The British film industry's production sector difficulties in the late 1930s

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 49-66

  Sedgwick, John ^a  

^a LONDON METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0039402403     PISSN: 01439685     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01439689700260621     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. R. Low, Film Making in 1930's Britain (London, 1985), pp. 115-116.
2. H. M. Glancy, MGM film grosses, 1924-1948: the Eddie Mannix ledger, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 12 (1992), pp. 127-144;
3. H. M. Glancy, Warner Bros, film grosses, 1921-1951: the William Schaefer ledger, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 15 (1995), pp. 55-74;
4. R. B. Jewell, RKO film grosses, 1929-1951: the C. J. Tevlin ledger, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 14 (1994), pp. 37-50, have recently published financial information on the performance of approximately 25% of the feature films released in Britain and the US during these years from the MGM, Warners and RKO studios, respectively. I am grateful to Mark Glancy for access to the complete record of the William Schaefer ledger of Warners' films 1921-1951.
5. See also my comments on the RKO and Warners' ledgers: J. Sedgwick, Richard B. Jewell's RKO film grosses, 1929-51: the C. J. Trevlin ledger a comment, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 15 (1995), pp. 51-59;
6. London Films Special Collection housed at the BFI Library, London.
7. K. Kulik, Alexander Korda: the Man Who Could Work Miracles (London, 1995).
8. S. Street, Alexander Korda, Prudential Assurance and British film finance in the 1930s, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 6 (1986), pp. 161-179.
9. 'More has been written about Korda than about other producers in Britain, and he has been both praised for restoring British film production and blamed for ruining it'. Low, Film Making, op. cit. , p. 165.
10. I. Dalrymple, Alex, British Film Academic Journal, Spring (1956), p. 7.
11. An exchange rate of $4. 5 has been used in this and subsequent calculations in comparing the film budgets of London Films with Hollywood productions. See N. Dimsdale, British monetary policy and the exchange rate, Oxford Economic Papers, 33 (1981), pp. 306-349.
12. See Low, Film Making, op. cit. , pp. 247-251.
13. Kine Weekly, 3 June 1937.
14. Kine Weekly, 27 October 1938.
15. See J. Sedgwick, The British film industry: the market for films, 1932-37, ch. 7, unpublished Ph. D thesis, London Guildhall University, 1995;
16. idem, The market for feature films in Britain, 1934: a viable national cinema, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 14 (1994), pp. 15-36.
17. Kine Weekly, 13 December 1934.
18. For a detailed account of Gaumont British's attempt to obtain a share of the American market see J. Sedgwick, 'Michael Balcon's Close Encounter with the American Market', HJFRT, 16(3) (1996), pp. 333-348.
19. Kine Weekly, January 1937.
20. Also see Low, Film Making, op. cit. , pp. 142-143.
21. Multiply by 4. 5 to obtain the equivalent US. dollar values. See note [10].
22. Kine Weekly, 5 September 1937.
23. S. Rowson, Value of remittances abroad for cinematograph films, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 97 (1934), pp. 588-611. The calculations of remittances are also reported in Kine Weekly, 13 September 1934.
24. H. E. Browning and A. A. Sorrell, Cinema and cinema-going in Great Britain, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 117 (1954), pp. 133-165, revise downwards these estimates to those listed in Table V.
25. This is arrived at as follows: Rowson's calculation of net revenues taken by renters is £8. 1 million. From this subtract £810,000 as the revenue earned by non-feature film producers and £500,000 for renters' profits. This leaves an estimate of £6,790,000 going to the makers of feature films.
26. The 664 film release will need to act as an approximate denominator since films released in 1934 continued to earn revenues in 1935, whilst some released in 1933 will have done the same during the 1934 season. For some reason Maxwell supposed that the number of feature length films marketed in Britain was in the order of 500. Given the assumption concerning one-tenth of the revenues being earned by non-feature films, the difference between the two denominators is sufficient to obtain approximate arithmetic means from the two sources.
27. Sedgwick, 'Market for feature films', op. cit. .
28. A fuller explanation of the index for the period 1932-37 can be found in, idem. , British Film Industry, op. cit. , chs 4-7.
29. In effect, the aggregate POPSTAT score for 1934, generated from the sample cinema set for that year, is taken to represent the exhibition sector as a whole. The performance of the season's 'hits' is likely to be underestimated since the respective box-office percentages negotiated by the renters is not measured in the POPSTAT statistic. For example, where an exhibitor booked a double bill programme which included a major 'A' and a 'B' feature, it is likely that whilst the former commanded a percentage of the gross box-office revenue, the latter would have been booked at a low flat rate fee. However, the POPSTAT score for both will be identical, thereby underestimating the popularity of the 'A' film as measured by the box-office potential revenue and overestimating the popularity of the 'B' film. At the other end of the scale, the fact that so many films return a zero POPSTAT amongst the sample cinema set, suggests that the latter leads to an underestimation of the performance of the cheaper flat rate bookings. This is not likely to be very important in terms of market share since the size of the cinemas in which such films predominated and their tariff range imply very small box-office returns.
30. S. Rowson, A statistical survey of the cinema industry in Great Britain in 1934, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 99 (1936), pp. 67-129.
31. C. H. Feinstein, Statistical Tables of National Income, Expenditure and Output of the United Kingdom 1855-1965 (Cambridge, 1976).
32. R. Stone and D. A. Row, The Measurement of Consumers' Expenditure in the U. K. 1920-38 (Cambridge, 1966).
33. G. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (Harmondsworth, 1962), p. 72.
34. Similarly, in a letter addressed to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and published in the Kine Weekly on 23 March 1933, the General Secretary of the Cinema Exhibitor's Association, Mr W. R. Fuller, argued that It (the k(c)inema) is no longer a luxury, but in the drab and dreary circumstances of life in depressed areas it is the only means available for bringing a little colour into the lives of people. as part of a campaign to persuade the government to abolish the entertainment tax levy on admissions of 6d. and less.
35. This appears in marked contrast to the claim that the long-run income elasticity of cinema-going was high (3. 4) in the United States as found in S. Bowden & A. Offer, Household appliances and their use of time, Economic History Review, 47 (1994), pp. 725-738 and 732.
36. Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Departmental Committee Appointed by the Board of Trade to Consider the Position of British Films (chairman, Lord Moyne) (London, HMSO, 1936).
37. Report of a Committee Appointed by the Board of Trade to Consider the Position of British Films (chairman, Lord Moyne) (London, HMSO, 1936) (Cmd 5320).
38. Board of Trade, Proposals for Legislation on Cinematograph Films . . . . (London, HMSO, 1937) (Cmd 5529).
39. For details of the reciprocality provision of the 1938 Act see Low, Film Making, op. cit. , p. 50.
40. see M. Dickinson & S. Street, Cinema and State: The British Industry and the British Government 1927-84 (London, 1985), pp. 98-99.
41. US population statistics taken from Eldridge & Thomas (1964).
42. S. Street, Hays office and the defence of the British market in the 1930s, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 5 (1985), pp. 37-55.
43. Kine Weekly, 4 November 1937.
44. The Board of Trade registered 228 British 'long' films submitted by renters in the registration year 1937-1938. This fell to 103 and 108, respectively, for the registration years 1938-1939 and 1939-1940. On the other hand, the proportion of British 'long' films registered by exhibitors fell from 26. 4 to 22. 8%. See Low (1985), Appendix and Tables 2 and 6).
45. See Sedgwick, British Film Industry, op. cit. , ch. 7, for a full breakdown of market shares by studio and nation.
46. These details are presented in Wood (1986), p. 120.
47. Low, Film Making, op. cit. , p. 29.
48. See also F. D. Klingender & S. Legg, Money Behind the Screen (London, 1937)
49. I. Jarvie, Hollywood's Overseas Campaign: The North Atlantic Movie Trade, 1920-1950 (Cambridge, 1992).
50. B. Fine & E. Leopold, The World of Consumption (London, 1993).
51. J. Foreman-Peck, Industry and industrial organisation in the inter-war years, in R. Floud & D. McCloskey (eds), Economic History of Britain since 1700, Vol. 2, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1994).
52. The Chandler paradigm as applied to Britain is most persuasively represented in B. Elbaum & W. Lazonic (eds). The Decline of the British Economy (Oxford, 1986)
53. and A. P. Chandler, Scale and Scope: the Dynamics of Industrial Competition (Cambridge, MA, 1990).
54. J. Eberts and T. Dort, My Indecision is Final: The Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films (London, 1990).