The Euro-British Flagship That Sank

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1 Bioscope, 14 January 1931, 14. 2 Robert Murphy, Coming of sound to the cinema in Britain, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 4(2) (1984). Rachael Low, The History of the British Film 1929–1939: film making in 1930s Britain (London, 1985), 182–184. Tobias Hochscherf, The Continental Connection: German-speaking émigrés and British cinema, 1927–45 (Manchester, 2011), 25–26; Andrew Higson, A film League of Nations: Gainsborough, Gaumont–British and ‘Film Europe’, in Pam Cook (ed.), Gainsborough Pictures (London, 1997), 71; Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby (eds), ‘Film Europe’ and ‘Film America’: cinema, commerce and cultural exchange 1920–1939 (Exeter, 1999), 277. 3 Niederlage in Wembley: Tobis–Klangfilm in England, in Jan Distelmeyer (ed.), Tonfilmfrieden/Tonfilmkrieg: Die Geschichte der Tobis vom Technik-Syndikat zum Staatskonzern (Munich, 2003). 4 For British International Pictures, see Andrew Higson, Polyglot films for an international market, in ‘Film Europe’ and ‘Film America’. Launched in 1927, BIP abandoned its European ambitions with Let’s Love and Laugh, its final multi-lingual production, shot in March 1931. ASFI’s last major venture, The Bells, reached the studio floor in April. 5 Bioscope, 6 November 1929, 18; Times, 7 November 1929, 21. Schlesinger had previously been involved in British National Studios, absorbed into BIP in 1927. For further national readjustments in European collaborations see Horst Claus, Commerce, culture, continuity: Hans Steinhoff’s ‘Mittelfilm’ production of Stefan Zweig’s Angst (1928), German Life and Letters, April 2006, 119–126, and Lawrence Napper, Geza von Bolvary, Arnold Ridley and ‘Film Europe’, in Tim Bergfelder and Christian Cargnelli (eds), Destination London: German-speaking èmigrès and British cinema, 1935–1950 (New York, 2008), 38–42. 6 For an imposing diagram of the Küchenmeister network, see Karel Dibbets, Sprekende films: De komst van de geluidsfilm in Nederland 1928–1933 (Amsterdam, 1993), 150. Note too the diagram tracing sound and film companies’ international connections in Howard T. Lewis, The Motion Picture Industry (New York, 1933), 79. 7 Coming of sound to the cinema in Britain, 148. For more detailed accounts of the Tobis–Klangfilm union, see Karel Dibbets, Tobis, made in Holland, in Tonfilmfrieden/Tonfilmkrieg, and Kristin Thompson, Exporting Entertainment: America in the world film market 1907–1934 (London, 1985). 8 The Tobis syndicate’s national divisions—there were others in Portugal, Poland and Austria—are documented in Hans-Michael Bock, Wiebke Annkatrin Mosel, Ingrun Spazier (eds), Die Tobis 1928–1945: Eine kommentierte Filmografie (Munich, 2003). 9 Times, 10 July 1929, 14. 10 By June 1929, Western Electric’s cinema installations numbered 65; by December, 450. In the same period, RCA’s sound-on-film system was installed at Elstree, Islington and Twickenham studios; it was soon the most widely used system in Britain. See Coming of sound to the cinema in Britain, 146; Kinematograph Weekly, 23 January 1930, 54; Douglas Gomery, The Coming of Sound: a history (New York, 2005), 107; Rachael Low, The History of the British Film 1918–1929 (London, 1971), 205–206. Western Electric’s equipment was only installed at British and Dominion’s Elstree studio. 11 Kinematograph Weekly, 26 September 1929, 26. 12 Bioscope, 21 August 1929, 37; Times, 21 October 1929, 26; Kinematograph Weekly, 11 January 1934, 115. 13 Denis Gifford, The British Film Catalogue, Volume 1: fiction film, 1895–1994 (London, 2000), 349. 14 In the ASFI directorate listing in Kinematograph Year Book 1932 (London, 1932), 330, Schlesinger had two henchmen, his BTP colleague Harold Holt, and the businessman W. W. S. C. Neville. The Küchenmeister and Tobis axis were represented by Dutch financiers Dirk Out and W.H. van Eeghen, R. Frankfurter (Sprekende Films), Ernst Nölle (director of Tobis’s Berlin production base), V.H C. Amberg and Ufa executive Ferdinand Bausback. 15 Bernard Vorhaus, Saved from Oblivion: an autobiography (Lanham, 2000), 54. Kinematograph Weekly (2 January 1930, 107) lauded Becker as ‘that famous production chief’, while his entry in Kinematograph Year Book 1931 (London, 1931, 237) mentioned his work for Westi as ‘the originator of the system of European collaboration in film production’—an exaggerated claim. 16 Bioscope, 15 January 1930, 27. 17 Times, 21 October 1929, 26. 18 Bioscope, 23 October 1929, 27. 19 Kinematograph Weekly, 23 January 1930, 36. Times, 4 February 1930, 5; 8 April 1930, 5; 24 July 1930, 23. See also Bioscope, 5 February 1930, 18; Kinematograph Weekly, 20 March 1930, 23; 10 April 1930, 36, and 19 June 1930, 24. BTP’s dwindling fortunes are neatly summarised in Coming of sound to the cinema in Britain, 149. 20 Times, 27 July 1931, 18. 21 Kinematograph Weekly, 19 March 1931, 63. 22 Bioscope, 4 September 1929, 24–25; 9 October 1929, 24. Times, 4 September 1929, 10. 23 Saved from Oblivion, 54–55. 24 Preserved in the BFI National Archive, catalogued as Gorno’s Italian Marionettes. It was trade shown in July 1929. 25 Kinematograph Weekly, 30 January 1930, 35.The five other puppet films were: Herlock Sholmes in Be-a-live Crook (aka AnnaWent Wrong); Kuster Beaton; Don Dougio Farabanca; Our Dumb Friend; and Kerri Cheertum in Jungle-Tungle. Gifford’s British Film Catalogue mistakenly lists their trade show date as February 1930. Shooting took place between January and October 1930. Five were trade shown on 17 March 1931; Don Dougio Farabanca was reviewed in Kinematograph Weekly on 26 February 1931. 26 Kinematograph Weekly, 16 January 1930, 41. 27 Bioscope, 15 January 1930, 9–14, 27. Kinematograph Weekly published its own coverage the next day. See also Times, 22 January 1930, 22. 28 Times, 12 June, 1929, 14. The play A Roof and Two Walls eventually reached the screen in 1932 as Discord, produced by British and Dominion. 29 Bioscope, 6 August 1930, 21. 30 Kinematograph Weekly reported on the legal squabbles on 30 October 1930, 41. Warners’ German offshoot was formed after the company’s distribution deal with Tobis–Klangfilm in April, a major breach of Hollywood’s boycott of the German market during the sound patent warfare of 1929–1930. See Exporting Entertainment, 156. 31 Forsyth Hardy, John Grierson: a documentary biography (London, 1979), 53. 32 Bioscope, 15 January 1930, 27; Kinematograph Weekly, 16 January 1930, 41. 33 Kinematograph Weekly, 25 April 1930, 25. For an early approving review, see Robert Herring, Manchester Guardian, 28 June 1930, 11. In John Grierson: a documentary biography, Forsyth Hardy wrote: ‘Marionettes were to become an enthusiasm of Grierson’s which he would stoutly defend against all criticism’ (53–54). 34 Kinematograph Weekly, 6 March 1930, 37; 27 March 1930, 19. 35 Kinematograph Weekly, 22 January 1931, 69. 36 Kinematograph Weekly, 24 April 1930, 25; Bioscope, 14 January 1931, 40. 37 Saved from Oblivion, 57. Kinematograph Weekly, 5 June 1930, 31. 38 Kinematograph Weekly, 31 July 1930, 21. 39 Close Up, August 1930, opposite page 99. 40 Kinematograph Weekly, 26 June 1930, 54. Manchester Guardian, 28 June 1930, 11. 41 Kinematograph Weekly, 24 July 1930, 55; 16 October 1930, 32. 42 Bioscope, 27 August 1930, 26. 43 A conspectus of German reviews appears in Karlheinz Wendtland, Geliebter Kintopp: Sämtliche deutsche Spielfilme von 1929–1945: Jahrgang 1929 und 1930 (Berlin, 1988), 135–136. See also Siegfried Kracauer, Kleine Schriften zum Film: Band 6.2,1928–1931 (Frankfurt am Main, 2004), 410–412. The Variety review is from 19 November 1930, 21. The German version subsequently reached New York City in May 1932. 44 Cinema listings in La Stampa, 1 March 1931, 7 (www.archiviolastampa.it, 2012). The ‘silencing’ of Italy’s imported foreign talkies in 1930–1933 was a Ministry of Interior policy; see Mario Quargnolo, La parola ripudiata (Gemona, 1986), 20–24. 45 Kinematograph Weekly, 22 January 1931, 69. 46 Bioscope, 14 January 1931, 34. According to the 1927 Cinematograph Films Act, to ensure registration as a British film salaries paid to ‘British subjects or persons domiciled in the British Empire’ had to reach 75%, or, after special pleading, 70% (Kinematograph Year Book 1931, 169). 47 Bioscope, 14 January 1931, 34. Kinematograph Weekly, 15 January 1931, 41. Manchester Guardian, 10 January 1931, 10. Observer, 18 January 1931, 18. 48 Variety, 28 January 1931, 43. The reviewer, ‘Chap.’, also poked fun at the scarcity of British personnel involved in this formally British film: ‘Inside tip-off claims the aunt of the lad who held up the N.G. [ie. No Good] board came from Aberdeen’. Times, 23 February 1931, 10. 49 The BFI National Archive’s viewing copy of City of Song runs for 64 minutes. The film was trade shown on 9 January 1931 and later released at 99 minutes, and reissued in 1934 in a 72-minute version. A separate 35-mm print, lasting 59 minutes, is available on video from the Bel Canto Society. A print of Die singende Stadt (registered with the German film censor on 27 October 1930 at 99 minutes, then re-submitted on 14 November at 96 minutes) is housed at the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Stiftung; there is also substantial material on the internet. 50 Kinematograph Weekly, 26 June 1930, 54. 51 Dover Express, 28 August 1931, 15 (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk, 2012). In a double-page advertisement in Kinematograph Weekly (8 January 1931, 42–43), ASFI boasted that City of Song had been sold to 27 countries, though not to America, Canada or Australia. 52 Film Weekly, 17 February 1933, 7. Aside from the trimmed 1934 re-release in Britain, City of Song reached America in November 1933 as Farewell to Love. 53 In 1933, Gallone made two further British variations on the formula in Windsor Films’ For Love of You and Going Gay, both released by Sterling, distributor of City of Song. 54 Kinematograph Weekly, 18 September 1930, 61; Bioscope, 1 October 1930, 18. The Gorno shorts were initially supposed to conclude with Wembley Follies, featuring the series’ puppets in a revue format; it was never made. 55 Kinematograph Weekly, 10 April 1930, 52. 56 Times, 22 October 1930, 14. Kinematograph Weekly, 23 October 1930, 35. 57 Kinematograph Weekly, 19 March 1931, 67; 26 March 1931, 58. Le Juif Polonais began shooting on 15 March, and opened in Paris on 18 September, a month before the British film’s trade show. 58 Michael Omatsu, Famously unknown: Günther Krampf’s work as cinematographer in British films, in Destination London. 59 Kinematograph Weekly, 14 May 1931, 77. Despite ASFI’s frontline employment of European talent, sensitivity on the nationality issue clearly remained. Writing about the studio’s sound system, Lars Moen insisted that ‘Wembley has never found it necessary to call in a foreign sound technician and none is employed to-day’, despite the employment of Leo Mittler on City of Song (Kinematograph Weekly, 19 March 1931, 64). 60 Kinematograph Weekly, 9 April 1931, 47; 16 April 1931, 54; 23 April 1931, 61; 7 May 1931, 35. 61 Allen Eyles and David Meeker (eds), Missing Believed Lost: the great British film search (London, 1992), 35–36. 62 Imogen Holst, A Thematic Catalogue of Gustav Holst’s Music (London 1974), 189–190. Michael Short, Gustav Holst: the man and his music (Oxford, 1980), 296–298. 63 Kinematograph Weekly, 15 October 1931, 39. Bioscope, 14 October 1931, 23–24. 64 A Thematic Catalogue of Gustav Holst’s Music, 189. Through regional newspapers I have traced provincial bookings in Gloucester, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Dundee (1932) and the area served by the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette (1933). 65 Variety, 29 September 1937, 27. 66 Times, 27 July 1931, 18. ASFI’s lack of profit is mentioned in Karel Dibbets’ Sprekende Films, 175; he subsequently describes ASFI as the millstone round its parent company’s neck (p. 185). 67 Sprekende Films, 168–187; Tonfilmfrieden/Tonfilmkrieg, 32–33. See also Peter Tschmuck, Creativity and Innovation in the Music Industry (Dordrecht, 2006), 64–66; and Oliver Wurl, Ultraphon reflects the tone, Classical Recordings Quarterly, Winter 2010, 37–39. 68 Kinematograph Weekly, 18 June 1931, 41; 16 July 1931, 39. 69 Bioscope, 17 June 1931, 17. Kinematograph Weekly, 18 June 1931, 20. 70 Bioscope, 16 December 1931, 12. ASFI’s communiqué announced that he would be seeking ‘work of a more definitely commercial character’; none appears to have followed. 71 Bioscope, 28 October 1931, 17. 72 Kinematograph Weekly, 26 November 1931, 45; 7 January 1932, 60. 73 Kinematograph Weekly, 22 October 1931, 52; 10 December, 51. 74 Steve Chibnall, Quota Quickies: the birth of the British ‘B’ Film (London, 2007), 47. 75 Kinematograph Year Book 1933 (London, 1933), 358. 76 Kinematograph Weekly, 29 November 1933, 39. 77 Saved from Oblivion, 58–60. 78 Times, 28 August 1937, 6. 79 Kinematograph Year Book 1933, 144; Kinematograph Year Book 1935 (London), 205–206. The economic background of such failures is crisply explored in Margaret Street and Sarah Street, Cinema and State: the film industry and the British government 1927–84 (London, 1985), 39–42. 80 Times, 24 July 1930, 23; 12 November 1932, 18; 23 November 1934, 24. 81 Kinematograph Year Book 1936 (London, 1936), 307. 82 Variety, 21 August 1934, 14. 83 Clarence Winchester (ed.), World Film Encyclopaedia (London, 1933), 395–396. 84 Kinematograph Year Book 1938 (London, 1938), 353. 85 Since 1993, the site has been occupied by the Fountain Studios, current home of ITV’s The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and other TV shows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_Studios, 2012). 86 Times, 23 November 1936, 32; 20 November 1937, 20; Film Making in 1930s Britain, 75. 87 Times, 16 July 1935, 14. 88 Jo Fox, ‘A thin stream issuing through closed lock gates’: German cinema and the United Kingdom, 1933–45, in Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch (eds), Cinema and the Swastika: the international expansion of Third Reich cinema (London, 2007), 289–305. Film-Kurier, 22 June 1934, reprinted in Die Tobis 1928–1945, 98. Times, 19 September 1934, 8. 89 At Welwyn, BIP replaced Tobis–Klangfilm with AmBIPhone, a system partly based on BIP-held patents (Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, July 1935, 30). 90 Klangfilm (Great Britain) Ltd. is last listed in the 1937 Kinematograph Year Book; Tobis (Great Britain) Ltd. survives until the 1941 edition. 91 Kinematograph Weekly, 5 May 1932, 17; Film Making in 1930s Britain, 2, 75. According to Board of Trade data, the number of licensed cinemas in Britain in April 1933 was 4331, suggesting that Western Electric’s 1500 installations covered just over a third of the cinema total. 92 Film Making in 1930s Britain, 184. 93 Das unfehlbare Mittel, einen guten Film zu machen, Film-Kurier, 3 May 1935, reprinted in Die Tobis 1928–1945, 107–109. 94 See Tim Bergfelder, The production designer and the Gesamtkunstwerk: German film technicians in the British film industry of the 1930s, in Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: key writings on British cinema (London, 1996); and Michael Omasta, Famously unknown: Günther Krampf’s work as cinematographer in British films, in Destination London. 95 Kinematograph Weekly, 22 January 1931, 69. 96 The exception to the rule was Ufa in Germany. See Chris Wahl, Sprachversionsfilme aus Babelsberg: Die internationale Strategie der Ufa 1929–1939 (Munich, 2009). 97 Exporting Entertainment, 158–168, 225–228; The Coming of Sound, 110–111

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