Contents: A simple theory of film choice; the context film in 1930s
Britain; measuring popularity; shares in the British market;
popular films and their stars in Bolton (worktown); comparative
cinemagoing preferences, 1934-1935 - national, Bolton and Brighton
audiences; profits, film budgets and popularity; genres, generic
lineages and "hits"; stardom and "hits"; Michael Balcon's close
encounter with the American market; difficulties facing the
production sector of the British film industry during the late
1930s; conclusion. Appendices: the national sample cinema set; 126
London West End "hits" screened between 1 January 1932 and 31 March
1938; POPSTAT top 100 films in Britain, 1932-1937.
John Sedgwick is Principal Research Fellow at the University of
North London.
"Sedgwick's attempt to bring about a new kind of synthesis of
economic and cultural history, offering in the process a new way of
assessing the relative popularity of the films that were available
to the enormous cinema-going public in the Britain of the 1930s, is
a resounding success. It should be essential reading for business
historians, because it starts from the premise that the making and
distribution of films is above all a business . . . A book which
deserves to dominate its field for years to come, generating
valuable follow-up research in the process." (Business History,
2002) "The book brings a valuable new economist's perspective to
our understanding of cinema and a strong argument that British
cinema enjoyed good health in the 1930s." (Contemporary British
History, 2002) "Thorough and engaging . . . Fascinating to a wide
range of scholars and students . . . A terrific bibliography that
will allow any scholar or reader wishing to delve into the motion
picture industry an easy leg up on the literature . . . While the
rich data set that Sedgwick uses is from 1930s Britain, the points
he highlights are general and should appeal to anyone with an
interest in the economic or social history of the movies . . . The
theories he proposes and the models he creates to test them are
general in scope and leave lots of room for future scholars to
follow his path and extend his research. In the end, he has
produced a top-notch study of an industry that is under-explored in
the economics literature. While focusing on a narrowly defined data
set, he manages to produce a volume that cuts a wide swath through
the history of the motion picture industry. It is a highly
recommended read." (EH.NET, Aug 2001) "Sedgwick's work on popular
film preferences constitutes probably the most thoroughgoing
revisionist challenge to many of the accepted wisdoms of British
cinema history at the present moment. His book will be eagerly
awaited by historians." (James Chapman, Open University. Society
for the Study of Popular British Cinema Newsletter, Autumn 1999)
“Sedgwick’s study is extremely helpful for anyone interested in the
actual leisure activities of the British public in the 1930s . .
.The book addresses questions of local differences and provides a
model for forward research in lucid prose which constantly returns
the reader to the bigger questions under examination. It will be
appreciated by both social and cultural as well as economic
historians for the way it sets out its findings and suggests new
pathways for understanding the development of cultural industries
in the twentieth century.” (History, Vol. 87, No. 288, Oct 2002)
“John Sedgwick’s Popular Filmgoing in 1930s Britain: A Choice of
Pleasures is the most important and innovatory of the range of
books under review here. Although it is a bracing (not to say
challenging) read, it effectively redraws the map of British film
scholarship… Overall, Sedgwick’s book is one of the most important
to emerge in the field of British cinema in recent years, though no
one would claim it was an easy read” (Journal of Contemporary
History, Vol. 39, No. 3, 2004)
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