queen victoria family tree lord alfred prufrock

One Saturday evening we watched the 1944 version of Henry V, commissioned by the British Government as a wartime public morale booster. I would have to wait until I got to Paris before I found other audiences prepared to openly register their approval or disapproval of whatever film they were watching.

The films were always preceded by a cartoon and the mere appearance in the titles of the name Fred Quimby, veteran director of a thousand Bugs Bunny cartoons, solicited applause. We cheered the triumph of good, booed the villains and stamped our feet when the projector failed and we went to our beds transported to the bridge of a destroyer in the North Sea or into the silken embrace of Joan Fontaine. There was not a great deal of choice I remember “They Were not Divided”, “The Cruel Sea”, “Oliver Twist” but never were these films received by a more appreciative audience, for we were, to all intents and purposes, prisoners starved of the popular arts. I was charged with producing an illustrated poster to be hung in the cloisters announcing the film and the time of showing, normally a Saturday evening in the speech-hall. The Chronicle History of King Henry the Fift with his Battel Fought at Agin Court in France 1944Īt school in the 1950s we were allowed to watch two films in each of the Michaelmas and Lent terms, chosen from an approved list by a committee of boys and masters. ‘A Summer Place’ in a Los Angeles Drive-In, ‘Spartacus’ in the 1,300 seat Empire, Leicester Square, ‘Key Largo’ at home on TV, ‘Calamity Jane’ with the pensioners in Sydney’s art deco Cremorne Orpheum on a Saturday afternoon, ‘Behind the Green Door’ with an all-male, raincoated audience in Le Beverly Cinema in Paris’ Saint Denis district – all very different experiences. If a consumer’s opinion of a wine may be influenced by the wine’s receptacle, so may our enjoyment of a film be influenced by the cinema it is shown in and the theatre’s incumbent audience.

Queen victoria family tree lord alfred prufrock