Children, Cinema and Censorship by Sarah Smith

Author:Sarah Smith [Smith, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-05-29T21:59:12+00:00

Children as Censors

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Some managers, however, did adhere to the rule that under-16s must be accompanied to A films. Denis Houlston found this something of an obstacle as a rather diminutive 16 year-old in 1933, although he still managed to assert some autonomy: ‘I used to go with my friends . . .

and they wouldn’t let us in on one occasion ’cos I was always small, so I probably looked younger than I was . . . so I took the huff and I boycotted them, and I never went there again’.16 However, the practice of children gaining entry with strangers was often accomplished with the collusion not only of the strangers, but also of the cinema staff.

While many cinemas required children to be accompanied, they often ignored the stipulation that this companion must be ‘a parent or bona fide adult guardian’, turning a blind eye to unaccompanied children who routinely procured adults from the cinema queue, just to get past the box office. Thus, many cinema staff outwardly upheld certification regulations, while unofficially condoning the techniques used by children to circumvent them. Olga Scowen remembers going to the Harrow Coliseum during the school holidays:

And if it was an A film, you see, I couldn’t go in on my own. So you used to wait for somebody to come and say, ‘Please, will you get me a ticket?’ [Laughs] And the people behind the cash desk knew very well what was going on, but they never stopped you. [Laughs] So I saw quite a lot of A films when I shouldn’t have done.17

A notable example of adult collusion occurred in Bristol where, on 5 March 1932, a Mrs Saviour went to the Saturday matinee at the Metropole Cinema and found 45 children outside, unable to gain entry. The film being shown was Never the Twain Shall Meet (1931), a romantic comedy about a man who ‘goes native’ after falling in love with an uninhibited, sexy, young Polynesian woman. As the film had an A certificate, the unaccompanied youngsters could not enter alone, so Mrs Saviour gamely agreed to buy their tickets and accompanied all 45 into the cinema. Following a timely visit from a police inspector, the case went to Bristol Police Court. The defence argued in vain that the regulation was ridiculous, as it prevented under-16s from seeing a

‘sex film’ which would probably bore them, while allowing 16–21

year-olds to see it, even though ‘the age of puberty rendered them more susceptible’. Eventually, the cinema owners were fined £10 on 112

Children, Cinema and Censorship

the grounds that a stranger was not a bona fide guardian, thus setting a legal precedent.18

Nevertheless, many cinema managers and staff continued to collude in the practice of children gaining entry with strangers and, when cases came to court, the legal authorities also often colluded to some extent by setting minimal fines. In 1931, legal action was taken against the Manor Picture House, Sheffield, for admitting 200

unaccompanied children to see Hitchcock’s Murder! (1930), an A film that touches not only on murder, but also on suicide and transvestitism.

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