Recently we received a series of photographs from Valerie Jordan. The pictures illustrate how cinemas used to advertise new films in the 1930’s in Gt Yarmouth. Valerie’s late father used to advertise at the Empire cinema in Gt.Yarmouth, where the photographs were taken.
Valerie’s father also showed the first talkie in Great Yarmouth where she remembers attending the children’s morning shows around the age of 4 at the Royal Aquarium. After moving to Gorleston her mother used to take her every week to the cinema, normally the Coliseum as well as continuing to go to the morning shows at the Palace.
One of the photographs depicts a promotion for Sanders of the River, a 1935 British film directed by the Hungarian-British director, Zoltán Korda, based on the stories of Edgar Wallace. It is set in Nigeria during the British colonial era. The lead Nigerian characters were played by African Americans, Paul Robeson and Nina Mae McKinney.
Valerie’s dad is standing on the top step in a smart suit (second from Left). Other photographs feature a promotion for “The Kid Brother” (1927) starring Harold Lloyd, directed by Ted Wilde and produced by Harold Lloyd himself. Valerie’s father is in the driving seat in the picture. Another promotional photograph features Fisherwomen and Valerie’s dad possibly taken during the Herring Fishing Season.
Many cinemas covered the front of their buildings with eye-catching images and provocative tag-lines. They would decorate the front with creative set pieces and even hire people to dress up as characters from the films. They would also have ‘mobile advertising campaigns’ using sandwich boards, cars, carts, or horse drawn vehicles to promote their films. With often many cinemas within the same city, competition was tough to attract audiences.
As cinema advertising was self regulated during the 1930’s, adverts were often quite provocative and controversial. Cinemas and films in general were closely watched by the many puritanical organisations that felt film was a threat to the moral good of society.
“Scanning newspapers, handbills and billboards, moral guardians were alerted to the awful doings in films they would never have been aware of otherwise. In 1934, a racy billboard so infuriated Philadelphia’s Cardinal Dougherty that he launched the motion picture boycott that helped bring aboout the Production Code Administration. Outside his residence, a provocatively painted and leeringly taglined billboard for a Warner Bros. melodrama [had] daily affronted his eyes.” (Thomas Doherty, Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930-1934, Columbia University Press, 1999, pages 112-113)
Norfolk at the Pictures 