Intermission Part 4

The Diary of a Kind Hearted Man Killer now available as an Amazon Kindle book:

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This diary came to life several years ago as a novel, one that I was not entirely happy with. But then I had a phase of reading wartime diaries, and I realised a means of bringing Louisa Bradshaw to life. She came back out of her drawer and together we concocted her diary. 

She was born from my love of those old Ealing comedy films of the 1940s and 1950s. Those who share my passion may recognise the title as a cross between 'Kind Hearts and Coronets' and 'The Ladykillers', two of my favourites. I wanted to emulate the black comedy of the genre in the form of a book. This is the reason for the high body count and the at times rather blase attitude towards it. The easily offended or incredulous may wish to give Louisa's story a miss. Part 1 of the story has been available as a blogspot serial. Parts 1 and 2 are contained in this kindle book.

Summary:

Louisa Bradshaw is a railwayman's daughter who chooses to serve the LMS railway when World War Two erupts. Her adventure leads her to tangle with the notorious Leon family, whose matriarch curses her when she rejects her son's advances. As the curse appears to come true, Louisa looks set to lead a lonely life.

Bomb Sights

I recently borrowed a book from the library, a great door-stop of a tome which details life in Britain in the 1980s. As the historian set the scene for the riots of 1981, he put forward a viewpoint, just in passing, which pulled me up short.  This was the assertion that at this point in time, inner cities had still not completely recovered and filled in its World War Two bomb sites.  And that in fact, the final rebuilding of a London bombsite did not take place until the end of the 1990s.  I have never given much thought to exactly how long it took our blitzed cities to recover.  But I probably held some sort of assumption that it was all done by the 1960s – that a need to construct thousands of new homes and offices had swallowed up the bombsites.  I feel sure that if I saw any piles of rubble in Sheffield’s east end during the 1980s, I never associated it with bombing – more an assumption that progress was sweeping out the old ways of working and living.  As slum clearances took hold and the traditional industries folded, demolition lines became blurred.

I carried out a web search to see if I could find any information which corroborated this assertion that it took more than 50 years to fill in the voids in London. What I did find was that this is a contentious issue.  There are a couple of quite heated debates that have taken place in forums.  One person agreed that the last bombsite was at Ludgate Circus and that this was finally developed at the close of the 20^th century.  Others claim that they know of bombsites that still have not been fully redeveloped – gaps in streets that were never filled in, or playgrounds where fragments of bombed houses can still be seen.

Whatever the answer, I still found it amazing that it took so long to clear up the damage and replace all the lost buildings.  But this perhaps proves that I was not there to witness the sheer scale of the destruction.  Fortunately, just a couple of weeks later, a film came along to help bring this home.  The classic Ealing film ‘Hue and Cry’ was filmed in central London in 1946.  It makes very good use of the bombsites to create an atmosphere of seedy shabbiness, where criminals can take advantage and children become worldliwise.  The devastation cannot be escaped, such is its scale.  The scenes towards the end of the film are particularly good, where a gang of sleuthing boys descend on a gang of crooks. This large scale fight takes place by the Thames atop piles of rubble and inside the skeletons of buildings.  It looks like there is not a thing in tact along that stretch of the water.

A scene of houses being built is shown and it is obvious that the priority had to be housebuilding. It was in the politicians’ interests to see to it that their voters had comfortable homes first and foremost. When you give the matter due consideration, not all sites would have been suitable for residential development.  With all the resources ploughed into homes, of course many sites were going to be left longer than others before reconstruction could begin. Especially if they were publicly owned and in need of financial input from the local authority. ‘Hue and Cry’ certainly helped me to gain some perspective on post war redevelopment.

The film is also worth watching for the appearance of Alastair Sim at his brilliant best. There is also some novelty to be found in the depiction of several young boys who are obviously fresh out of school and in work.  This phenomenon is unknown to modern society.  I watched with interest the jobs that they happily kept themselves employed in, including market porter, ice cream bike operative and errand boy for the BBC.  1946 London was truly a world away, one where even the scars have now finally healed over.

Alastair Sim by @aitchteee

For a look at how World War Two changed our attitudes to the spirit world, see ‘Films With Spirit’ – part 5 of ‘Matinee Musings’ by Sarah Miller Walters, available as an Amazon Kindle book

 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Matinee-Musings-The-History-Usherette-ebook/dp/B00FJ4KY6C

Stop Wineing

‘Carry on Abroad (1972) takes full advantage of the package holiday phenomenon of the 1970s.  Suddenly, the British found themselves in the position of being able to head for the sun for their summer breaks.  Package holidays to Spain and other Mediterranean countries boomed.  Resorts, keen to cash in on the boom times, sometimes couldn’t quite keep up with demand.  I vaguely remember the consumer programme reports of the late 1970s/early 1980s where people wrote in to complain about tour operators that had sold them two weeks on a building site.  Rich pickings indeed for Talbot Rothwell.  ‘Carry On Abroad’ exaggerates the problems encountered by most, but as with all comedy it is based on familiarity and there are elements of truth in the unfinished hotel in the middle of nowhere, run by amateurs.

A strong theme running through the film, and a looming sign of things to come is the conspicuous consumption of alcohol.  The character of Eustace Tuttle, played by Charles Hawtrey (though mainly being himself rather than acting, by all accounts) is rather symbolic.  A Mummy’s boy, whose maternal bondage seems to revolve entirely around his bowel movements, he uses his holiday to temporarily break free.  To him, to break free entails indulging in copious amounts of drink.  He spends the entire film on the sauce.  Meanwhile, Mrs Blunt, played by June Whitfield, is a hugely uptight woman.  She is the butt of that famous line of Sid’s, where, after telling him that she has tried every vice once and didn’t like it, he can only assume that she has just the one child.  Of course, all it takes is a bottle of champagne to loosen her up and become open to amorous advances.  Finally, at the end of the film, all of the characters bond over a huge bowl of punch.

If we go on the older black and white British films, it used to be the case that our pubs kept to strict opening hours, that men drunk only pints of flat beer or traditional spirits, while any woman unladylike enough to frequent a public house drunk a port and lemon, or possibly a gin. Certainly drunkenness existed – but was it to the same extent that we have now?  These new trips abroad broadened our horizons where drinking was concerned and holidaymakers partook specifically to enhance the relaxation experience.  Trips began to be made across the Channel specifically to drink, and we imported these new habits in an attempt to recapture the holiday spirit, to break up the horror of returning to the daily grind.

Unfortunately, like Eustace, we do seem to have taken it too far, as scenes on a Saturday night up and down the land attest.  And I do believe that we have rather made a name for ourselves on the continent as a nation unable to hold their drink.  As ‘Carry On Abroad’ shows, we do it to escape and to loosen ourselves from the bonds of our natural national reserve.  It is time that we grew up now, and found some confidence elsewhere.  

My first holiday abroad in Tenerife, 1982.  I wasn't on the booze though....

What Maggie May Tell

‘The Maggie’ (1954) is a well loved Ealing film, a gentle comedy set on the waterways around the west coast of Scotland.  The Maggie of the film title is a battered old puffer boat, whose wily captain returns to Glasgow in search of a cargo.  By being in the right place at the right time, and with a little stretching of the truth, Captain MacTaggart makes a scoop.  He secures the cargo of a wealthy American transport tycoon called Calvin D Marshall.  His job is to take several household items to an island.  The job is given to Captain MacTaggart by Marshall’s assistant, the very English beaurocrat Mr Pusey who is too busy to make the proper checks.  The Captain being a law unto himself, the journey is punctuated by booze ups and poaching, and the journey promises to be a long one.  Marshall, finding out about his cargo, firstly tries to send his assistant to sort things out, but then ends up joining the crew to supervise matters.  All sorts of little adventures ensue which are delightfully entertaining – perfect feelgood stuff for a wet weekend afternoon.

As I have mentioned before, most recently in my post about ‘The Man in the White Suit’, I often detect a hint of political commentary in the Ealing comedies.  In ‘The Maggie’ I think that the key to the commentary lies in the name of the wealthy American – Marshall. At this point in the mid 1950s, Marshall Aid would still have been a relevant topic. This pumping of United States wealth into Europe aimed to put us back on our feet economically – the ultimate capitalist plan to prevent communist revolution or further war.  Britain received a hefty share of Marshall Aid, but as we can still easily imagine today, people must have had their own ideas on how it should have been spent.  I think that the naming of a rich American character as Marshall is too much of a coincidence for it not to have been deliberate.

The big mistake that Donovan Marshall makes is to leave the arrangements for the transportation of his goods to an Englishman in a bowler hat.  It is he that messes up what should be a simple task of distributing the goods to their intended destination. He fails to make the proper checks and is panicked into giving the shipping contract to the wrong sort of people.  Does this translate into dissatisfaction with how the Westminster government spent the Marshall Aid? There has certainly been discussion amongst history commentators on this issue.  Germany invested their aid into manufacturing and soon outstripped the UK in this respect.  Meanwhile, it seems that the UK chose to spend much of its aid money on the welfare state and clinging to the wreckage of colonialism.  Is this the reason why we have bowler-hatted and suited Mr Pusey misdirecting Mr Marshall’s riches?  I do believe that someone involved with the making of ‘The Maggie’ was bemoaning a perceived condemnation to a second rate future because of mishandled aid money.

One scene in the film which really caught my eye was close to the end, when Mr Marshall’s cargo is jettisoned in order to save The Maggie from sinking. There is a lingering shot of a crate sinking to the sea bed. A drop in the ocean is the phrase that came to mind.  An opinion that we just didn’t receive enough?

At the close of the film, Marshall lets MacTaggart get away with it all and keep his puffer, sacrificing his expensive cargo in the process.  I wondered if this was a criticism of the US too, in being too soft with Britain.  Is this a suggestion that they let sentimentality get in the way of making us treat capitalism with the due reverence?

None of this proves anything; it is all my own conjecture.  But I find the possibility that such a gentle film as The Maggie could be making such a political comment fascinating.  This is a subtlety which is definitely lacking in modern media.

http://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/178258325/vintage-red-guide-to-western-scotland?ref=shop_home_active_5

Difficult Truth Girl

‘Good Time Girl’ (1948) is quite the hidden gem.  I unearthed it on You Tube, and I’m sure that I have neither seen nor heard of it previously.  This is odd, because it has a stellar cast.  Jean Kent has the starring role and she is supported by Herbert Lom, Dennis Price, Flora Robson, Diana Dors and Jill Balcon.  As you would imagine with a cast with this kind of quality, the film is no turkey – it is compelling and atmospheric.  So why is it not a household name?

I wonder if this is because the film was too radical in its outlook for the times.  Did it have a subdued reception in 1948 because, in general, people found its message difficult to deal with?  This in turn might have led to it becoming quickly buried and forgotten.

The story focuses on Kent’s character, a girl of sixteen called Gwen.  We are invited to watch her spiral down into a life of crime and eventual imprisonment by the haughty and moralising magistrate (Robson).  We first find her living at home with her parents and five siblings, where the father drinks away what little he earns and regularly beats his entire family.  After losing her job in a pawnbrokers, Gwen is on the receiving end of what she decides will be her final belting and leaves home.  She then becomes prey to a series of ne’er do well men and she slides down towards alcoholism, manslaughter and theft. Her crimes are undoubtedly heinous.  There is no tiptoeing around the fact that she is in the wrong.  Yet we sympathise because we are shown that she was born to be a victim.  The fault is not all hers, society has a role to play – society turns a blind eye when fathers beat their children senseless; society allows adult men to take advantage of teenage girls with a nudge and a wink.  And whatsmore, society allows people to sit in judgement of girls like Gwen when they have absolutely no insight into poverty and abuse.  They only see the crime and seem to have no concept that the criminal can also be a victim.  All it would have taken to prevent Gwen’s crimes would have been a safe home and a job.  But she was condemned the minute that she tried to fight back against her lot in life.  She didn’t know her place.  Uncomfortable, isn’t it?  Because this isn’t history.  At least in the modern world systematic abuse makes newspaper headlines and launches official enquiries.  It’s one baby step in the right direction but look how long even that has taken us. 

The modern audience of ‘Good Time Girl’ are not unfamiliar with the concept of criminal as victim.  Most of us have now at least learned that there is more than one aspect to any story.  We can watch this film and accept what it tells us about our faults.  But its burial over time perhaps shows that post-war society was still inclined to accept what was dictated to them by a rigid hierarchy.  People were not expected to question, and in fact may have viewed this film very differently to me or to any of us now.  Perhaps it should be re-released or re-made because this story is still, unfortunately, very relevant.

Dark Days

‘The Stars Look Down’ (1940) stars Michael Redgrave and is set in a North Eastern mining town in the 1930s.  Above all else, it demonstrated to me the unremitting misery of the 19th and 20^th Century coal community.  This is of particular personal interest to me.  Although I grew up in Sheffield, with steel workers as my immediate antecedents, in 1999 I moved to a traditional coal mining town.  My work put me in touch with many old miners and I found myself working in communities where mining was gone but by no means forgotten.  I have seen how the memory of dark times has been passed on down the generations, so that even decades old grievances can be brought into play without either side thinking it strange.  This is history that remains difficult to shake off.  I found it bemusing at first.

‘The Stars Look Down’ portrays a community that is downtrodden by its livelihood.  When the workers try and make a stand against the greed of the pit owners, the mine closes and they are left with nothing.  There is no alternative work.  The whole town is dragged down as people can’t afford to buy from the shopkeepers and small tradesmen.  With nothing else to kick against, they turn in on themselves.  Those who do try and find a way out – such as Redgrave’s character (Davey Fenwick) are viewed with amusement or disdain.  The will to break free has been forced out of most, they continue along a single track like a blinkered pit pony.

Redgrave by @aitchteee

 When the pit is open and working, danger is a constant presence.  The film makes it clear that many were of the opinion that mine owners put profit before lives.  It puts across a firm opinion that only public ownership will make this a safer working environment.  Daily threat of death is accepted as a hazard of earning enough to stay alive – a paradox unacceptable in the modern world. The storyline ends tragically.  True to life for so many families.  Also true to life perhaps is Davey Fenwick’s eventual return to his home village.  Even those that escaped found the world outside just too different to cope with – such was the unique character of a pit village. 

Nationalisation was achieved but it didn’t stop the accidents or the strikes.  What really changed things was the welfare state, which meant that loss of work didn’t lead to cruelly means- tested grinding poverty.  Although the towns and villages where I live and work are still struggling through the closures of two decades ago with some of the highest unemployment rates in the country. This film helped me to see why I shouldn’t have been so bemused when I moved here. Perhaps if I had seen this first I would have been more prepared. 

Since moving here, I have traced my family tree and found that I have some north eastern mining blood. Cornforth and Ferryhill are my ancestral homes, and were probably not that different to the village portrayed in the film, even back in the 19^th century.  I am proud to have this blood – but glad that Great Grandma decided to seek her fortune in the big city and took her hook to Sheffield.  And now I realise just how much I should admire her for breaking free from that setting.  Strange to imagine that I did actually meet her, that this history was just in my grasp as our lives briefly overlapped. Unfortunately, she was so old that she scared me! But it just shows that these terrible lives were not so long ago in the grand scheme of things, which should be much to our shame.


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Appointment With Luck

‘Appointment in London’ (1953) stars Dirk Bogarde as a Wing Commander at a Lincolnshire bomber base.  The action takes place in the summer of 1943.  As you would imagine for a British film of this period, there is a range of familiar looking faces in supporting roles.  Quite often, you can’t put a name to the face, they are just part of your own film landscape.  In this film, one character had an extremely familiar voice, although his face was hitherto unknown to me.  The voice belonged to an Australian character, played by one Bill Kerr.  Any Hancock’s Half Hour-ites out there will know Bill’s Antipodean tones – I must have heard him hundreds of times from the radio shows.  I found it quite fascinating to actually see him, though I kept expecting him to call other characters “Tub”!

This is a serious film, focussing on a group of men who never knew if that day would be their last.  I was half expecting a squadron of stiff upper lips and blithe heroism.  I was pleasantly surprised by the very human portrayal that I saw on the screen.  It gave me the overall impression that these men were obsessed with the concepts of luck and superstition.  At the beginning of the film, Bogarde’s character (Mason) is returning from his 87^th flying mission over enemy territory.  The storyline makes clear just how lucky he is to have reached this point.  In fact he is an anomaly in the statistics.  Mason’s luck weighs heavily on his shoulders and colleagues worry for his health.  There is no logical reason for his survival, it is pure luck and he doesn’t know how to prolong it or when it will run out.  Meanwhile, other characters have their lucky charms, and talk of jinxes is common.  There is even the hint of superstition around the presence of wives and girlfriends.

Bogarde by @aitchteee 

This film demonstrates how important these concepts are to the human when they face an uncertain, pressured existence.  It shows how our irrational beliefs in superstitions and charms stems from a time when life was much less safe than it is today.  It also demonstrates, should we ever forget, just how short a lifespan World War Two aircrews faced.

We should treasure films such as ‘Appointment in London’ as part of our national war archive.  Another thought that this film led me to is that this kind of warfare was quite unique and its existence short-lived.  Aerial warfare was in its infancy in World War One, it was perfected in the Spanish Civil War and used most intensely in World War Two.  But by the end of this conflict, the pilot-less aerial bombardment weapon had been developed.  It was then not the nightly air-raids, but the constant sudden appearance of a V rocket that was to be feared.  So, this window in the lives of bomber crews needs to be kept, as our understanding of their existence and psychology recedes into a past that we can barely comprehend anymore.

To see how this film inspired one of my short stories, see my wordpress blog post: http://sarahmillerwalters.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/keep-writing/