On 4 July 1931, the New Picture House (NPH) announced that their ‘magnificent cinema café’ would soon ‘complete Fife’s Super Cinema’. The ‘tastefully furnished’ café was set to add ‘the finishing touch to a truly super-cinema’; the jewel in its entertaining crown. Indeed, it went on to become much more than this, serving as a community hub and multifunctional venue in its own right. Yet the café had less than auspicious beginnings. 

First mooted in the St Andrews Citizen’s preview of NPH building plans from June 1930, the café was next mentioned in the newspaper’s published report from the Chief Constable of The Works Committee in July. The report noted the need for ‘movable tables and chairs’, yet seemed to sanction the café’s construction. In November, the NPH created a position for a young lady with tearoom experience, and in December, the Citizen’s formal preview of the newly constructed NPH noted its ‘smoking lounge and café’. But, despite these appearances, the café was not accessible to the public until July 1931, a full six months after the NPH opened its doors. 

It seems likely that the café fell at two hurdles: scope and staircases. An article in the Citizen from December 1930 noted the ‘tremendous last minute hustle’ involved in readying the NPH. Whilst the cinema was successfully hustled into existence, with a vigour that ‘the old grey city’ of St Andrews had apparently ‘seldom, if ever, witnessed’, the café did not make it through the initial and ambitious round of construction. The retirement of the NPH manager, Mr Symon, in March 1931 likely contributed to its further delay, and licencing peculiarities for tearooms, along with health and safety concerns, were additional impediments. Only in June 1931 was the tearoom finally approved by the Inspector of Places for Public Refreshment and the Town Council, following extensive debate on the café’s staircase, which directed café goers through the main cinema foyer. As a compromise, the NPH agreed to add an emergency exit directly from the café to the street at a later date.

Having reassured the relevant regulatory bodies, the NPH pulled its café into full swing from mid-July 1931. Their advert boxes in the Citizen show that it was initially marketed as a place to ‘take tea and refreshments’ after ‘the pictures’. It offered accompanying ‘music’ and was open between 2pm and 10pm, Monday to Saturday. It is unclear whether the music was live or recorded, but it was advertised as a café feature until November 1931. Two weeks after the café’s opening, the NPH advertisements emphasised that it was ‘open to the general public as well as patrons’, and within a month its opening hours were extended, from 2pm to 11pm. Evidently, the café had proved attractive enough to public and patrons alike to justify expanded opening times before its first month was through. 

In December 1931, the NPH placed a small advert for ‘a novel xmas party’ and suggested that arrangements could be made to host a gathering at the NPH with ‘tea or supper’. This advert represents the earliest evidence of the NPH’s exploration of the café’s varied utility and potential. Throughout December 1931, other Citizen articles illustrate how the café was otherwise incorporated into the NPH’s wider programme of community activities and commercial ventures. The café was used to entertain ‘residents of the Gibson Hospital and (…) ex-Service men’s widows and children’ after their invitation to a special matinee performance of City Lights, a popular romantic comedy by Charlie Chaplin. The tea was paid for by St Andrews’ Rotary Club but hosted by the café, and it is noteworthy that the occasion marked the NPH’s ‘first anniversary’. The decision to celebrate the NPH’s anniversary indicates the ambitions of NPH management to establish the cinema as a multifunctional and community-focused enterprise. 

In late December, a letter to the Citizen’s editor decorated the NPH with praise for their provision of ‘special facilities’ for Gallipoli veterans during their reunion, and related how the café space would offer a gathering place for the ‘whole party’, including veterans’ wives, to take tea after a showing of Tell England; a drama focused on the Battle of Gallipoli. The veterans’ reunion of 1931 marks the first in a series of NPH events and interactions with past and present military personnel, and likely laid the foundations for its wartime and post-war engagements across subsequent decades.

Despite its meandering path to prominence, the NPH café established itself as an integral feature of the NPH within half a year; facilitating philanthropic efforts that recruited loyal audiences, and widening the NPH’s scope as a venue. It enjoyed a continuous evolution along these lines until at least 1950; before, during and after WWII, and throughout brought St Andrews its own, bespoke, cinema café culture. 

Audrey McBride (2020)

Works cited 

St Andrews Citizen, 12^th July 1930 – 5 December 1931. (All weekly editions). 

‘New Cinema for St Andrews’, St Andrews Citizen, 28^th June 1930.

‘St Andrews Town Council’, St Andrews Citizen, 12^th July 1930.

‘Young ladies with tea-room experience wanted’, St Andrews Citizen, 15^th November 1930.

‘St Andrews New Picture House’, St Andrews Citizen, 13^th December 1930.

‘The New Picture House’, St Andrews Citizen, 20^th December 1930. 

‘Tearoom Manageress wanted’, St Andrews Citizen, 14^th March 1931. 

‘Tearoom at New Picture House’, St Andrews Citizen, 13^th June 1931. 

‘Waitress Wanted’, St Andrews Citizen, 20^th June 1931. 

‘New Picture House Café’, St Andrews Citizen, 4^th July 1931. 

‘A Novel Xmas Party’, St Andrews Citizen, 5^th December 1931.

‘Birthday Celebration of New Picture House’, St Andrews Citizen, 19^th December 1931. 

‘New Picture House Birthday Celebration’, St Andrews Citizen, 24^th December 1931.

‘Gallipoli Veterans’ Re-union (To the Editor.),’ St Andrews Citizen, 24^th December 1931. 

‘Gallipoli Survivor’s Re-union (To the Editor.),’ St Andrews Citizen, 9^th January 1932. 

Gillespie and Scott Drawings, St Andrews University Library (Bundle 2071). 

‘117 North Street, The New Picture House’, Historic Environment Scotland, http://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB51110 Last accessed 29th March 2020. 

‘New Picture House’, Dictionary of Scottish Architects 1660-1980,http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/building_list.php?bsstr=&bstwn=&bsisl=&bscnt=&bsctr=&bsnme=new+picture+house&bscls=Any&bsarc=&bscln=  Last accessed 29^thMarch 2020. 

Christmas day in St Andrews in 1950 differed from previous years. While recent years had been unseasonably warm, on this morning the townspeople were greeted by a glistening blanket of frost. The overnight temperature had slumped to fifteen degrees below freezing. The children met this cold weather with delight as they tried out their new ice skates, and games of curling were played on the skating pond (St Andrews Citizen, 30 December 1950). Though there was holiday merriment, St Andrews was still suffering some of the hardships brought on by war, with residents experiencing power cuts due to fuel rationing (St Andrews Citizen, 23 December 1950). This burden was not reflected on screen, as three light-hearted musicals dominated the programme across the town’s two cinemas, The New Picture House and The Cinema House. 

At the time going to the cinema was an especially popular leisure activity during bank holidays. To escape the cold, St Andrews residents could enjoy some special Christmas events. The New Picture House and The Cinema House were both open and showing films on Christmas day. The New Picture House had a very popular café and smoking lounge. For those desperate to escape the kitchen, the cinema even offered a special Christmas day dinner (Citizen, 9 December 1950).  

Meanwhile at The Cinema House, the St Andrews branch of the British Legion sponsored a special children’s showing of Make Mine Music (Geronimi, Kinney, Luske & Meador, USA, 1946) (Citizen, 16 December 1950). Make Mine Music, an animated Disney film comprising ten unrelated vignettes set to music, ranging from The Andrews Sisters to Sergei Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf,” was originally intended as a sequel to Fantasia (Grant & Huemer, USA, 1940) but was delayed with the onset of War (Nicholson, 2002, 125). The Cinema House had a packed schedule for the whole family on Christmas Day; illustrating the important social role cinemas occupied in the community. 

The main showing at The Cinema House was the musical One Touch of Venus (Seiter, USA, 1948). The children’s special showing began at 10:30am, with a final showing starting at 9:10pm. Based on a Broadway play of the same name, One Touch of Venus stars Ava Gardner as the love goddess Venus, who was a statue in a department store before a kiss from a timid window dresser (Robert Walker), brings her to life. The British publicity emphasised that Gardner had been cast due to her resemblance to the Anatolian Venus statue (“Beauty by the Inch”). Indeed, the film is best remembered today as a star vehicle for Ava Gardner, who would be compared to Venus for the rest of her career (Williams, 2020, 45).

Across the road at the New Picture House, they were playing One Sunday Afternoon (Walsh, USA, 1948), the third film adaptation of this Broadway musical. The film was intended as a star vehicle for Dennis Morgan, who had shone in My Wild Irish Rose (Butler, USA, 1947), a film which had played at the New Picture House in April 1949 (Citizen, 30 April 1949). However, One Sunday Afternoon was not popular and barely turned a profit (Glancy, 1995, 66). Despite his popularity at the time, Morgan and his films are largely forgotten today. 

The presence and popularity of the cinema on Christmas Day highlights the hugely significant place that the New Picture House and The Cinema House occupied within the town as both entertainment and social centres. This post-war era of austerity, before the television boon, was the peak period for cinema attendance in Britain. A Christmas day trip to the cinema offered a chance to meet friends and, given the Hollywood musicals on show, escape from the cold winter of 1950. 

Brooke Daley (2020)

Works Cited: 

St. Andrews Citizen, 1949 – 1950

“Beauty by the inch”. Film News Sheet from Eros Films Ltd, 21 June 1950.

Glancy, H. Mark. “Warner Bros Film Grosses, 1921-51; the William Schaefer Ledger” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 15/1 (1995), 55-73.

Griffiths, Trevor. “A Seven-day Wonder? Cinema and the Scottish Sabbath” in The Cinema and Cinema-going in Scotland, 1896-1950 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012), 138-170.

Nicholson, Stuart. “Make Mine Music and the End of the Swing Era”. In The Cartoon Music Book, edited by Daniel Goldmark & Yuval Taylor (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2002).

Williams, Michael. “A Venus in marble and Bakelite: Ava Gardner and One Touch of Venus (1948)” Celebrity Studies11/1 (2020), pp.43-59.

The operetta enjoyed a different kind of rendition when put on by the St Andrews Amateur Operatic Society for the first time in St Andrews in 1966. The Society formed in 1939 to gather lovers of opera and create a base from which they could produce local plays and public performances of the masterworks of world opera together with some of their own favourites (Partial Personal Correspondence: NODA).

Instead of taking on the town’s well-known Byre Theatre, trademark host of many local plays and productions at the time, The Society’s performance of The Gypsy Baron ran in the New Picture House (NPH) on the 14, 15and 16 February 1966 (The Citizen, 12 February 1966). The Society began its relationship with the NPH – which was a site long used for local amateur shows – in 1947 with a production of “The Pirates of Penzance” (The Citizen, 8 February 1947) and throughout the 1950s both the NPH and The Citizen had well-established connections with The Society.

The Baron was – unlike many previous Society productions – intensively advertised by The Citizenfor one month in advance: every week a poster was included between NPH and Cinema House programmes on page four of The Citizen. The phrase “show business” is studded across a large 22 January advertisement of the Baron. Underneath it reads, from the “stables that brought you the winners “Oklahoma” and “Brigadoon”” (The Citizen, 22 January 1966).

The Society’s method of advertising is doubly effective. On the one hand, the Society speaks to mainstream film production by invoking the language of Hollywood (“show business”) and two of Hollywood’s famous 1950s productions. On the other, the Society actually refers to the productions of the same name put on by the Society in the 1950s, which St Andrews locals may recall. It thus doubles The Baron’s chances of success by invoking two strands of popular heritage: that of global Hollywood and that of the local Society and their history with amateur productions in the NPH.

Moreover, the Society plays on the local sensibilities by targeting the family audience: The Citizen advertises the production as a “show for all the family” (The Citizen, 22 January 1966), while another issue reads “Bring Your Family to this Sparkling Show” (The Citizen, 15 January 1966). This serves both to draw local opera fans (and families and friends of the performers) to the cinema and potentially to bring an existing cinema audience to the local show.

The premiere and the whole three days were, indeed, successful. The Baron was perhaps unsurprisingly praised in a two-page glorious review in The Citizen, which proclaimed “A revel of gaiety and colour”, “flawless and effortless”, with its performances commended as well as its family appeal (The Citizen, 19 February 1966). The presence of critical engagement when it came to this, and many later, local theatre productions indicates that St Andrews continuously supported the efforts of local societies throughout the twentieth century.

The brief run of The Gypsy Baron shows a Scottish picture house going against the norm of allowing mainstream film exclusivity in UK programmes as the NPH, together with the local press, supported the successful exhibition of a local production put on by an Amateur Operatic Society. The desire to reach a different audience and to connect art forms can still be seen today with performances of operatic and stage shows, transmitted ‘live’ on cinema screens across the country. The operatic society also continues, now operating under the name the St Andrews Musical Society.

Mina Radovic (2018)

Works cited

The Citizen, 8 February 1947; 2.

The Citizen, 15 January 1966; 22 January 1966; 29 January 1966; 5 February 1966; 12 February 1966; 4.

“Glittering Operatic Society Show” in The Citizen, 22 February 1966; 3.

National Operatic and Dramatic Association (NODA)

Advertisement for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
in The St. Andrews Citizen, 5 March, 1949.

In 1949, The St. Andrews Film Society – formerly known as The Dundee and St. Andrews Film Society – relaunched on its own, with an opening performance of Raymond Bernard’s Les Otages. For this opening event at the New Picture House on 20 February, each of the 150 members in attendance were personally greeted by Mr. A. B. Paterson, the original founder of The Byre Theatre and a key figure in St. Andrews’ artistic community. While the society would become an integral part of the town’s artistic community – through its Sunday evening screenings – its second performance on Sunday March 6^thhighlighted a series of challenges facing the newly-formed society.

The film chosen for this second event was Robert Wiene’s classic German Expressionist film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) (St Andrews Citizen, 19 February 1949). The choice of Caligari is significant for a number of reasons, not least as a German film made in the aftermath of the First World War, which was now screened in the aftermath of the Second World War. The choice also shows how the reformed St. Andrews Film Society sought to portray itself to the town. By picking Les Otages and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligarias their first two screenings, the society was foregrounding international films already celebrated within the film canon. It wanted to educate the town on films which were thought of as well-crafted, and which created a counterpart to the Hollywood imports often shown throughout the week.

Yet, according to a review of the Caligari screening in The St. Andrews Citizen, the audience were far from impressed (The Citizen, 12 March 1949). The article states that when made in 1919, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a film intent on ‘horrifying’ but now in 1949, the ‘crude technique, compared with films of today, relieved the tension for the St Andrews audience by the comic effect of its most dramatic moments.’ 30 years after its initial release, Caligari was seen to have lost its sinister atmosphere and frightening impact – audiences were now laughing at scenes which had once evoked fear, and comparing Caligari’stechnical aspects to modern films of the 1940s.

The idea of technology failing to transition well through the years is also apparent in another aspect of the screening. According to the newspaper, the society were informed that the film took 81 minutes to show, but this was on the old, silent projector, whereas ‘on the high speed modern sound projector, the film went through in an hour’, significantly transforming the film for the modern audience. The screening was instead presented as ‘an interesting study’ which ‘underlined the technical advance in 30 years’, showing how these two negative aspects of the screening (the unexpected laughter, and erroneous speed) were used to promote apparent modern ‘advances’. Whilst the aim of the screening was to appreciatethe film for its historical and cinematic importance, it was used instead to show how far technology has developed in the time since its original release.

The screening of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari highlights a dislocation between what The Film Society thought audiences should see and what the citizens of St. Andrews wanted to see. Looking back at the screening now, we can see a society trying to educate audiences in the canonical titles of film history, and whilst this may not have always been successful, we can appreciate the efforts to find a space in the town to view and study film not only as entertainment but also as an art form.

Lyndsay Townsend (2018)

Works Cited:

St. Andrews Citizen, February 19, 1949.

St. Andrews Citizen, March 12, 1949.

The Citizen, 26 February 1955

While the two cinemas in St Andrews were often in competition with one another, the 1950s brought a wholly different adversary that threatened to seriously decrease the size of their audiences: it was the beginning of the era of television. One of Hollywood’s answers to the disappearing cinema audience was the introduction of CinemaScope in 1953. This format differentiated from the small screen, by using a widescreen image that suited westerns, historical epics, musicals and other genres that relied on panoramic shots, action scenes and spectacle.

In December 1954, The New Picture House announced that it would install the first CinemaScope in St Andrews, and only the second in Fife; the other being at Kirkcaldy. The local paper explained that CinemaScope would ‘produce a panoramic picture effect which is achieved by the use of a new lens which projects a picture on a screen that is over forty feet in width’ and ‘is slightly curved and creates thereby an illusion of depth’ (The Citizen, 4 December 1954, p. 5).

The first screening took place on 20th December 1954, and was a musical comedy Lucky Me (1954), starring Doris Day. Though no subsequent reviews of the event exist, the neighbouring Cinema House evidently recognised its potential impact and underwent its own installation of the CinemaScope. This installation was, The Citizen reported, completed by a firm that ‘came up to St Andrews from Buckingham Palace where they had been installing a similar apparatus’ (The Citizen, 22 January 1955). Indeed it was The Cinema House that would most strongly embrace this new technology, running an extensive promotion campaign in the local magazines in the coming weeks and years.

The first screening in CinemaScope at The Cinema House brought an enthusiastic response from The Citizen, which stated that the ‘mellow and restrained sound was in particular admired, while the coloured panorama of the film brought out the fullest possibilities … in a strikingly effective way’ (The Citizen, 29 January 1955).

Advertisements in The Citizen and even in the Madras College Magazine promised ‘Glorious Technicolor’ and ‘Breathtaking CinemaScope’ and sought to position film apart from television and other forms of entertainment. In this way, the advertisements built on the promises of ‘luxury and elegance’ that had been present since the cinemas first opened in town. The existence of the technically sophisticated equipment also meant that St Andrews was able to present the very latest spectacles intended for the wide screen, ranging from River of No Return (1954) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), to In Like Flint (1967) and a variety of Walt Disney Feature Animation films.

The introduction of the Cinemascope appeared to usher in a new and exciting era for St Andrews cinemagoers, but this was not to last. After fourteen years the production of CinemaScope films concluded, and the local cinemas now largely advertised the content rather than technical aspects of the films. The last screening advertised with CinemaScope took place in The New Picture House on 3rd February 1968 with the rerun of The Guns of Navarone (1961).

Jaka Lombar (May, 2016)

St Andrews Citizen, 8 May 1875.

On 10 May 1875, the local paper reported a ghost in St Andrews.[1] In Hull, there were similar tales of a “spectral visitor”.[2] The Chester Observer told stories of a spirit as “distinct as flesh and blood…pierced in vain by swords”.[3] The man behind these eerie manifestations was John Pepper. Pepper travelled the UK showing off his “ghosts” – optical illusions – to people across the country. When he came to St Andrews he promised “Angels that float in space” and “Spectres that creep up walls”.[4] It’s hard to believe that a show this ambitious could have been put on in the 1870s, a time before cinema or television even existed. Contrary to popular belief, a vibrant culture of optical illusions and projection based entertainment existed long before the often-quoted “birth of the cinema” in 1895.

How was Pepper able to “summon” the ghosts which performed in his travelling show? By the careful arrangement of mirrors, actors and a device called the magic lantern. The magic lantern is in many ways a precursor to the cinematic projector. Like the projector, the lantern harnesses concentrated light to magnify small images. These images are then projected onto a larger screen. Rather than projecting film reels, lanterns used images on glass slides. Showmen would use it to tell stories, and sometimes even create moving images. Pepper – and his former partner Dircks – decided to project the image of a person rather than a lantern slide. It was this trick – now known as the “Pepper’s Ghost” technique – that allowed them to create the ghostlike recollection of a person on stage.

One way to imagine what this technology may have looked like is to watch the works of Musion – a company which specialises in Holographic projection. Musion’s holograms are based on the same trick that Pepper popularised centuries ago. Musion projects videos rather than using live actors, but the basic effects of the trick are similar.

Like Musion, Pepper used his ghosts as part of a wider show that his audience was already familiar with. The ghost shows would include short scenes from popular plays of the era.[5] In St Andrews for example, the show included extracts from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and an adaptation of Faust. Instead of using a costumed actor, Pepper used his trick to play the ghosts in these scenes. His ghosts had the ability to dissolve into thin air and disappear through walls – not something that a traditional actor could offer!

Given the supernatural slant of his show, it may seem strange that Pepper was actually trying to encourage scientific thinking. Pepper was honourary professor at the London Royal Polytechnic. The Polytechnic’s shows were famous throughout Britain.[6] They aimed to expose the “supernatural” magicians of their era by explaining the secrets behind their tricks. In the case of his Ghost, however, Pepper sometimes felt compelled to keep the magic alive.[7] He did not always give the audience a rational explanation for what they saw.

Victorian audiences were fascinated by “scientific progress and educational spectacle”.[8] Groups like the Royal Polytechnic were caught between the chance to entertain and the desire to educate. The story of Pepper’s Ghost speaks to a time when scientific and popular interests were – often uncomfortably – intertwined, and to a history of visual media that stretches earlier than the “beginning” of cinema.

To read more about Pepper’s legacy in St Andrews, click here.

Sam Mills (August 2015)

[See image gallery at cinemastandrews.org.uk]

[1] St Andrews Citizen, 8 May 1875, 1.

[2] The Hull Packet and East Riding Times (Hull, England), 25 September 1863, 5.

[3] Cheshire Observer (Chester, England), 14 December 1878, 8

[4] St Andrews Citizen, 8 May 1875, 1.

[5] Helen Groth, “Reading Victorian Illusions: Dicken’s Haunted Man and Dr Pepper’s Ghost,” Victorian Studies 50.1 (2007), 43-65.

[6] Laurent Mannoni and Richard Crangle. “The Royal Polytechnic Institution.” The Great Art of Light and Shadow: Archaeology of the Cinema (Exeter, Devon: U of Exeter, 2000), 264.

[7] Jeremy Brooker, “Pepper’s Ghost, Metempsychosis and the Magic Lantern at the Royal Polytechnic Institution,” Early Popular Visual Culture 5.2 (2007), 189-206.

[8] Mannoni, 265.

At the start of 1914 a fierce advertising battle developed in St Andrews Citizen, with La Scala the first to use and exploit the potential war as a commercial selling point. While it advertised a forthcoming screening of ‘The Great Film of 1914 – The British Army’ – described as ‘the only film taken by authority of the Army council and as shown by the royal command’ – the Cinema House instead emphasised its state of the art facilities. ‘This new theatre compares favourably with any of the First Class Theatres of London and Glasgow’, the advertisement stated, ‘It is fitted out with all the latest appliances. It is arranged on the most Hygienic principles and is commodious and comfortable, beautifully designed and exquisitely furnished (Citizen, 31 January 1914. 1).’

However, a few weeks later The New Cinema House followed La Scala in advertising its own war-related film. Under a ‘Special Notice’, an advertisement explained that for one evening only ‘The National Service League will show Patriotic Subjects “Life In The British Army” and a special picture of the “Territorial’s In Camp” showing our university brigade in training’ (Citizen, 14 March 1914).’

Both of the town’s exhibition houses were trying to win public support by screening topical films, which often combined national images with local footage or talks, pertinent to the community. A further example of this came in La Scala’s biggest ever advertisement (Citizen, 4 April 1914):

SPECIAL NIGHT ON MONDAY 6 April

GREAT MILITARY TURNOUT

COLONEL SPROT, STATHVITIE CHAIRMAN

Supported by Colonel Allan, Colonel Macpherson and Others.

The Citizen subsequently reported on the ‘large audiences’ and ‘great interest’ generated by the British Army film screened, but now noted that ‘Colonel M’Kerrell commanding the Black Watch Brigade occupied the chair.’ Colonel Sprot, a prominent figure in the area and the intended guest of honour, instead attended a screening that evening at the rival, neighbouring Cinema House, in front of an audience of 900 people. This would appear to represent a major coup for the New Cinema House, which was now established as the leading cinema, and a community centre, within the town. Publicity for La Scala would fade over the next few weeks until on Saturday April 18 1914 an empty programme was printed on the front page of The Citizen opposite the full listings for the New Cinema House. A month later, in May 1914, La Scala closed when its Manager Mr McCullum retired. While it would reopen a number of times during the war, it never again focussed exclusively on film, and would shut its doors for good in 1923. The Cinema House, born and established on the cusp of War in December 1913, would continue until its closure in 1979.

Graham Dalton

Bibliography

The St Andrews Citizen 1913 Editions

The St Andrews Citizen 1914 Editions

The St Andrews Citizen 1915 Editions

The programme chosen to mark the cinema’s Golden Jubilee was a somewhat unlikely double bill. Alongside local historical footage of St Andrews, patrons would watch ‘the year’s Big Thrill Success’, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

The programming of familiar local footage – offering the chance to ‘see St Andrews and her people of 42 years ago!’ – alongside The Birds, served to recontextualise Hitchcock’s perilous tale of terror on a remote, coastal town for local audiences. While the film had relocated Daphne De Maurier’s short story, from Cornwall to California, the screening in St Andrews – juxtaposed with local footage – served to reverse this process, localising the narrative for those attending and relating the footage from San Francisco back to Britain’s coastline. While the prospect of The Birds may not have been wholly appealing to those that had attended the opening night screening of Lorna Doone and The Amateur Plumber in 1913, The Cinema House offered free admittance to all old age pensioners throughout its jubilee week. However, posters revealed the exact start time for the local footage (6.6 and 8.20) and for The Birds (6.15 and 8.29), suggesting that some of the pensioners may have managed to get out before The Birds arrived. For those that didn’t want to watch The Birds during this week, their other options included a trip to La Scala in Cupar, where they could see Hitchcock’s previous film, Psycho.

Despite the geographical distance between the film’s location, Bodega Bay and St Andrews, the narrative of The Birds continues to resonate with residents and tourists in St Andrews, who according to local press reports have recently been subject to ‘bird attacks’ within the town. In response to a seagull problem that had reached ‘epidemic proportions’ – with birds ‘divebomb[ing] people’ – the council introduced birds of prey in 2012 to ‘patrol the skies over St Andrews.’

By now, The Cinema House is no more. While advertisements in 1963 had confidently proclaimed ‘Now for the Century!’, the cinema would close almost exactly 16 years later.

Tom Rice (with thanks to Asta Hiippala)

Works Cited:

‘Cinema House Celebration: Fifty Years Old This Week’, The Citizen, 30 November 1963, 5.

The Citizen, 23 November 1963, 4; 30 November 1963, 1, 3, 4; 7 December 1963, 4.

‘Fed up St Andrews Residents to Give Seagulls the Bird’, Fife Today, 2 March 2012.

The Jazz Singer (1927)

Al Jolson’s famous first talkie, The Jazz Singer, opened at the Cinema House in St Andrews on 13 April 1929, almost a year and half after its famous opening in New York City in October 1927. However, the Cinema House was still only equipped to screen silent pictures. The film was advertised as being shown with ‘augmented orchestra’ joined by a special performance of a Glasgow jazz vocalist James Forbes.[1] Though a key moment in the history of sound cinema, Jolson’s famous first synchronized talking dialogue in The Jazz Singer—‘Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet’—was in St Andrews emblematic of early sound audience’s ‘unsynchronized’ experience of sound cinema: namely of the delayed exhibition of sound films without sound.

The slow and cautious conversion of local cinemas to sound was not unusual at the time. The Jazz Singer underwent the same fate in Edinburgh, opening silently at the Princes Cinema on 13 June 1929 together with Emil Jannings’ All For A Woman.[2] Furthermore, the films shown throughout 1929 in the Cinema House were still predominately Hollywood silent films, such as Harold Lloyd’s Speedy, Douglas Fairbanks’s The Gaucho, and Emil Jannings’s The Last Command and Tartuffe. It was not until March 1930 that the Cinema House finished its sound installation and embraced the sweeping enthusiasm of talkies with its screening of Al Jolson’s The Singing Fool (directed by Loyd Bacon, 1928) and Victor McLaglen’s King of the Kyber Rifles (John Ford, 1929).

Technical renovation of local cinemas for sound was slow going in 1929 for a variety of reasons. Before 1931, cinemas had to purchase sound equipment from American companies. The installation was slow and expensive, costing between £2500 and £4000 and committing the theatre to an additional weekly maintenance fee for eight years.[3] The long installation and contract and the exorbitant costs appalled many small cinema owners. In addition to these difficulties, there was a growing concern about the future of talkies. Despite the box-office success of the early talkies in America and London, many critics maintained a skeptical outlook and urged for improvement ‘both technically and artistically’.[4]

The uncertainty within the film industry and the lack of a sufficient amount of quality talkies echoed with the slowing pace of the local transition from silent to sound. Even though the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act was initiated to revitalize British film production and exhibition by establishing import quotas, it became entangled in the faltering British transition from silent to sound cinema. This attempt to stimulate British production largely resulted in poor quality quota talkies during a time when it was most needed.

Weixan Pan

St Andrews Citizen, 17 January 1931, 10.

When the New Picture House opened in December 1930, St. Andrews became home to two competing sound cinemas situated on North Street. While the economic depression hovered over the country, the cinema managers invested in the latest and expensive Western Electric Sound Technology, and, in particular in the case of the Cinema House, which had opened in 1913, in extensive upgrades of the interior in order to prevent sound distortion.

With the money spent, the sound conversion made it not only vital to sell and advertise the latest sound novelties. It was equally important to advertise the venue in order to prevail over the competition.

Upon its opening, the New Picture House, St Andrews’s Super Sound Cinema, offered the townspeople what the Cinema House seemed to lack: half-prices for children, daily matinees, and no booking charges. All three strategies naturally posed a threat to the long-existing Cinema House. One attempt to tackle this was the rebranding of the cinema. Not only had it been labelled as The House of Perfect Reproduction, but additionally as The Popular Centre of Amusement Seekers in St Andrews from January 1931 onwards.[1]

Over the course of the weeks, there had been several attempts on both sides to attract an audience. The Cinema House started to offer special matinees on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It dropped its booking charges, and even offered entirely new features such as Book Your Favourite Seat now for Great Entertainment![2]

In April 1931, the New Picture House responded by dropping its original label and by replacing it with the striking notion of Enjoy Ideal Comfort and Entertainment![3] There is a clear emphasis on the impressive interior of the cinema, while the entertainment is subordinate to this. The Cinema House never highlighted its interior in its adverts. The New Picture House, on the other hand, brought this new dimension into the marketing in an attempt to give patrons an additional reason for attending the picture house.

This did not seem to be sufficient, however. Only a month later, after the Cinema House increased its marketing effort with illustrated advertisements for films such as Whoopee! and with daily matinees for productions as big as All Quiet on the Western Front, the New Picture House once more altered its label, only slightly, but with an important meaning: on 30 May 1931, it presented itself with Enjoy Ideal Entertainment with Comfort![4] Adapting and subtly revising the April advertising phrase, this was a definite attack by the New Picture House on the grounds of quality. Strongly emphasising entertainment, the New Picture House pulled back from the attempt to impress patrons with its new interior. This telling change foreshadows the fight between two cinemas on the ground of entertainment, specifically over the acquisition of the best and latest sound pictures in an attempt to attract the townspeople.