Campbeltown Speaks: Small-Town Cinema and the Coming of Sound

The popularity of cinema from its earliest days in small-town settings emphasises the importance of local circumstances in explaining the medium’s success. This article employs surviving business records relating to the Picture House in the Scottish burgh of Campbeltown to explore aspects of cinema-going peculiar to that corner of rural Argyllshire, including a propensity, hitherto unidentified among Scottish audiences, to support the productions of the British film industry. Beyond this, the Picture House has a broader significance. As a monopoly provider of commercial entertainment to an enclosed market, it offers telling insights into a key point of transition for cinema, that from silent to sound film. Placed in the context of national trends, documented by data relating to the taxation of entertainments, Campbeltown provides compelling evidence that the advent of the talkies marked a fundamental discontinuity in the history of the medium at all levels, from the local to the national.

Campbeltown, close to the tip of the Kintyre peninsula.Dependent on varied forms of employment, from fishing to coal-mining and whisky distilling, the burgh's peak population had been recorded in 1901 at 8,286.By 1931, the number had fallen to 6,309. 4 Initially dependent for its access to film on visits by travelling showmen, Campbeltown acquired its own permanent picture house in 1912, a business that from its opening a year later would continue to function through to the century's end, outlasting the majority of its metropolitan counterparts. 5The growth of this and other small-town and rural cinemas has encouraged reflections on the varied settings in which modernity as exemplified by the cinema was encountered and the degree to which exhibition practices adapted to the particular conditions under which shows were mounted.John Caughie has charted the different approaches adopted by showmen in Scotland according to whether the setting was maritime, rural, or industrial, as well as the degree to which prevailing cultural forces, from an aggressive Presbyterianism to a sizeable Gaelic-speaking population, operated to promote or inhibit engagement with the moving image. 6omparable studies in the USA and across Europe have served to underscore the need for sensitivity to local particularities in explaining cinema's development.The result has been a growing perception of the audience as diverse, with points of difference receiving as much, if not more, emphasis as characteristics held in common. 7his perspective may be extended to metropolitan areas.Cinema managers were repeatedly cautioned on the need to 'know' their audiences, using the perceived preferences of picturegoers in their area to shape their running of the business. 8Over the course of a career, however, managers across Britain were often subject to high rates of mobility, requiring them to transfer techniques publicising the business learned in one setting to another. 9This need to balance sensitivity to local difference with an awareness of the broader forces operating at regional, national, and international levels to shape the industry's development is one that, as Judith Thissen observes, is as incumbent upon cinema historians as it was for the trade's practitioners. 10So, while the experience of Campbeltown can be used to identify traits peculiar to that corner of rural Argyllshire, it is also of value in reflecting with unusual clarity issues common to the industry elsewhere, both in Scotland and beyond.This is especially so with the most profound technological change to affect the cinema after its emergence as a discrete entertainment form: the coming of sound pictures from the late 1920s.The rapidity and extent of the talkies' triumph is most often explained in terms of supply-side pressures, as the declining output of silent subjects forced otherwise hesitant exhibitors to opt to wire for sound. 11That reluctance, bolstered by advice from the national organisation of exhibitors to 'wait and see', arose primarily from doubts as to the likely appeal of sound films for cinema-goers habituated to silent modes of presentation. 12The uncertainty surrounding the audience response to the talkies has carried over into later studies, especially with regard to the years of transition, so that estimates of audience size have varied markedly.Some have argued for little change in overall attendance levels as the silents gave way to sound. 13Even where increases in support are claimed, the extent of any change remains unclear.Trade and mainstream newspapers offer general statements on growing levels of patronage, but were rarely concerned to chart their extent with any precision. 14here business records exist, the insights provided are, in most cases, partial.Most urban centres were serviced by more than one cinema, multiple venues competing substantially on the content of the programme offered.In the years from 1929, this could extend to whether that programme could be heard as well as seen.So, the Palace Cinema in the centre of Edinburgh, which remained a 'silent' house until the autumn of 1930, lost custom from the summer of 1929 to nearby halls which had made the transition to sound or had opened as talkie houses. 15If the effect on an individual business can be reconstructed with confidence, the net change in the cinema-going audience across the city as a whole remains obscure in the absence of comparable records for other picture houses in the area.
Campbeltown provides a means of addressing this issue.Here, the Picture House, active since 1913, remained the town's only cinema until the late 1930s and indeed during that period was the sole regular provider of commercial entertainment locally.The nearest cinema accessible by land was the Picture House at Tarbert, half way up the Kintyre peninsula and one of only three other fixed cinemas operating across the county of Argyll. 16The Ayrshire coast offered more varied attractions, but journeys by steamer were not so frequent as to encourage their use by cinema-goers seeking no more than an evening's entertainment. 17ffectively, then, the Picture House enjoyed a monopoly of cinema provision in the burgh and the surrounding district.In this case, records exist to enable us to trace the fortunes of the business, including a ledger detailing the daily operations of the hall for the financial years (running from late May) from 1929 to 1933, covering the better part of two operating years either side of the decision to convert to sound in July 1931. 18In the absence of local competition, changes reflected in the company's accounts for this period also capture shifts in demand across the burgh and neighbouring districts during the key period of transition.The extent to which it may also act as a signifier for broader trends across the industry is considered in this piece.Before turning to examine the implications for Campbeltown and points beyond of the shift from 'silence' to sound, the burgh's engagement with the moving image in earlier decades receives attention.This serves to locate Campbeltown in the pattern of exhibition practices observed across small towns in Scotland, but also in the development of cinema-going across Britain.

Campbeltown in the silent era
In common with settlements of comparable size, Campbeltown was introduced to the moving picture through visits by touring shows.The first was mounted at the burgh's Victoria Hall in November 1897, some eighteen months after the cinematograph's Scottish debut, by optical instrument makers, Lizars.This was one of a number of exhibitions by the firm across Scotland designed to publicise the cinematograph, hailed in advance copy as 'The Wonder of the Century'. 19While the large attendance reflected widespread interest in the novelty, the show itself garnered a mixed response, as some voiced their discontent with the quality both of the projection and the supporting variety artistes. 20This failed to discourage occasional visits by such established Glasgow entertainment entrepreneurs as Arthur Hubner, Prince Bendon, and J.J. Bennell's BB Pictures, as well as leading Aberdeen exhibitor Robert Calder. 21If shows for the most part comprised subjects of national and international significance, local subjects were also given occasional prominence, a pattern observable elsewhere.Shows at Victoria Hall in September and October 1900 by Calder's Famous Cinematograph, and The Empire Kinematograph and Concert party included footage of the Kintyre Cattle Show and landings at Campbeltown Pier by parties, including that of The Princess Christian of Schleswig Holstein. 22Three years later, Calder's programme, again at the Victoria Hall, promised film of a Parade by Argyllshire Volunteers and held out the familiar prospect of potential identification of the subjects on screen by audience members: 'You or your Friends will be there'. 23n most cases, visits by the cinematograph occurred outside the peak holiday months of July and August, suggesting an explicit play for local custom.By 1912, interest had been sufficiently piqued to justify moves to establish a permanent venue with the flotation of The Picture House, Campbeltown, Ltd.In contrast to comparable centres, such as Oban, local figures supplied both the initiative to form and the share capital to fund the venture. 24External assistance was, nevertheless, sought through the involvement as Managing Director of Fred Rendell Burnette, who had experience of the trade gained in halls in Glasgow, Partick, Rothesay, and Inverness. 25From its opening in May 1913, the Picture House relied almost exclusively on film to populate its programmes, an approach shared with other cinemas whose location rendered them less accessible to circuits of live entertainments.Weekly newspaper listings thus gave priority to the principal features and the few occasions on which reference was made to supplementary forms of entertainments, as in early 1917 when patrons were assured of a strong variety programme, occurred when transport difficulties rendered the supply of films unpredictable. 26By the late 1920s, all indications are that the Picture House lived up to its name by offering an evening's entertainment based solely on the moving image.
Beyond the capacity to amuse and divert, the company acknowledged a broader civic purpose in mounting programmes, or providing facilities for shows, intended to raise money for worthy causes.In wartime, evenings were devoted to raising funds for the Red Cross or to encourage the take up of War Savings Certificates. 27After 1918, the problems facing many local industries encouraged initiatives focused on the immediate neighbourhood.In January 1930, the Picture House hosted a theatrical entertainment by the Lochranza Amateur Dramatic Players in aid of the local Fishermen's Relief Fund. 28Such instances were, it must be acknowledged, rare and local causes were more often supported through voluntary efforts, comprising concerts, dances, and whist drives organised by churches, the Women's Rural Institute, the Corporation and political organisations such as the ILP. 29The Picture House, then, appeared but a small part of a still vibrant civil society in this part of Argyllshire, albeit contrasting with these mostly one-off ventures by providing entertainment all year round.
By the late silent period, the Picture House operated one show an evening with programmes that changed twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays.Each comprised one main feature supported by a combination of shorts, serials and newsreels/cine-magazines.The latter included two editions each week of Pathe Gazette, supplemented for the first three days each week by Eve's Review, another Pathe production outwardly aimed at female cinema-goers, but whose diet of 'Glorious fashions, bizarre beauty regimes, quirky home crafts, and astounding cabaret acts', was often packaged in a manner designed to stimulate the male gaze. 30This schedule of vaguely factual content was then rounded off later in the week with editions of Pathe Pictorial and Cinemag.Serials promised to maximise repeat business, as cinema-goers were lured back to discover how cliffhangers were resolved and the narrative advanced.By 1930, the Picture House's last full calendar year as a 'silent' hall, serials figured in both programmes through the week, so that from early April, patrons attending early in the week could commence following episodes of the Pathe Exchange adventure starring Cyclone the Dog, The Yellow Cameo, while those attending from Thursday could thrill to the later instalments of Universal's Tarzan the Mighty. 31Remaining shorts also offered the familiarity of recurring characters in series such as those featuring Buster Brown, and Mike and Ike, produced by Century Films, and the Hal Roach Studio's Our Gang series. 32he aim of such programming was to ensure stable and predictable levels of custom and therefore income, and monthly accounts which exist from the start of the financial year 1921-2 would suggest that this was in large part achieved.Allowing for seasonal variations, from January, when business was boosted by extended opening hours over the New Year holiday period, and the early summer months of May and June, a point in the year when improved weather and the availability of outdoor amusements combined to depress takings, net receipts varied by 17 per cent. 33This might be thought to indicate a marked tendency towards habitual cinema-going, in contrast to metropolitan practice where, it has been noted, audiences exercised choice over the kind of entertainment sought and, if the cinema was the preferred source of amusement, the films they wished to see.Managements, obliged to account for the performance of the business to boards of directors, would note the various forces affecting patronage, and placed particular emphasis on the weather and the appeal of programmes offered at neighbouring houses. 34For the Picture House, the range of alternatives was confined for the most part to locally organised entertainments, including performances by the local Amateur Operatic Society. 35With the choice of amusement beyond the home comparatively restricted, the potential for attendance at the Picture House to become a matter of routine would seem all the greater.
To test how far this applied in practice, a comparison was drawn between Campbeltown and the one city-based cinema in Scotland for which detailed accounts exist for this period, the Palace in Edinburgh.Located at the east end of Princes Street, the city's principal retail thoroughfare, operating close to well-established cinema businesses, the Palace sought to draw in part on a sizeable city centre trade of casual cinema-goers. 36Box-office figures for the weekly programmes mounted by the Palace's management are available from the start of 1928, and indicate that by that date, the last full year in which Edinburgh's halls were 'silent', business had attained a marked stability.In 32 of the 52 weeks across 1928, income was within ten per cent of the weekly mean for the year as a whole.In 16, or some 30 per cent of cases, variation from the mean was within five per cent. 37In Campbeltown, by contrast, returns covering the final two years of operations as a silent house indicate rather more volatility, especially in the first half of the week.Across the final seven months of 1929, programmes running from Monday to Wednesday generated takings within ten per cent of the mean for that period on only nine of 30 occasions.Taking the whole of 1930, such instances become even less frequent, so that net receipts diverged by more than ten per cent from the annual mean for 38 of the 52 programmes offered. 38Greater regularity might be anticipated from Thursdays onwards, with demand for amusements at its height on Saturday, as the disposition of working hours and the payment of wages at the end of the week ensured that both time and money were available for recreational pursuits.The experience of the Picture House goes some way towards justifying these expectations, with Thursday to Saturday programmes in late 1929 and across 1930 generating receipts within ten per cent of the respective means on 30 occasions in all. 39Yet even this falls short of the stability observed at the Palace in Edinburgh.This suggests that, contrary to what might have been predicted, cinema-goers in Campbeltown showed a greater propensity to exercise choice in attending the pictures than did their counterparts in central Edinburgh, despite a programming policy designed to maximise habitual attendance.For the business, this suggests that financial success rested on occasional patrons, whose choice of an evening at the movies could not be taken for granted.In this respect then, the non-metropolitan picturegoer emerges as a thoroughly modern consumer, capable of practising discretion over a range of possible uses of their free time.
It remains to determine how choice was exercised.Seasonal fluctuations have been noted and, in the case of Campbeltown, were exaggerated by the policy, applied in most years across the 1920s, of closing the house for part of the week during June. 40This allowed for repairs and refurbishment in anticipation of visitors who would descend on the town around the time of Glasgow Fair from mid-July. 41The Picture House thus displayed features in common with urban cinemagoing more generally, with higher levels of activity in the early months of the year and autumn, but also betrayed one of its functions as a resort with a temporary boost to the box-office occurring at the height of summer. 42The material generating these figures is also worthy of note.The part of the programme considered most likely to encourage attendance by occasional patrons was the main feature and so newspaper publicity understandably focused on those productions.In booking films, managers were obliged to balance the perceived preferences of local picturegoers with the product available from distributors.Many urban cinemas ensured a supply of available product by engaging in block-booking arrangements with particular studios, whose output came to dominate screenings. 43There are suggestions of comparable practices at Campbeltown, so that MGM and Universal productions played more often than not across the second half of 1930. 44On remaining dates, a marked propensity to book British films was evident and was sustained across the Picture House's last two years as a 'silent' cinema; most were productions from one of the leading national studios, British International Pictures (Table 1).
Such figures are considerably in excess of the legal minimum (quota) established for the screening of domestically produced footage set out in the Cinematograph Films Act of 1927 which for these years was set at between five and 7.5 per cent. 45By contrast, patrons at the Palace in Edinburgh were far less likely to encounter British productions at this time.Prior to the Quota Act taking effect in 1928, only two of the 90 films screened across 1927 were British.With the Act in force, the number rose to seven out of 105 films exhibited in 1928 only one of which was the principal feature on the programme. 46This minimalist approach to the quota would appear of a piece with attitudes to the measure across the cinema industry in Scotland, where an enduring resentment against the obligation to devote amounts of screen time to product that was regarded as overwhelmingly English in character would be voiced in the years that followed. 47n such circumstances, it would be tempting to see Campbeltown's commitment to 'Buy British' as a symptom of the problems a small exhibitor could encounter in seeking to secure attractive product.Yet audience response, registered at the box office, points to an altogether more positive interpretation.In the Picture House's final two years of 'silence', British-produced films generated takings in excess of the mean in the second half of 1929 and the first of 1931.In both years, this involved programmes shown in the first half of the week.Where performances fell below the average, this was for the most part marginal and only exceeded 10 per cent for Monday to Wednesday shows across 1930 (Table 2).
Particular British titles ranked among the most popular features of their year, including Hitchcock's The Ring, in 1929, E.A. Dupont's Piccadilly, in 1930, and The Last Post, in 1931, a drama concerning a soldier whose brother, a Communist sympathiser, shoots another soldier during the General Strike, and notable for being one of only two films overseen by Britain's only female director of features, Dinah Shurey. 48Even growing problems in securing recent British productions by early 1931 failed to discourage Campbeltown picturegoers.In successive weeks, the Picture House screened titles reissued by Stoll Picture Productions, including one, Children of Courage, which had first been released in 1921 as Froggy's Little Brother.Audiences were not deterred and all but one scored close to or above the mean both for British releases and for all films shown in the cinema's last six silent months. 49Overall then, the suggestion is that the frequency with which British films were booked at the Picture House owed less to legal obligations or an There is evidence then of a distinctive taste community in Campbeltown, confirming a view of the national audience, both British and Scottish, as marked by lines of division determined by geography, class, and local cultural forces among other factors.The business records, however, also point to behaviour which matched local picturegoers with their counterparts in towns and cities across Britain.All exercised choice in deciding to seek their pleasures at the cinema.From the end of the 1920s, a decisive factor influencing behaviour was the coming of sound, and the extent of its impact is caught with particular clarity in communities such as Campbeltown.

The impact of the talkies
The coming of the talkies effected a significant change in the cinema-going experience.In the Picture House's first week after wiring for sound, which opened with the showing of Warner's The Desert Song, the local newspaper remarked that 'Campbeltown audiences which were inclined to be rather noisy at the silent shows, were completely silent, and in sympathy with the production of the film'. 51Speech as a vehicle for conveying plot demanded closer attention from picturegoers than had the occasional intertitle.How far this marked shift in behaviour carried over into later weeks is unclear and such comments, isolated in their nature, leave open the question how far those who sat in such rapt attention to early talkies were the same as those who had expressed themselves freely when the story was conveyed by the image alone.This remains, given available evidence, a question that eludes easy analysis.In the absence of accepted figures for changes in the aggregate national cinema audience with the coming of sound, we are often driven back to impressionistic accounts which point to growth in attendance of uncertain extent. 52The opinions of cinema-goers themselves, conveyed through responses to questionnaires or through diary entries, are often ambiguous, questioning the quality and entertainment value of early sound pictures while reflecting an enduring fascination with the technology's potential. 53Such uncertainty communicated itself to industry leaders dubious of the commercial benefits likely to accrue from converting to sound.Even the statistical precision offered by business records often proves of limited utility in cases such as this, enabling us to judge the talkies' impact at the level of the firm but not more widely.
To illustrate, the coming of sound had a clear and immediate impact on the Palace Cinema, in Edinburgh.The talkies arrived in the capital in the summer of 1929, appearing in close succession at the New Picture House on Princes Street, Poole's Synod Hall, close to the west end of Princes Street, and at the newlyopened Playhouse to the east. 54The Palace, run by the same company responsible for the Playhouse, remained silent amidst a crescendo of sound.The implications of that decision were soon apparent.In the months between the opening of the Playhouse in August 1929 and the end of the year, takings at the Palace were down by some 26 per cent on the equivalent weeks a year earlier. 55Losses continued into 1930, as the Palace's conversion was delayed until October that year.Returns for the final quarter of operations as a silent house were barely 52 per cent of the level for the same three-month period two years earlier. 56The dramatic shift in fortunes for a hall which, when built, was one of Edinburgh's premier picture theatres and had enjoyed consistent profitability through the later 1920s conveys the extent to and speed with which cinema-goers changed allegiance in favour of the talkies.Once heard, the sound film eclipsed established forms of presentation.Yet, if we are able to chart trends at the level of the business, the net effect of gains and losses at the local box office on the size of the cinema-going population across the city as a whole cannot be gleaned from available evidence.
Campbeltown enables such uncertainties to be addressed.Here, the Picture House satisfied the needs of the local population, at least in terms of commercial entertainment, so that income taken at the box office reflects, with unusual fidelity, developments in the wider market.Initial indications are that the burgh's remoteness offered protection against the first wave of talkie mania.Despite a late conversion to sound, the Picture House experienced little of the slide in business that affected the Palace.Over its final two years of offering silent film, net receipts showed some slippage for programmes in both halves of the week, but significantly, rather than the fall being maintained to the point of conversion, takings across the first half of 1931 showed a revival over the same period in 1930, rising by 6.5 per cent for shows from Thursday and by some 23 per cent for those at the start of the week. 57There is little in this to suggest a growing disenchantment with silent footage and an impatience over the delayed arrival of the talkies. 58Indeed, taking a longer term view, business had shown a gradual decline from a peak in 1925-6, so that drawings across the year were down by just short of nine per cent by 1930-1. 59This may reflect to some degree local economic difficulties, as leading industries experienced downturns in the late 1920s.Distilleries closed and the fishing fleet was forced to curtail activity as a herring famine affected the Firth of Clyde. 60For all this, it is the durability of business at the Picture House which remains its most striking characteristic in the last years of 'silence'.This endorses the findings of surveys undertaken in more heavily urbanised areas that satisfaction with the silent film endured to the point at which sound was encountered.Such were the findings of an investigation of towns around Manchester covering some 54,000 cinema patrons in the later weeks of 1929. 61noculated against the talkies by distance, Campbeltown's picturegoers continued to support established modes of presentation with barely diminished enthusiasm up to the Picture House's temporary closure for installation of British Thomson Houston sound apparatus. 62In such circumstances, a sizeable boost to business following re-opening would seem far from inevitable.
Four months after the adoption of synchronised sound projection, the Campbeltown Courier remarked on the Picture House's popularity 'which the introduction of the "Talkies" has so substantially enhanced'. 63Company accounts indicate that there was more to this than mere puffery.Comparing mean returns across consecutive six-month periods shows a broad doubling in takings compared to the final period preceding conversion (Table 3).
The figures also indicate that the boost to business was largely sustained to the point at which detailed coverage ceases.Further east, at the Palace, any surge in patronage was quickly spent and although the first six months as a talkie house generated receipts 29.74 per cent above those of the final six months of silence, that figure was still 31.2per cent below that for the equivalent period in 1928-9 before Edinburgh's first encounter with sound. 64To some degree, the picture is complicated by the Palace's operation in the talkie era as a second-run cinema to the company's bigger hall, the Playhouse. 65No such changes worked to depress business in Campbeltown.
Explanations for the substantial upturn in income with the advent of sound are now assessed.It owed little if anything to a change in the price of admission.Ticket prices exclusive of tax had remained remarkably stable since the house's opening in 1913, ranging from 1s for a balcony seat, to between 4d and 6d for In each case, change is measured against the final period of silent exhibition.
parts of the front area. 66The only change with conversion to sound was abolition of the lowest price raising admission to the front area to a uniform charge of 6d. 67hat minor amendment apart, prices net of tax were unaltered, so that growth in receipts after the adoption of sound substantially reflects an increase in admissions. 68Crucially, that boost was facilitated by an increase in the number of shows.The original intention on the Picture House's opening in 1913 had been to run two shows nightly, but this was cut back to one shortly after, in the belief that this would suffice to satisfy demand. 69On converting to sound, management moved to offer a second screening each evening, extending opening hours by commencing at 6.30 rather than 7.30 pm. 70In part, this was a rational response to escalating costs of film hire, which rose by 134 per cent in the first two years of sound compared to the last two of silence (although it might be noted that with payments for film hire increasingly calculated as a percentage of the box office, this figure is itself in part a reflection of higher levels of business). 71The move to double the number of shows clearly had the potential to raise ticket sales.Yet as an explanation for the boost to the cinema's income, this would only prove decisive in itself if the Picture House had been operating at or close to capacity prior to turning to the talkies.As we have seen, such occasions were rare, with audiences in the late silent period fluctuating significantly according to the appeal of the programme.Even on Saturdays, when conditions were most favourable to cinema attendance and capacities were most likely to be tested, net receipts diverged from the mean by more than 10 per cent on almost two out of three occasions across the final eighteen months of silence. 72What is more, the growth in business observed from July 1931 extended across all days and was, if anything, most apparent on evenings when demand was at its lowest (Table 4).
Such figures dispose of one potential explanation for the higher takings from mid-1931: that the Picture House drew its audience from a progressively wider area.Sarah Neely has found that changes in transport arrangements, including inauguration on Orkney of a 'talkie bus', helped boost business. 73Enhanced travel opportunities were most likely to be taken up on Saturdays, when a late return home would not impinge on work time the day after.That Campbeltown experienced growth across the week suggests that higher levels of demand were generated substantially within the burgh.The figures we have are more suggestive of a more even distribution of patronage, and might point to a further factor potentially

Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television
contributing to the growth in receipts following the introduction of the talkies: that the attraction of the sound picture encouraged a greater number of visits among existing cinema-goers.Had this been the case, then it might be anticipated that fluctuations in attendance would be less pronounced, as cinema-going became more explicitly habitual.The Picture House ledger, however, provides no evidence of such a change.Of 211 programmes mounted from the start of the financial year 1929-30 to the final silent show in 1931, only 88 or just short of 42 per cent generated takings within 10 per cent of the mean, while for the first 196 talkie programmes, that proportion fell to 37.75 per cent. 74If anything, habitual picturegoing appeared even less characteristic of audiences in the early sound era.Rather than acting to intensify the practice of cinema attendance among established patrons, the suggestion is that the talkies operated to extend the appeal of film as a source of amusement to a public for whom the movies had not been a regular or recurrent leisure pursuit, heightening cinema-going as an occasional practice.
To a large extent, the Campbeltown evidence suggests, technological change had worked to alter significantly the market for entertainments.This appeal to a substantially new constituency is indicated by the content of programmes at the Picture House from July 1931.Outwardly, continuity was maintained from the late silent era, with presentations headed by a single feature, and the balance made up of shorts and newsreels.Eve's Review continued for a few weeks, although increasingly its content could not compensate for the absence of sound, and from the later months of 1931 its place was taken by Pathe's Super Sound Gazette and Universal Talkie News. 75Comedy remained a staple of sound programmes, with productions from the Roach Studios, featuring Laurel and Hardy, and Charley Chase, and appearances by the Tiffany Talking Chimps, balanced by British subjects showcasing the likes of Ernie Lotinga in a series of sketches recorded on DeForest Phonofilm. 76By 1933, management at the Picture House was expressing concern at the quality of available comic shorts, despite which bookings remained consistent through the early sound years. 77A key change from July 1931 was the absence of serials.A central attraction of the silent era, their place was taken by shorts whose subject matter made a particular virtue of sound by focusing on musical performance.Music inaugurated the talkies' career at the Picture House with Warner's version of Sigmund Romberg and Oscar Hammerstein's The Desert Song. 78The popularity of this feature, boosted by the novelty of sound presentation, was exceeded later that same year by another Warner's vehicle, Gold Diggers of Broadway. 79Even where music was not central to the main feature, it figured among the shorts on the programme.These varied from filmed recitals by prominent artistes from the operatic tenor Giovanni Martinelli, performing extracts from Il Trovatore and Martha, to Broadway star Jay Velie, to presentations of musical revues, including the British productions Songcopation and Pot-Pourri. 80Into 1932, Campbeltown programmes were fleshed out by musical offerings from Gainsborough Pictures, featuring performers such as Hal Swain, Ena Reiss, Elise Percival and Ray Raymond. 81Across the first year of sound, films with prominent musical content featured on almost half the programmes at the Picture House.Measuring performance in comparison to the mean, such bills showed no tendency overall to attract larger than average audiences.However, where a musical headed the programme, receiving due attention in newspaper listings, the mean was more likely to be exceeded, and did so in 12 out of 19 such instances. 82Here, popularity may have received a further boost through advertisements placed in the Courier by local record dealers, which offered patrons the opportunity to hear tunes from such films as The Desert Song, On With the Show, and Sally, on the gramophone. 83If this does not establish with certainty the degree to which the make-up of audiences changed with the coming of sound, it is suggestive of growing levels of support among a public able to afford entertainment technologies in the home and who perhaps had hitherto been satisfied by the amusement afforded by local concerts.Despite which, locally organised concerts and dances remained central to Campbeltown's entertainment calendar well into the 1930s. 84Occasional cinema-going may therefore be seen as one facet of a diverse musical and recreational culture, covering live and recorded performances, across the burgh in the age of the talkies.
Further evidence of a changed cinema-going public following the coming of sound may be found in enduring support for British films.If a fall in bookings of domestically produced features might be anticipated with the advent of talkies which proclaimed their 'English/British' character through the deployment of predominantly English images and patterns of speech, the opposite was the case in practice.The proportion of programmes at the Picture House headed by British films rose to reach a remarkable 58 per cent in the first five months of 1933. 85ox-office returns broadly validated the intention to 'buy British', with returns for Monday to Wednesday programmes with domestic productions as the main attraction exceeding the overall mean by just short of four per cent and only falling below average takings for Thursday onwards by just over three per cent. 86olstered by such figures, the local management observed that 'Their [British films'] appeal to the picturegoer is unmistakable, for American pathos and humour do not, in some indefinite manner, appeal particularly to Scottish tastes'. 87This was, as evidence from elsewhere suggests, not necessarily a representative view, but nevertheless is one which suggests a local audience at the very least less intolerant of and perhaps more receptive to the English idiom as transmitted through the screen. 88One conclusion, highly speculative still in the current state of local evidence, is of a socially more diverse as well as substantially larger cinema-going public.
This interpretation gains plausibility when placed in the context of broader developments accompanying the coming of sound.From 1929, contemporary observers both within and beyond the trade noted a significant growth in patronage.Simon Rowson of the Gaumont British Picture Corporation, a diligent student of statistics regarding the cinema industry, pointed to a rise of between 25 and 50 per cent in numbers attending cinemas by late 1930. 89The Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association plotted a middle course between these estimates, arguing for growth over two years to the autumn of 1931 of just over 30 per cent. 90either estimate was based on any close study of attendances across the close to 5,000 cinemas active across Britain at the end of the silent era.Nevertheless, officially generated statistics suggest that the trend outlined here had some basis in fact.From 1916, the government had imposed a tax on admissions to entertainments which were non-participatory in nature. 91The amounts collected each year provide, at the most basic level, a measure of changes in expenditure on a range of taxable amusements, of which the cinema was among the most significant.Over the later 1920s, the final years of movie silence and a period in which the incidence and levels of the tax were not subject to change, this total did not vary markedly. 92By contrast, in three consecutive years from April 1929, the take, boosted in the second half of the tax year 1931-2 by an increase in rates, rose by 31 per cent. 93This was all the more remarkable given the wider context of deepening recession and escalating unemployment.The contrast between trends in entertainments expenditure and that on goods and services more generally was encapsulated in the tax year 1929-30, during which falling levels of economic activity reduced income from Customs and Excise duties by over £3 million below the estimates set out as recently as the 1929 Budget. 94The Entertainments Tax alone bucked the trend, the amount raised exceeding the 1929 estimate by more than £500,000. 95The buoyancy of receipts in this one area was noted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Snowden, in his 1930 Budget speech and was ascribed by him to 'the boom in talking films'. 96If this view is accurate, and we attribute all growth in the tax receipts to greater demand generated by the talkies, then the growth in entertainments expenditure indicated was sufficient over the two financial years from April 1929 to raise the overall national cinema audience by more than 28 per cent. 97However, growth was not confined to this source alone.In the years from 1929, the theatre trade voiced increasing concern at the threat to business posed by the talkies.The perception was that cinema and theatre were no longer discrete amusements and that the fare offered by the former so resembled that offered by the theatre, and at markedly lower prices, that the demand for one increasingly encroached on that for the other. 98In the early 1930s, officials at the Treasury, and the Customs and Excise would come to see the talking picture and the changes in recreational behaviour that encouraged as the most significant threat to the viability of commercial theatre across the country. 99Technological change which now allowed film actors to be heard as well as seen worked to reconfigure the market for entertainments in the cinema's favour.Along with the overall boost to spending on amusements beyond the home, the share of that spending going on moving pictures also rose markedly in the years from 1929, from under half to almost two-thirds of taxable expenditure, adding to the 28 per cent growth indicated by the tax receipts alone. 100Campbeltown, it may be suggested reflected such trends in microcosm, the Picture House like its counterparts elsewhere drawing on a larger and more diverse public to generate higher takings from the talking picture.At both local and national level, it may be suggested, the coming of sound did more than transform the presentation of films, it also effected a lasting change in the nature and level of support for the cinema as a medium of entertainment.

Conclusion
The study of small-town cinema has served to heighten awareness of the degree to which reception of the mass medium of the moving picture was determined by local circumstances.Cempbeltown's status as an industrial but also tourist centre, shaped the rhythms of cinema-going both across the year and over the longer term.In common with burghs elsewhere, business suffered downturns in late spring and early summer.That slump was checked, however, by the advent of visitors from Glasgow Fair from mid-July, signalling an upturn that would endure through the shortening days that followed.Over the longer term, the problems that affected most local industries would ensure that the 1920s saw little if any secular growth in the Picture House's income.Stability continued to characterise the box office through the final months of 'silence', as lack of alternative ready access to the talking picture ensured that the delay in wiring for sound did not carry the costs felt by silent houses elsewhere.A further idiosyncrasy, certainly when compared with what is known of attitudes elsewhere in Scotland, was the strong support, reflected in booking practices, for British films.Even the coming of sound, which served to expose Campbeltown ears regularly to cultivated English accents, did nothing to check this pattern, serving rather to strengthen it with time.To that extent, the view from Campbeltown serves further to fragment our perception of audiences, and the importance of local behaviours and preferences.Yet, as this article has sought to show, the local and the particular can also be used to capture broader trends with unusual clarity.The Picture House's position as the monopoly provider of regular commercial entertainment in the burgh ensured that fluctuations in the company accounts mapped readily on to change in the wider market for organised leisure.In Campbeltown, as elsewhere, a period of stability in the late silent era was succeeded by radical change in the market for cinema, the product of the coming of sound.This process is caught both at the micro level of the firm but also at the macro level through national tax returns.The advent of the talkies thus emerges as a more fundamental departure for the entertainment business across Britain than has perhaps been recognised.It did not simply consolidate support for existing amusement forms; rather it reconfigured the market radically in the cinema's favour.As a leisure pursuit, picturegoing was transformed both in the numbers and in the variety of people drawn in to the practice, making it more recognisably 'the essential social habit of the age'. 101n the Firth of Clyde; 1 Nov. 1930, 3; 20 Feb. 1932, 3, the herring fishery was also hit by declining exports and a perceived shift in domestic demand in favour of white fish.061.Bioscope, 27 Nov. 1929

TABLE 1 .
Number and proportion of programmes headed by British Films at Campbeltown Picture House, June 1929-June 1931.: the figure for 1930 includes five joint productions, three with Germany, and one each with Austria, and Germany and Hungary.Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television absence of choice when booking films and more to the preferences expressed by local cinema-goers for domestically produced features.That these invariably lacked any explicitly 'Scottish' content proved no obstacle to success locally.At no point does cultural nationalism appear to have influenced patterns of cinema-going in this corner of Argyllshire.50 Note

TABLE 2 .
Performance of British Films at Campbeltown Picture House, 1929-31.
Figures are in old pennies (d.) of which there were twelve to every shilling (s.) and 240 to every pound (£).

TABLE 4 .
Campbeltown Picture House, increase in takings, comparing 1930 and 1931 (July to December in each year).