against nightclub owners. Despite this illegal activity, the newspaper article takes every opportunity to stress the respectability of the club.

It starts with the description of the police constable who had conducted observations in the club: he is described as ‘debonair’ and having ‘beautifully curly hair and a public school voice.’ The inference is that in the only police officers who were able to successfully blend in with the clientele of the club were those who appeared to be of a high social class. The club itself is described as ‘extensive and well-furnished’ and the police inspector leading the investigation admitted that those present in the club during the raid were ‘reputable people of position’: “You could not put the place down as one of the usual dens”.

In deference to these visitors’ reputations, none of them were charged or even named in the newspaper reports; not even the club visitor who was found by the police to be ‘very drunk’ and emptying half a bottle of champagne over the head and neck of his female companion. The police had also found clear evidence that alcohol had been served at the club beyond permitted hours and not in accompaniment of the substantial meal that was required by law.

Very different was the newspaper reporting on the raid of the Caravan Club in 1934. The Caravan was a gay club in Endell Street, Soho, which was raided within months of its opening. The opening of the Bow Street police court hearing warranted reports across two pages in the Evening Standard of 28 August, against the one column given to the raid on the Burlington Club in the Express two years’ prior.[5]

Unlike the common charge of selling alcohol after hours, which was only laid against the proprietors of a club, in the case of the Caravan Club the charges were those of keeping a place for the purpose of exhibiting ‘lewd’ and ‘obscene’ behaviour; and aiding and abetting such premises. The aiding and abetting aspect applied to all the visitors of the Club – a total of 103 individuals were put in front of the magistrate.

The first part of the Evening Standard report deals almost exclusively with the huge crowd that gathered around Bow Street to see all those charged as they entered the court. The reporter specifically states that ‘Most of the onlookers were market porters’.[6] This evokes an image of a crowd of men who look and behave within the bounds of masculinity as it was accepted at the time. As becomes clear of the remainder of the report, the ‘indecent behaviour’ witnessed at the Caravan Club mostly centred around men behaving in ways that were considered improper and not masculine. The reporter also notes that the crowd of market porters cheered and jeered at each of the defendants as they entered the court, further underscoring that those present at the club had behaved in ways that elicited public ridicule.

Although the language of the report is circumspect when it comes to describing the activities within the club, they are still reported in much greater detail than those that took place inside the Burlington Club. Men were seen dancing with men; men were dressed up as women; a male performer was half-naked; and the ‘conversation in the club was a lot on sex matters’.[7] Interestingly there were no allegations made of alcohol being served without a license; it appears that the club’s proprietors had been observing that particular rule. After the evidence was given, one of the counsels for the defence described the club as a ‘horrible place’.

As is evident from the comparison of these two newspaper reports, the moral judgement of what went on inside a nightclub weighed heavier than the legal argument. The language of the newspaper reports underscores the tacit assumption that wealthy, educated people should be allowed privacy even if they break the law, whereas men engaging in transgressive behaviour can be jeered and shouted at.

Serving alcohol outside of permitted hours was a clear offense, but if the club served ‘reputable’ people then the proprietors were simply fined. However, if the club allowed the display of ‘indecent’ behaviour, particularly behaviour that challenged what was considered appropriate for men, the punishments were much more severe. In the case of the Caravan Club, custodial sentences rather than fines were meted out, with the longest sentence given to the club’s proprietor who had to undertake 20 months of hard labour. Interwar nightclubs may have allowed their visitors to engage in transgressive behaviours but if they threatened to challenge accepted norms too much, institutions of authority were swift to move against them.

[1] Judith Walkowitz, Nights Out: Life in Cosmopolitan London (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), pp. 209-252

[2] Heather Shore, ‘Constable dances with instructress’: the police and the Queen of Nightclubs in inter-war London’, Social History, 2013 Vol. 38, No. 2, 183–202, p. 200

[3] Louise A. Jackson, ‘Lady Cops’ and ‘Decoy Doras’: Gender, Surveillance

and the Construction of Urban Knowledge 1919–59, The London Journal, 2002, 27:1, 63-83, p. 77

[4] ’72 People in Raided Club’, Daily Express, 11 March 1932, p. 7

[5] ‘Crowd of 500 in Club Case Scenes at Bow-street’, Evening Standard, 28 August 1934, p. 1; ‘Constable Tells of Scenes in Raided Club’, Evening Standard, 28 August 1934, p. 2

[6] ‘Crowd of 500 in Club Case Scenes at Bow-street’, Evening Standard, 28 August 1934, p. 1

[7] ‘Constable Tells of Scenes in Raided Club’, Evening Standard, 28 August 1934, p. 2

Break the News (1938)

Break the News is a British film of the end of the interwar period that displays some of the ambition of the film industry at that time. The film is a remake of a 1936 French film called Le Mort en Fuite (Death on the Run). Break the News was directed by Frenchman René Clair who cast his compatriot Maurice Chevalier in one of the lead roles. The other male lead was played by Jack Buchanan, a British actor who enjoyed fame both on stage and on film. The main female role was fulfilled by June Knight, a Hollywood starlet who had come over to Europe. Buchanan also produced the film under his short-lived production vehicle Jack Buchanan Productions.

Although Clair is mostly remembered for his post-war films, he started directing in France in the mid-1920s. Break the News was his second picture in the UK, after he directed Robert Donat in the supernatural comedy The Ghost Goes West in 1936. The casting of Break the News demonstrates the high aspirations Buchanan and Clair had for the film. Buchanan had considerable star power in interwar Britain, and Chevalier was a recognised Hollywood star.[1]

The film’s plot is as internationally mobile as its stars. The action starts on the West End, where Teddy and François, played by Buchanan and Chevalier, are in the chorus of a musical comedy show. The show’s lead star is Grace Gatwick, played by Knight. Teddy and François long to have the same level of fame as Grace, so they come up with a cunning plan. After staging a face argument in their lodgings, they make it appear that François has killed Teddy, and make sure that he conspicuously tries to dump the ‘body’ in the Thames. Teddy goes off to the south of France to enjoy a holiday; the plan is that the ‘murder’ will generate a lot of newspaper publicity; François will get arrested and Teddy will dramatically return from France during the trial to ensure François gets acquitted. Both men will get famous and then they will be able to put on their own stage production.

Unfortunately, and obviously, the plan goes awry. Firstly, the anticipated media storm after the ‘murder’ does not materialise, so whilst François eventually gets arrested, the men do not get famous. Secondly, whilst in France Teddy is mistaken for a revolutionary leader of a (fictional) Balkan country, and gets kidnapped and taken back to this Ruritania. He only very narrowly manages to get out and return to Britain just in time before François is executed. This being a musical comedy, of course all is well at the end, and with the help of Grace the men do get their names in lights on the theatre façade.

The plot of Break the News, and indeed the film’s title, place great importance on the operation of the written press. The newspapers are presented as the only vehicle that can give Teddy and François the fame they long for. Fame is not dependent on talent on stage, but rather on who is able to get and keep the attention of the journalists. Grace’s character functions to demonstrate this; early on in the film she manages to create a media storm by reporting that her little dog has gone missing; and then another one when the dog is found. Once the story breaks of a ‘murder’ within her show’s production, she makes sure to put herself in front of journalists and spin the story in a way that puts herself at the centre of it.

Teddy and François also assume that a murder case will most definitely hit the front pages. Much of the comedy in the first part of the film is derived from the way the men stage the ‘murder’, starting with a phoney argument on stage in front of the whole company; moving on to a loud argument in their lodging; and finishing with François taking a black cab to Limehouse to drop a heavy, corpse-shaped parcel in the river. But what the men do not take into account is that the press are not interested in murder per se. Grace is able to generate publicity on anything because the press consider her to be interesting. François and Teddy are never interesting to journalists, no matter what they do. Whereas the men assume that the press can make someone famous, they find that in order for the press to pay attention to you, you must already be interesting or relevant yourself.

The power of the newspaper press is underscored through the implicit assumption that if the press were to write about the murder story, then Teddy and François would become instantly famous. As is often the case in interwar films, ‘the press’ is treated as a homogenous entity, and it is taken for granted that a story is either covered by all papers, or by none. Break the News shows journalists to be operating in a pack, indistinguishable from one another as they all try to get a quote from Grace. Once a story is covered, the next assumption is that the newspapers’ reach is such that the details of the story would become generally known.

The comedy of Break the News relies in a large part on the audience understanding and accepting these beliefs about how the written press operates. It is funny that the murder gets no attention from the papers, because, like Teddy and François, we assume that it would attract column inches. Whilst Break the News pokes fun at these assumptions, the jokes only work because we share the same underlying beliefs that the film’s plot is built on. In that way, Break the News gives insight in the position of the written press in interwar British society.

[1] Andrew Spicer, ‘Jack Buchanan and British Musical Comedy of the 1930s’ in Ian Concrich and Estella Trincknell (eds), Film’s Musical Moments (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006)

The King and Queen go to the Movies

The King and Queen go to the Movies

The 1920s were a turbulent time for Britain, both at home and abroad. The decade saw the beginning of the end of the British Empire, as Ireland and Egypt gained a level of independence in 1922. Throughout the 1920s popular support for independence grew in India, with Ghandi’s Non-Cooperation Movement founded in 1920. At home, as in the rest of Europe, ideological and extremist political factions gained support. The British imperial identity was clearly under threat during this period.

The Royal Family, as the figureheads of this imperial identity, worked hard to reaffirm conservative values and traditions and bolster a sense of national cohesion. They used cinema as one of the ways in which to promote the Empire and their own role in maintaining it. In the 1920s the King, Queen and Prince of Wales interacted with cinema both as consumers and as subjects of films. By engaging with cinema, the Royal Family both shared in a common activity which appeared to bind them together with the general public; and set themselves apart as extraordinary figures whose importance enabled them to appear on the silver screen.

The Prince of Wales was a subject of films that were made of his various Tours of the Empire which he undertook in the 1920s. He visited New Zealand in 1921, India in 1921-22, South America in 1924 and South Africa in 1925. These tours were routinely filmed, and the films were screened in British cinemas. At their initial release the films usually premiered at the Marble Arch Pavilion and the Stoll Picture Theatre on the Kingsway, before being distributed more widely. On 12 May 1925 more than half of The Times’ regular ‘The Film World’ column is taken up by a detailed description of Part 1 of the Prince’s Tour of Africa film, which gives an indication of the importance these films held at least for the Empire-minded Times.[1]

These Tour films placed the Prince of Wales as inextricably connected with the Empire, in the popular imagination. For the general public, the Prince was frequently visible as visiting all the corners of the Empire, reasserting his Royal authority over citizens across the globe. The images and intertitles of the films show how the texts consciously stress the coherence and common experience of Empire. In the newsreel summary of the Prince’s Tour of South America, when he visits a group of war veterans, the intertitle confidently states that ‘There are few cities under the sun that cannot raise a muster of British ex-servicemen.’ Empire here is emblematised in the image of the war veteran, who risked his life and health in order to maintain the integrity of said Empire.

Apart from the Prince of Wales’ tours, the Royal Family was also subject of a number of feature length films. In 1922 Cecil Hepworth produced Through Three Reigns, a compilation film which consists of footage of the Royal Family between 1897 and 1911, as well as extracts from actualities and other early cinema footage. Hepworth updated his efforts in 1929 with Royal Remembrances, which was also a compilation of footage of the Royal Family but this time the most recent footage was of 1929.

On 25 September 1922 the King and Queen asked for a special ‘command’ performance of Through Three Reigns at Balmoral Castle. This event was widely reported in the press.[2] The Royal couple invited 200 guests, including their tenants and servants, to attend the screening where they effectively watched their own family history. Shown in conjunction with Through Three Reigns – and different newspapers give different weight to this – was Nanook of the North, the ground-breaking Inuit documentary made by Brit Robert Flaherty. In one evening, the King and Queen watched a film that reasserts the significance of the Royal Family, and a film which demonstrates the technological and geographical advancements of the British Empire. This was the third of such ‘command’ performances that year – at an earlier screening at Windsor Castle the King and Queen had asked for the Prince of Wales Tour of India film.

The King and Queen’s first public visit to a cinema came two years later, in November 1924 on the eve of Armistice Day. The occasion was a charity screening to raise money for the newly formed British Legion. The royal couple saw the non-fiction film Zeebrugge, which told the story of the British army’s attempt to close off the Belgian port of Zeebrugge during World War One. Again the event was covered extensively in the press.[3] Crowds cheered the Royal Couple as they arrived at the Marble Arch Pavilion and were shown to the Royal Box which was constructed for the occasion. Three commanders who had received Victoria Crosses for their bravery during the Zeebrugge Raid were also in the audience.

Photos in the Daily Mirror of the Royal visit to the cinema. Daily Mirror, 11 November 1924, front page

The Daily Telegraph gave a detailed report of all the aristocrats who attended the screening. The cinema space, normally open to audiences of all backgrounds, on this occasion became a much more exclusive space. It seems that the King and Queen could endorse cinema, as long as cinema related to serious and inoffensive topics –and the films they viewed were British productions, of course. The Royal’s support of cinema underscored the Royal Family’s values: of course the King and Queen saw films like everyone else, but only those that promoted the national identity of their country, and those that would not cause offence to any of their subjects.

During the visit to the Marble Arch the Royal Family also became the subject of a novel technological experiment: their arrival at the cinema was filmed, and while they were watching Zeebrugge the film was developed, and played back to the audience at the end of the evening. The Royals became subject of a film which they later consumed as an audience. This circularity was also demonstrated in the private Royal screenings in 1922: one of the topics that the Royal family could watch without risk of controversy was – the Royal family.

By the end of the 20s, film had become a recognised medium to promote empire, either directly through ‘educational films’ or indirectly by using cinema screenings to raise money for charities with Royal patronage. In this decade, the Royal family had gotten involved in the cinema business, and started using it as a means of increasing their popularity and profile, and of reaffirming discourse on empire and nationalism. Although the cinema could be a democratic space, the Royal Family’s interactions with it were carefully constructed. This way, they cleared the way for later generations of Royals to use popular entertainment to maintain the ‘common-sense’ status quo of monarchy.

Through Three Reigns is available to watch for free on the BFI Player (UK only)

[1] ‘The Film World’, The Times, 12 May 1925, p. 14

[2] ‘The King Sees Himself’, Daily Express, 26 September 1922, p. 7; ‘Royal Family Film’, Daily Mail, 26 September 1922, p.6; ‘Films at Balmoral Castle’, Daily Telegraph, 26 September 1922, p. 12; ‘Royal Ballroom Cinema’, Daily Mirror, 26 September 1922, p. 2

[3] ‘King and Queen at the Cinema Theatre’, Daily Telegraph, 11 November 1924, p. 11; ‘King and Queen See Zeebrugge Film’, Daily Mirror, 11 November 1924, p. 3; ‘The King & Queen Filmed’, Daily Mail, 11 November 1924, p. 7

All-Night Card Clubs

On 8 March 1927 the Daily Express ran a sensational exposé on its front page:

“London’s All Night Card Clubs – Women who play from tea-time to breakfast”

The story ran nearly the full length of the front page. It noted that an advertisement had been appearing in respectable broadsheet The Times, which read:

BEAUCHAMP CLUB
56 Beauchamp Place, S.W. 3 (Sloane 3340)
Mrs Hands has regular games of straight poker daily, at 3 and 9pm. Bridge lessons given

Poker clubs such as this one functioned as private member clubs, where members paid an annual fee to attend. The legislation of private member clubs had been drawn up with the classic Pall Mall club for upper-class men in mind. In the interwar period, however, club legislation and licensing were increasingly exploited by entrepreneurs to facilitate transgressive behaviour. Nightclubs of the period operated under the same legislation; they were nominally private member clubs, which allowed them to evade a level of external scrutiny. However, where the old clubs in ‘Clubland’ often had (and still have) extensive vetting procedures for new members, nightclubs and poker clubs usually allowed anyone to join as long as they paid their annual fee. The poker clubs were perfectly legal, but clearly they were stretching the intentions of club legislation beyond its originally intended purpose.

The Daily Express held the Beauchamp Club up as an example of a supposed sudden influx of private member clubs that catered to poker players. The members of these clubs were alleged to be mainly women, playing into persistent fears of the potential corrupting effect of modern society on women. The article states confidently that: “Women gamblers are patronising these clubs in increasing numbers. They begin in the afternoon, break off for dinner, and then sit down to another long session, which often lasts till dawn.” The question that this may raise in the reader’s mind is – what happens to these women’s families whilst they are spending time at the poker table? At a time when a married woman’s primary role was to support and look after her family, a woman who spends hours at the poker table was presumably neglecting her responsibilities towards her husband and children.

Mrs Hand, the owner of the Beauchamp Club, is quoted as saying “Women will always gamble”; this is presented as a simple fact of life, that all the readers of the article can agree on. Players are described as attending the club after the theatre shows finish, then playing until breakfast, and returning at 3pm for the next round. It is implied that women are particularly susceptible to this addictive behaviour. What is more, Mrs Hand’s earning model banks on it; on top of the club’s annual fee, she charges players for each hour they spend at the table.

The location of the club and the fact that the advert had been placed in The Times – the stalwart of the upper classes – implied that the club members were of a high social standing. The Daily Express was aimed at a lower-middle class audience; this story allowed the Express reader to feel indignation at the wealthy Londoners who were supposedly spending all day gambling their money away. Mrs Hand is quoted as explaining that club members “play for four-shilling rises (…) That means you would have to be most unlucky to lose as much as £10 in a sitting.” Ten pounds was a substantial amount of money for most people; Mrs Hand’s comments only highlight how removed she is from the average person in her understanding of the value of money.

The Express article traces the reason for the sudden increase in poker clubs specifically to a few key court cases of previous years. In 1921 the owner of the Cleveland Club was charged with allowing illegal gambling activity in his club because it contained a poker room. The Express notes that in that instance, “The stakes were low, and play was never continued for more than half an hour after midnight”. Nevertheless, the club owner pleaded guilty and paid a fine.

However, a similar case that was brought to trial not long after was put to a jury, which delivered a verdict of ‘not guilty’ on the basis that poker required a level of skill and was therefore not a form of gambling. According to the Express, the police have since stopped taking action against poker clubs as the jury’s verdict set a precedent. The debate on whether poker is a sport or a form of gambling continues to this day, with both sports and betting companies arguing for their respective positions. A variation of poker called ‘Match Poker’, which removes the random element of which cards a player is dealt. This version of poker is now recognised as a sport, but more commonly played versions such as Texas Hold’em are a mainstay in casinos, and players are required to be at least 18 years old (in the UK) to play.

It is clear where the Express stands on the matter of prosecution, even if the clubs are currently primarily frequented by those who can afford to lose some of their wealth. It argues that complaints keep arising of “women and young men losing much more money than they could afford in poker clubs, and of other evils arising out of this form of gambling.” The article’s final sentence notes that publicly advertising these clubs, as The Times is allowing to do, gives opportunity to professional gamblers to swindle others out of their money.

It is unlikely that many Express readers themselves had been affected by poker clubs, but it was a pretty safe topic to gain their audience’s approval, as it put people of a different social class in the firing line. The article did not spark a bigger inquiry into poker clubs and the Express did not pursue the story. For the paper, private poker clubs were a way to generate indignation towards women, the upper classes, The Times, and the government and police who were not taking any action against these clubs.

The Squeaker (1937)

Today’s post is going to discuss another Edgar Wallace adaptation, as so many of his works were turned into films in interwar Britain. The Squeaker, also known as Murder on Diamond Row in the US, was made in 1937. The novel on which it is based was published ten years’ prior, in 1927. Wallace himself died in 1932 so although he is credited as a co-writer on the film, he had no active involvement in its production.

The Squeaker is directed by William K Howard, and American who came to Britain in 1937 to work for the – then already famous – producer Alexander Korda. The Squeaker was their first collaboration. The American link may be the reason why this film got more exposure in the US than most British interwar products; according to the film’s IMDb page, The Squeaker got broadcast on a number of regional US TV stations in a six-month period in 1948-1949, as part of a syndicated broadcast package.

The story of The Squeaker has all the elements of a British interwar crime story. There are criminals, police officers, journalists, and nightclub performers. Larry Graeme is a small-time jewellery thief. He sells his stolen goods on to a mysterious man known as ‘the Squeaker’. The Squeaker extorts his criminal suppliers; he offers a bad price for their goods but if they refuse him, he betrays them to the police. Larry is in love with the beautiful nightclub performer Tamara. Scotland Yard are after the Squeaker and the hard-drinking, gruff Inspector Barrabal goes undercover to investigate. Barrabal is friends with the journalist Joshua Collie, a crime reporter.

When Larry steals some valuable pearls and refuses to sell them on to the Squeaker, the latter makes sure Larry gets arrested. Larry escapes; the film’s climax takes place at a society party thrown by the affable businessman Sutton. Larry dies at the party; Barrabal gets accused of being the murderer. He however has realised that Sutton is the Squeaker and Larry’s killer, and the film ends in Sutton’s arrest and confession.

Contemporary reviewers have found the original novel uneven, hard to follow and poorly paced. Nevertheless, there have been no fewer than four film adaptations of the story. The first was made in Britain in 1930 and directed by Wallace himself. This version appears to stay close to the source material. A German film was made in the following year; and the Germans had another stab at it in 1963. (The popularity of Edgar Wallace adaptations in Germany is perhaps material for another post.)

The 1937 adaptation under consideration here is the only one who makes changes to the original novel. The biggest change is the addition of Tamara the nightclub dancer, whose character does not appear in either the source material or any of the other adaptations. In the film, Tamara’s nightclub performances are shown several times and at length. The inclusion of female nightclub dancers in films was a common trope in interwar British films, and they gave audiences an opportunity to enjoy the spectacle of the female body.

By introducing a nightclub dancer as a character, The Squeaker also opens up the nightclub space as one of the main sites of action in the film. The fictional club in the film is called the ‘Leopard Club’, and it is presented as a popular and high-end entertainment venue. However, the club is also the space where Larry can meet with Tamara. The film does not show the criminal Larry as being able to navigate any other public space, but in the nightclub he blends in with ease. In fact, the doormen of the club are shown to know Larry and greet him warmly when he arrives. The implication is clear: although the nightclub can be a fun space of entertainment and spectacle, it is also assumed to be a space on the margins of acceptable society, where criminals mix with non-criminal people.

Inspector Barrabal also moves in and out of the nightclub throughout the film, and easily builds rapport with Tamara. He is present at the club at the same time as Larry but makes no moves to arrest him; the nightclub’s status as a space almost outside of conventional frameworks, where everyone can mingle, is further underscored. The film later reveals that the inspector and the criminal know one another pretty well; they are sufficiently close that Barrabal can visit Larry in his apartment. The detective inspector is shown as someone who has to be able to build relationships of trust with anyone, and who plays the ‘long game’ in order to uncover a criminal plot.

Barrabal’s relationship with the journalist Joshua Collie does not quite have the same power dynamic as real-life 1930s journalists would liked audiences to have believed. Whereas real-life reporters liked to present themselves as indispensable to the police, because they could give them tips on live investigations, in The Squeaker the flow of information goes in the other direction.

Collie is unlike most cinematic journalists: rather than the stereotypical hard-nosed, ambitious hack, he is a fairly lazy man who rates his domestic comforts more highly than any professional success. In the film, Collie nearly gets fired by his editor because he is not chasing the Squeaker story as hard as reporters at other newspapers. However, Barrabal feeds him inside information from the investigation which allows Collie to impress his editor and save his job.

The purpose of Collie to Barrabal is not made very clear, yet Collie remains part of the action and is present at the film’s climax when Larry gets killed. There is a sense that by 1937, the crime reporter was considered such a staple part of the detective story that Collie’s character exists almost by default. He is there to complete the set of expected elements in the crime story; but his character is much less heroic or instrumental to the resolution of criminal cases than 1930s journalists liked to imagine themselves.

The 1937 film of The Squeaker does not feel uneven or poorly paced like readers have found the original novel. It is, however, difficult to find anything particularly objectionable in The Squeaker, but equally there are no original elements that make the film memorable.  There is a sense that by the late 1930s, British crime films were becoming so formulaic that filmmakers did not even question whether all the characters and elements were strictly necessary to the plot.