Civic Culture at the Cinema: Local Public Life and Cinemagoing in Inter-War Britain

ABSTRACT Despite burgeoning scholarship on British civic culture, the inter-war cinema is still characterised as commercial entertainment divorced from social citizenship. However, cinemagoing was a key means of participation in the local public sphere. This article reveals the ‘public’ functions of cinemas, namely their deep involvement in philanthropy, civic rituals, and associational life. It shows the ways in which cinemas effectively integrated into traditional forms of civic culture whilst also rendering this culture more democratic in the process. This article seeks to dismantle the false dichotomy maintained between the commercial and the civic in historical analysis of everyday life in inter-war Britain.

This article argues that in inter-war Britain, the cinema successfully integrated itself into the preestablished routines and events of civic culture, becoming a vital institution for local philanthropy, voluntary associations, and civic rituals. The inter-war cinema also added a popular and relatively inclusive tenor to local public life by the 1930s. Civic culture is here used as an umbrella term to denote the communal life comprised by voluntary associations and civic rituals. Voluntary associations were a vibrant and thriving facet of inter-war public affairs, with a glut of mass-membership organisations serving an eclecticism of communal needs ranging from social networks to charitable endeavours or political lobbying. 5 Civic rituals, meanwhile, were celebratory or commemorative occasions led by local authorities to propagate community identity and civic pride. 6 Cinemas straddled boundaries between state institutions and civil society by involving themselves in both associational life and municipal initiatives. The term civic culture is thereby used to reflect this liminal quality; being a commercial enterprise with no overarching ideals, individual cinemas could manoeuvre freely across political divides, whether collaborating with town councils or sectional voluntary associations. Indeed, this 'apolitical' versatility allowed cinemas to integrate easily into extant civic culture. Moreover, the ethos of commercial entertainment, open to anyone who could purchase a ticket and marketed towards 'mass' audiences, was arguably why cinemas helped to democratise civic culture by the mid-1930s. Thus, the inter-war British cinema managed to effectively weave itself into 'traditional' civic cultures whilst concurrently imbuing them with elements of commercialised popular culture. It is worth stressing here that this article is focused solely upon commercial cinema venues, run for profit. Existing parallel to these venues was a vibrant world of non-commercial screenings through volunteer-run film societies and local screenings of educational and instructional short films. 7 The role such non-commercial exhibition played in local public life is beyond the scope of the present analysis.
This article engages with the historiography of the early-twentieth century British public sphere by augmenting recent revisionism. Traditionally, political historians have, in explaining the Conservative Party's inter-war electoral hegemony, suggested that popular conservativism was effectively 'sold' to voters as patriotic, moderate 'commonsense' public opinion. 8 Jon Lawrence encapsulates the supposed effect this had on conceptions of the public sphere, arguing that after the tumult of the First World War 'the public, once thought of as an active demonstrative body, became reconceptualised as an essentially passive, reflective and above all individualised entity'. 9 Several historians have since challenged this characterisation of a conservative, insular, and inactive interwar public via empirical study of public activities. Helen McCarthy has undermined it significantly by examining the thriving associational life of voluntary organisations, such as the Women's Institute or the League of Nations Union, which promoted an activist citizenship detached from partisan politics among their large memberships. 10 McCarthy persuasively contends that in their apolitical centrism, these organisations were not antisocialist seedbeds as Ross McKibbin characterised them; they promoted democratic participation that eschewed party-political loyalties. 11 Likewise, Ellen Boucher's study of Save The Children in the 1920s highlights how the charity harnessed media publicity to successfully promote international humanitarianism. 12 This view of media consumers supporting humanitarian relief work also reveals philanthropy to have remained a burgeoning site for active citizenship. Such associational life presents inter-war Britons as more active and progressive citizens than previously thought.
Generally, mass commercial media has been argued by historians as antithetical to active citizenship. 13 McKibbin and Jeffrey Richards, among others, have used cinema as another explanation for conservatism's inter-war popularity, presenting it as an establishment medium militating social change. 14 Robert Snape has recently suggested that only leisure organised by the voluntary sector had 'cultural and social motivations' to propagate 'social citizenship' as opposed to commercial leisure, which operated 'for profit' alone. 15 This implies commercial entertainment eschewed public service and could only provide passive diversion that negated a 'New Leisure' of civic recreation. Brad Beaven, in his recent study of imperialism in local communities, contends that commercial leisure displaced imperialist civic pageantry across the Edwardian and inter-war periods; consumption in lieu of social citizenship. 16 This article will show that active citizenship was not the exclusive preserve of voluntary organisations. Nor did commercial entertainments prove detrimental to civic participation; the cinema was in many ways vital for urban civic culture. Commercial entertainments such as the cinema will be presented as a key means of allowing more, especially working-class, citizens to participate in democratic forms of civic culture. In this sense, the cinema must be given a larger role in the revisionist narrative of a thriving, increasingly democratised inter-war public sphere.
Another strand of research into the inter-war public, led by Tom Hulme and Charlotte Wildman, has revealed a vibrant local civic life in Britain between the wars. Hulme rightly argues that 'existing work on citizenship has been mostly seen through the lens of the national, at the expense of' local or municipal identities. 17 Hulme and Wildman, amongst others, have instead argued that civic culture and identity remained buoyant throughout the inter-war period, with Hulme proffering the 1930s as 'the zenith of local government civics'. 18 This was a blooming culture which found expression in sundry well-attended parades, ceremonies, and festivities. 19 Wildman, studying the civic cultures of Liverpool and Manchester, further contends that between the wars 'local government moved towards a more demotic and inclusive civic culture'. 20 This is a general trend in the scholarship, which presents local authorities as attentive to an increasing public desire to participate in civic occasions. 21 Moving away from the government-centric viewpoint of prior research, this article posits the cinema manager as another agent in local communities who brought a democratic ethos into civic culture. It thereby questions the extent to which municipal authorities were visionary harbingers of change. Rather, collaboration between state institutions, civil society, and commercial enterprises shaped the interwar public sphere as it was experienced in localities.
Cinema history of the last decade has generally focused upon cinemagoing as a 'social act' undertaken by individual consumers. 22 What has been neglected in such studies, with a few recent exceptions discussed below, is consideration of what role the cinema played in the everyday political culture of local communities. 23 Indeed, New Cinema History has made the subjective experiences of cinemagoers a primary ontological focus for cinema historians. 24 Annette Kuhn and Jackie Stacey pioneered this, using oral history to recapture cinemagoing from former patrons' memories. 25 From her project, Kuhn emphasised individuals' personal investment in films and the escapist entertainment they provided as salient reasons for going to the cinema. 26 The most recent major book on British cinema by Sam Manning, charting the industry and cinemagoing from the late 1940s to the 1960s, has a similar argument. As Manning states, cinemagoing was 'a profoundly important social activity and provided a great deal of pleasure for millions of UK citizens. The cinema was more than just a place to watch films; it provided a range of important social functions'. 27 Recent work has also drawn attention to the venting of intense, sometimes taboo, emotions in cinemas. 28 Collectively, this scholarship has portrayed the cinema as a site chiefly for the expression of individual subjectivities. It has been invaluable for illuminating the profoundly personal role cinema had in the lives of its erstwhile patrons. Such studies, however, have marginalised the political role cinema also played in the daily 'public' life of inter-war communities.
Gil Toffell, examining inter-war Jewish cinema culture, has begun ground-breaking research into cinema's function in community politics. He persuasively argues that cinema venues acted 'at the local level as communal hubs operating within an immediate social ecology'. 29 He further contends that cinemas helped to forge a distinctly Jewish 'counter-public . . . against a background of coercive state and media scrutiny'. 30 Cinemas within the predominantly Jewish quarters of cities, Toffell contends, were sites for a Jewish civic sub-culture to thrive in, a refuge from the state and 'mass' national culture. This article also stresses the centrality of cinemas in local community life. Engaging with Toffell, this article presents a less oppositional relationship between cinema cultures and the public sphere. Boundaries between state-led civic initiatives, civil society, and commercial cinemas were more porous than Toffell allows, with cinemas sometimes acting as brokers between partisan voluntary associations and municipal authorities. Overall, this article seeks to start a dialogue on the role(s) cinema, and commercial entertainment more broadly, played in the everyday political culture of early twentieth-century Britain.
The main sources used here are a mixture of archival and digitised material. The archives are those left by several cinemas. Containing evidence from across Scotland, England, and Wales they provide good geographical scope. They are, however, of varying quality and contents. For instance, the Harry Sanders collection contains a series of 1920s booking diaries, various cinema programmes, and other ephemera whereas the Harry Murray collection consists of only two volumes of press cuttings. 31 Other archives are comprised of assorted programme pamphlets from various cinemas. 32 Somewhat scant, they do provide valuable insight into how events were advertised, organised, and worked at individual cinemas. Moreover, extensive use of Kinematograph Weekly, the principal trade paper for inter-war exhibitors, contextualises archival evidence and provides a relatively comprehensive source for exhibitors' activities and attitudes. 33 This is further supplemented by local newspapers, with the Sheffield Daily Telegraph being utilised to study a specific locality. Mass Observation (MO) records of cinemagoing in 1930s Bolton further provide evidence for a 1937 cinema opening. 34 Overall, this array of sources provides a solid foundation for researching cinemas' involvement in local civic cultures across inter-war Britain.
This article has three main sections. First, an overview of the principal ways in which cinemas effectively integrated into established civic culture is provided. Comparing this with the BBC's philanthropy shows the cinema as more localised, versatile, and ideologically heterogenous in its 'public' endeavours. Next, a case study of the Sheffield Kinema Theatres' Charity Committee is used to explore a local context. In Sheffield, cinemas became key civic institutions through their philanthropy, adopting traditional styles of civic culture whilst mixing it with inclusive popular culture. Finally, two cinema openings in the late 1930s are examined to show how this became a major civic ritual which involved local authorities in a popular community event.
Throughout the inter-war period, there were two primary ways cinemas involved themselves in civic culture. The most prominent was by organising, or contributing towards, charitable fundraisers. Typically, this was through benefit film screenings or concerts, with a proportion of profits being given to charity. 35 Cinemas also organised other philanthropic events, ranging from free performances for indigent children to charity football matches or sweepstakes. 36 The benefit performance long predated cinemagoing, being a venerable form of philanthropy in theatres and music halls. 37 Thus, cinemas inherited a well-established and accepted tradition of civic involvement from older commercial entertainments. The other principal way cinemas integrated into communal life was as a rentable venue for voluntary associations. 38 Harry Sanders gave special performances for both the Boy Scouts and Girl Guides in October 1922 at his cinema in Wales. 39 The Scouts and Guides flourished in the inter-war period, reaching a combined membership of over one million by 1930. 40 Children were also a core demographic of habitual cinemagoers. 41 Thus, it appears to have been a mutually beneficial arrangement, allowing the Scouts and Guides to utilise popular entertainment whilst Sanders ensured youth groups did not entirely supplant cinemagoing in children's leisure time. Similarly, in November 1921 Sanders permitted the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) to host a lecture in one of his cinemas. 42 As Emma Hanna revealed in her study of YMCA initiatives during the First World War, the organisation set up makeshift cinemas and travelling cinema shows on the Western Front to boost morale. 43 Evidently, it remained advantageous from the organisation to collaborate with cinemas after 1918. The inter-war voluntary sector began championing the construction of purpose-built venues for local public life, with the National Council of Social Service lobbying for the erection of community halls on new suburban estates and Rural Community Councils advocating village halls as foci for civic activities. 44 By providing suitable venues for associations, cinemas were arguably fulfiling the role of community buildings in their absence, especially in urban areas. Brad Beaven and John Griffiths have argued that anxieties about the growth of suburban neighbourhoods bereft of elites' guidance prompted a post-1918 shift in notions of citizenship away from civic activism towards a more apolitical consumer-citizen. 45 Yet, habitual cinemagoing did not negate participation in civic culture. Indeed, as cinemas became involved with local philanthropy and associational life, so they served vital 'public' functions which sustained social citizenship.
It is interesting to compare the cinema industry's efforts to the BBC's philanthropic endeavour on the radio. The Week's Good Cause was a short charity appeal, broadcast weekly from 1926 onwards. 46 Eve Colpus has revealed that this was charity by committee, with a centralised panel of 'experts' who vetted and shortlisted charities deserving of patronage. As was typical at the inter-war BBC, a unified Reithian vision of philanthropy informed the BBC's efforts, which conservatively articulated 'worthy' charity as that aiding health, families, or veterans. Befitting the Reithian ethic, the Week's Good Cause also prohibited charities that were even implicitly 'ideological', including those with religious or commercial affiliations. 47 Cinemas, meanwhile, had no overarching ethos. The Cinema Exhibitors' Association (CEA), a federated national trade organisation for exhibitors, had loose control over the affairs of its regional branches, let alone those of individual cinemas. Though generally giving to conventionally 'worthy' causes, cinemas had freedom within localities to support politically charged charity. For example, in April 1921 the Ayrshire Miners' Union publicly thanked local cinemas for aiding the miners' family distress fund. 48 A local cinema could aid a striking trade union branch despite the socialist connotations of this. Other groups which cinemas collaborated with were overtly connected to civic politics. In August 1935, the Scottish Women's Rural Institute (SWRI) approached the Stranraer Picture House to use the cinema as a meeting hall in October. The cinema proposed a nominal two guineas for renting the hall alongside discounted matinee tickets for members. 49 The managerial committee of the cinema later received a letter agreeing to the terms, with thanks for the reduced fee. 50 Founded in 1918 by former suffragist Catherine Blair, the SWRI was as an association akin to the Women's Institute, but specifically for discussing and lobbying on rural matters. 51 Like many groups discussed here, it was avowedly 'apolitical' and accepted members from all classes and creeds. 52 It also espoused a 'practical' view of citizenship, as something done through charity work or voluntary service. 53 If not a radical group, it was palpably part of a wider inter-war women's movement that sought to engage more women in politics. 54 These examples show that individual cinemas, as commercial venues unencumbered by political ideology when compared to the Reithian BBC and many partisan voluntary organisations, were heterogenous in their involvement with civic culture and adaptable to local contexts.
The BBC, moreover, clearly preferred national, London-based charities or else those operating in the British Empire. 55 This reflected the corporation's general desire to forge a coherent national identity through valorising the imperial monarchy and creating a canon of annually broadcast national events. 56 Sometimes national campaigns were undertaken by the cinema industry, with the CEA coordinating regional fundraisers for a single charitable cause. In 1938, benefit performances were held nation-wide for the Earl Baldwin Fund for Jewish Refugees to support European Jews fleeing persecution. 57 In the wake of the Munich crisis, this was an immensely popular cause, and cinemas followed the national trend in philanthropy. 58 However, it was local causes that cinemas usually favoured. Indeed, many cinema managers worked with local government on civic philanthropy initiatives. Trevor Griffiths and Julia Bohlmann have revealed how municipal authorities in Scotland expressed interest in owning community cinemas, with a handful running cinemas in the early 1920s. 59 Cinema managers appear to have had an equal interest in collaborating with councils. In York throughout the 1920s, cinemas held Sunday benefit concerts for various causes organised by the mayor's office, including the Lord Mayor's Christmas Cheer Fund and the Lord Mayor's Unemployment Fund. 60 A similar festive fund in Bristol, the Lord Mayor's Christmas Dinner Fund, was contributed towards regularly by local cinemas. 61 In 1920, Birmingham cinemas were reported to have responded favourably to the Lord Mayor's requests for European Famine Fund benefit concerts. 62 In a reciprocal manner, the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress would often attend charity events which cinemas organised themselves. In 1927, the first Chesterfield Cinema Charity Ball, held at the picture house in aid of local hospitals and the 'Borough Welfare Fund', had the mayor and his wife presiding. 63 This event was mimicked in many other towns, with mayors acting as dignitaries for cinema benefit performances. This considerable involvement in civic charity conveys a more harmonious relationship between local authorities and cinemas than that presented by historians of film censorship. As the 1909 Cinematograph Act de facto ceded censorship of cinemas to local government, much of this literature details the ways in which the cinema industry and councils were at loggerheads over which films were suitable for exhibition. 64 Yet, charity work indicates cinemas were just as likely to establish working relationships with local authorities, collaborating on a range of fundraisers. 65 Thus, cinemas generally looked locally when involving themselves in public life.
Preferring local causes and exercising relative autonomy in choosing collaborators meant some cinemas worked with municipal authorities and local associations simultaneously. For instance, a 1937 benefit concert was held at the Paramount cinema in Manchester for the mayor's unemployment fund. The programme billed it as the 'Jewish Effort in aid of the Lord Mayor's Unemployed Fund' and was jointly 'under the auspices' of the 'Council of Manchester and Salford' and the 'Manchester Jewish Literary and Social Society'. 66 Indeed, a full-page article by the mayor, alongside his photograph, featured in the souvenir programme and explained why all sections of the community ought to endorse the fund. 67 The mayor was evidently appreciative of support for his civic initiative. The Jewish society likewise felt the event to have been successful for them. The local press and Kinematograph Weekly reported that manager Harry Murray was rewarded with an inscribed silver cigarette case by the Jewish society for raising £600 for the mayor's fund on their behalf. 68 This qualifies Toffell's notion of counter-publics opposed to mainstream society, as in practice the demarcations between different realms of public activity were blurred. Here, the Paramount acted as a broker between local government and Jewish associations, enabling their collaboration in Mancunian civic culture.
This is not to say cinema's integration into preestablished civic culture was always seamless. Most benefit performances were held on Sundays, and therein lay a moral and legal controversy. Sunday performances were technically illegal and faced staunch opposition from religious groups, but the 1909 Cinematograph Act implied councils could permit them. 69 In 1932, a law finally ratified pre-existing arrangements, in England at least, by formally granting local authorities prerogative over Sunday performance licences, a condition being that a percentage of the profits went to charity. 70 An early example of controversy was cinemas' efforts for the 1921 Warriors' Day organised for the Earl Haig Fund. It was a national cause spanning the entire entertainment industry, with the Prince of Wales as primary patron and its committee meetings at Drury Lane Theatre. Here, plans were articulated 'that a matinee performance will be given in every variety theatre, concert hall, and kinema in the country in aid of Lord Haig's Fund for all Service men who may be in distress'. 71 This originated the famous poppy appeal, founded in 1921 by former Field Marshall Douglas Haig alongside veterans' voluntary association the British Legion. 72 Cinemas were therefore aligning themselves with a popular bout of national philanthropy. The month after the initial committee meeting, the CEA established that the cinema trade would hold matinee concerts on Sunday 3 April as its main contribution. 73 Anticipating Sabbatarian opposition, the CEA also reported to the general committee, 'it is proposed to issue at an early date an appeal to Lord Provosts, Chairmen of County Councils and District and Urban Councils and of Watch Committees . . . that on this special occasion no opposition shall be raised to the opening of theatres on Sunday'. 74 For some cinemas, in Wales particularly, such requests met with obstinate hostility. 75 Away from the national furore, it is debatable whether controversy was so intense for local cinemas. Many cinemas equally found it easy to obtain Sunday licences. 76 Even where there was apparent Sabbatarian antipathy, cinemas could find compromise solutions. Despite Glasgow's cinemas being permitted to hold Sunday performances, the Waverley Picture House demurred. 77 Citing 'opposition to Sunday opening' in its monthly brochure, it instead planned to hold a 'very special performance' of music on Wednesday 13 April. 78 Attentive to patrons' opinions, cinemas could obviate locally the heated controversy playing out on the national stage. It suggests that cinemas did not generally prove disruptive to extant civic culture with Sunday openings; indeed, such performances, as shown above, proved a reliable source of philanthropic revenue across Britain.
The extent of cinemas' 'public service' must be assessed to gauge its impact upon communities. It should be stressed that charity and associational events were infrequent occurrences relative to the usual cinema programme. Sanders's booking diaries only noted a handful annually. Likewise, in extant cinema programme brochures, charity events were at most monthly and some months none were advertised. No associational events or meetings appear in programmes, although presumably these did not require advertising and were not directly organised by cinemas. Indeed, in the fiscal year that the SWRI rented the Stranraer Picture House, overall admissions to regular cinema performances were just over 205,000. 79 Benefit performances and association meetings, then, could be argued as marginal to cinemagoing. Nevertheless, their somewhat exceptional nature does not render such events unimportant. As the example of the Sheffield Kinema Charity Committee will reveal, cinema's civic events could become mainstays of the local social calendar, in turn having tangible impact upon civic culture.
Sheffield had a vibrant cinema culture by the inter-war period. A survey of Sheffield children's matinees in 1930 found there were 45 active cinemas in the city, most having opened during the Great War or in the early 1920s. 80 This equated to roughly one cinema seat for every 17 citizens. 81 Indeed, the matinees observed at nearly half the city's cinemas on a single Saturday in November found between 10,000 and 11,000 cinemagoers present. 82 Though matinees were exceptionally busy, it nevertheless reveals a considerable cinemagoing public in inter-war Sheffield. 83 Early in the period, the Sheffield cinema industry marshalled their sizeable audience for charity fundraising. A trio of annual events had been founded by 1922 to raise money for local voluntary hospitals. In 1921, a charity football match involving a team of cinema exhibitors was initiated, with Sheffield United loaning their grounds free of charge. 84 From 1922 onwards, this was accompanied by a cinema carnival ball held at Cutlers' Hall. Alongside these events were Sunday benefit performances at the city's cinemas. This initiative was organised locally, and largely independent of the CEA. The Sheffield Kinema Theatres' Charity Committee was a composite of the city's exhibitors and film renters who planned these events and oversaw collection and presentation of the money raised each year. 85 By 1925, the Sheffield and District CEA branch had been ceded administrative oversight of Sunday performances, the money from them henceforth divided between city hospitals and the CEA Trade Benevolent Fund. However, the Charity Committee retained sole responsibility for the football match and carnival. 86 Thus, the annual hospital fundraisers were a wholly local affair conducted by the Charity Committee, with assistance from Sheffield's CEA branch.
The choice of voluntary hospitals as beneficiaries is unsurprising. Frank Prochaska contends these were a favourite charity across the early twentieth century, especially amongst the working classes who gave prodigiously to them. 87 Moreover, such events had precedence; Hospital Sunday or Saturday fundraisers, often organised by the hospitals, were nineteenth-century in origin and continued to be held throughout the interwar period. 88 Cinemas across Britain often chose to patronise hospitals or health-related charities. 89 Working within this preestablished, traditional framework of civic philanthropy meant the Sheffield cinema industry forged strong ties to municipal elites, principally the mayor's office. The efforts of the cinema industry often contributed towards fundraisers organised by the Lord Mayor of Sheffield, who served as chairman of the voluntary hospitals board of governors. Foremost was this evidenced in 1922, with the establishment of the Lord Mayor's Fund for Sheffield's 'wedding gift' to Princess Mary. This consisted of a hospital cot and £640 given to each of the city's voluntary hospitals, alongside a cabinet of cutlery sent to Princess Mary on behalf of 'Sheffield Citizens'. The fund was arranged by the Lord Mayor and his wife as the municipality's contribution to the national occasion. 90 That this charitable gesture doubled as a royalist one, tied to a popular royal wedding and reinforcing the inter-war monarchy's association with philanthropic patronage, aligns it with a paternalistic middle-class vision of charity; royal patrons and municipal dignitaries presiding over a traditionally 'worthy' cause. 91 Sheffield's cinemas were the primary contributors to this fund, surpassing even the 'general subscriptions and donations' collected directly by local authorities. 92 Acknowledging this at the ceremonial unveiling of the cots, 'the Lord Mayor paid a high tribute to the great assistance rendered by the kinema industry, which . . . [raised] one-third of the total amount obtained, £3,243'. 93 The Sheffield Kinema Theatres' Charity Committee therefore supported an essentially Victorian style of monarchical philanthropy and civic ritual.
Even when not directly aiding mayoral philanthropy, the ceremonial surrounding cinemas' fundraising often involved the city council, no doubt due to the mayor's position on the hospital board. In 1925, the Charity Committee's fundraiser accrued over £1,500 to purchase an ambulance. 94 To celebrate this, the Committee was invited to a formal presentation of their funds at the town hall, with councillors, the mayor, and his retinue of officials attending. It was described as 'one of the largest [cinema] trade gatherings that has assembled in the city', hinting at the importance of municipal recognition for industry members. 95 In a speech at the event, the mayor praised 'the cinemas, their staff, and the general public who had supported them' as he harkened back to the Sheffield cinema trade's philanthropy during the Great War. 96 Thus, municipal authorities embraced the industry as major philanthropists and situated them in a legacy of voluntary service. In eulogising their philanthropy and providing civic ceremonial on their behalf, council leaders expedited cinema's integration into the apparatus of Sheffield civic culture. Indeed, the Charity Committee's annual carnival ball was pitched directly at the city's elites. It was an adaptation by the industry of an established form of middleclass fundraiser. The mayor himself held an almost identical annual ball for charity at Cutlers' Hall. 97 Thus, cinema exhibitors took heavy inspiration from a municipal occasion for the centrepiece event of their own fundraiser. Furthermore, the entry price of 10s 6d per ticket meant only wealthier citizens could afford to attend. 98 Compared to the Kinema Charity Ball in Portsmouth, where the cheapest tickets were 1s 6d, it is clear the Sheffield carnival was priced to exclude the working and lower-middle classes. 99 Testament to this price bracket, the ball was well-attended by civic dignitaries, with the deputy Lord Mayor, Lord Mayor's daughter, and several aldermen all noted to attend the 1923 ball, alongside two minor film stars. 100 A lavish and exclusive event, it quickly became a successful fixture of the Sheffield social calendar for local elites. It shows how the cinema industry, by adopting pre-established, largely conservative, modes of charity, integrated effectively into a middle-class tradition. 101 By the 1920s, then, the cinema trade was legitimised as a vital philanthropic institution in Sheffield, one whose fundraisers integrated smoothly into the extant Edwardian landscape of civic good works.
Yet, cinemas did innovate upon civic philanthropy, often by utilising inclusive popular culture. What is striking is that the Committee's contributions outstripped those of any other single association, profession, or industry. From 1921 to 1925, their events were reported to have collectively raised over £4,000 for the hospitals. 102 This was an impressive sum compared to fundraisers by other groups. In 1928, the Sheffield branch of the National Union of Cyclists raised £63 for local charities, a minor improvement on the £58 raised for hospitals through a charity tournament the year prior. 103 The Sheffield Teachers' Operatic Society raised £320 via a charity performance, the bulk donated to Sheffield Children's Hospital and the Page Hall Orphanage. 104 Cinemas could only raise significantly larger sums through Sunday benefit performances and their charity football match. In 1922, for instance, £617 was raised from the carnival and football match, with £484 collected from Sunday performances. 105 The Sunday performances thus nearly matched the money raised from the two other events combined, showing how cinemagoers were a lucrative source of charitable donations. Sunday performances were also held independently of the annual Charity Committee fundraiser. In 1925, the Royal Picture House held a benefit performance, 'in aid of a £1,500 Fund to provide a wireless installation at the Sheffield hospitals'. 106 Thus, the industry's charitable contributions were not delimited to the carnival week, and Sheffield cinemagoers evidently participated to a large extent in civic philanthropy. The mayor was apt, then, to include the 'general public' in his thanks to the cinema industry. Moreover, civic elites were involved in Sunday performances. In 1925, the mayor made visits to several cinemas to speak on behalf of the fundraiser, and a film was taken of the ceremony at city hall to be shown at Sheffield cinemas the following week. 107 Thus, civic ritual was opened up to cinemagoers through film, alongside the mayor appearing in person, both of which rendered the Charity Committee's fundraiser more inclusive.
The football match was also a carnivalesque counterpoint to the exclusive cinema carnival ball. It consisted of two teams, members of the Sheffield cinema trade and 'local pantomime artistes' respectively, in fancy dress for a comic match. 108 Usually the match raised large sums, apparently falling short in 1925 due only to inclement weather. 109 Football had become a predominantly working-class spectator sport by the inter-war period. 110 Thus, it would appear the Charity Committee were pitching their fundraiser to the working classes, akin to how the ball aimed to entice middle-class patrons. Even if people did not pack the stands, a film was made of the match and shown 'at the principal kinemas in the district'. 111 Like the civic ceremony, cinema patrons' inclusion was ensured by such film screenings. Moreover, vicarious involvement was facilitated by the Sheffield Daily Telegraph, the principal local evening newspaper. Already by the Great War, as Alexander Jackson has revealed through football reportage, the Telegraph had adopted techniques from national 'New Journalism' such as human-interest columns, serialised stories, and photography. 112 The fundraising efforts of the cinemas were consistently advertised and lauded by the local newspaper. 113 Indeed, the cinema ball reportage was akin to a society gossip column, detailing the lavish décor, fashions of female revellers, and which notable guests attended. 114 In this period, local newspapers served as 'the ubiquitous civic voice; vital yet distanced from partisanship, or the reputed banality, of former or later years'. 115 That the Telegraph, with its sizeable readership and centrality to municipal civic life, reported favourably and copiously on the cinema's philanthropy arguably amplified its effectiveness. Readers would have consistently seen the cinema industry portrayed as vital public servants of the Sheffield community. Thus, whilst generally the Charity Committee embraced traditional modes of civic culture, they also made efforts to include working-class cinemagoers. The incipient democratisation of civic culture evidenced here will be shown in the next section to have come to fruition by the late 1930s.
The gaudy and grand architecture of 'super-cinemas' was a striking presence in the local landscape, one that has lingered vividly in the memories of former cinemagoers. 116 Children would even watch the construction of such immensely proportioned cinemas as a pastime. 117 The grand opening of super-cinemas, then, attracted much attention and became a major occasion for local communities. Examining the opening of two cinemas, Grantham's State Cinema in 1938 and Bolton's Odeon in 1937, reveals that by the 1930s, cinema managers had 'invented' their own civic ritual. More than this, the event is emblematic of the relatively democratic ethos the cinema brought to civic culture, as the commercial imperative to entertain and include 'mass' audiences intermingled with traditional ceremony.
Ben Roberts contends that inter-war civic rituals became increasingly democratised as mixed entertainments replaced processional pageantry and rituals entailed greater participation from citizens. 118 Both Hulme and Wildman have similarly denoted more 'populist' civic cultures arising in the mid-1930s. 119 It is implied that such a shift was prompted by proactive civic leaders, well-attuned to the changing mood of their electorates. However, cinema managers had long embraced democratised popular culture. This permeated the grand opening of cinemas, where consumer entertainment was the primary purpose of the evening. Indeed, a full cinema programme formed the event's centrepiece in both Grantham and Bolton. At Grantham, an organ recital was followed by a newsreel, a Mickey Mouse cartoon, and two films; the main feature starred Cary Grant. 120 Likewise, the Odeon programme featured a newsreel, cartoon, and two Hollywood feature films. 121 The film programmes, typical of those put on by supercinemas, were the main draw of the evening.
Yet, this unextraordinary commercial entertainment was couched in the trappings of civic ritual. Both opened with a full military band from local regiments playing an assortment of music. 122 The Lord Mayor, too, was given pride of place at both cinemas. On the front page of the State cinema's souvenir brochure, it touted the 'grand opening by his worship the Mayor of Grantham', indicating the centrality of the civic dignitary to proceedings. 123 Moreover, the Odeon programme noted that the night's proceeds would be given to the Mayor's Coronation Year Charity Fund for Bolton Royal Infirmary. 124 Such civic pomp was not uncommon for larger cinemas, with councillors, mayors, and even a bishop reported to have presided over well-attended grand opening ceremonies in the 1930s. 125 Thus, the grand opening was a hybrid of commercial entertainment and civic occasion, blended together in a festive ritual for the consumer-citizen. The souvenir programme for the State explicitly presented the civic through a populist lens in its twopage feature on the mayor. A page-long biography was given of mayor Arthur Eatch opposite a full-page picture of him and his wife in mayoral costume. 126 The biography vaunted his humble background and his involvement with local football and bowls clubs. It ended on a panegyric claiming, 'Popular because he is endowed with the best qualities of sportsmanship, conscientious to a fault, hard working, honest and upright . . . Grantham has indeed cause to be proud of its Mayor, who loves to be called nothing more than just 'plain Arthur". 127 Claire Langhamer has argued that a normative 'ordinariness' arose in the late 1940s, which presented the ordinary, usually working-class, citizen as possessing desirable traits like decency, common sense, and trustworthiness. 128 In a similar vein, albeit predating Langhamer's chronology by a decade, Eatch was championed for being just like everyone else, an exemplar of the virtuous common man. The programme goes further than local press did which, recounting his sporting qualities and 'manliness', did not frame his ordinariness in a normative manner. 129 Thus, cinema managers could actively inject populism into rituals when the democratic tone of the cinema programme was employed for civic dignitaries. The use of colloquial language and focus upon inclusive commercial entertainment reveals how cinema management created a relatively democratic ritual for local civic culture.
Not just inclusive, these events were highly popular. A Mass Observer attended the Bolton opening as part of the Worktown project, and their observations suggest how the event was experienced by audience members. The MO notes also give insight into how the civic ritual functioned in practice. It was bustling, with a full house inside and a crowd of thousands gathered outside. 130 The Lord Mayor, wearing his chain of office and accompanied by his wife, literally took centre stage. To a standing ovation, they followed the pipe band onto the stage with a retinue of councillors and the cinema's managers and architects, all dressed in black tie. 131 Flowers were presented to the Lady Mayoress by a page boy and the mayor, though visibly nervous, gave a short speech in which he was applauded twice by the audience. 132 Thus, not only was civic ritual very much baked into the evening's affairs, the frequent applause suggests cinemagoers were stirred by local pride. From the snippets of conversation overheard, however, it seems doubtful whether any profound sense of citizenship was taken from the evening. Conversation focused on the cinema's décor or aspects of the entertainment, or else was unrelated to the evening itself. 133 The grand opening, then, appears to have received a diverse response befitting its hybridity, with audiences able to express a modicum of civic pride whilst enjoying the commercial pleasures of a night at the cinema. Hence, by the mid-1930s the cinema opening had become a key occasion in community life, one that blurred the commercial and the ceremonial to create a democratic civic ritual.
In 2020, the Welsh town of Pembroke unveiled a blue plaque commemorating Edwardian filmmaker William Haggar and the site of 'Haggar's Cinema and Ballroom'. This was the town's principal cinema from the 1930s through to 1984. The unveiling was attended by the mayor and several councillors; the plaque financed by voluntary fundraisers and a council donation. 134 Local press reported that it was 'decided to commemorate the building rather than William Haggar [alone] as it holds so many fond memories for Pembroke people'. 135 This civic ritual would appear odd for a purely commercial venue but cinemas, as this article has shown, were heavily involved in similar kinds of civic culture throughout the inter-war golden age of cinemagoing. It is true cinemas were foremost businesses providing entertainment for profit. Yet, they were also vital to the philanthropic and associational life of many communities. Indeed, as 'apolitical' private venues, cinemas had leeway to adapt effectively to extant local civic cultures. While often adopting 'traditional' modes of philanthropy and ritual, cinema managers brought popular culture from the commercial realm into public life. This blurring of the commercial and civic is key to the way cinemas impacted local political culture. For cinemagoers, consumption of commercial leisure was often intertwined with civic participation. Britons could easily be both consumer and citizen without the former negating the latter. Many intellectuals between the wars placed democratic participation and supposedly Americanised mass culture in polar opposition. 136 Following from this, historians have continued to see the civic and the commercial as more dichotomous than they in fact were in the lived experiences of inter-war Britons. Cinemagoing and everyday practices of citizenship were intimately enmeshed.
Of course, more studies of specific localities or the careers of cinema managers would help nuance the broad picture provided here. Harry Murray and Sheffield could differ from cinema management and civic culture elsewhere in Britain. It would also be useful to study cinema's public functions from the point of view of charities and voluntary associations. Compared to the YMCA's enthusiasm, tensions were apparently fraught between cinemas and the Salvation Army due to the latter's vocal denigration of cinema as an allegedly immoral pastime. 137 This article, focused upon the inter-war period, further begs the question of whether this civic function of cinema ceased with the decline of cinemagoing across the 1950s and 1960s. Many historians have claimed civic culture ebbed with the rise of the welfare state and corollary stripping of local councils' prerogatives in the late 1940s and 1950s. 138 There is evidence to suggest cinemas continued to be involved in civic culture until long after the Second World War, at least. Indeed, Murray and Sanders both continued to contribute to local philanthropy until the 1960s. Whether the two Harrys, representative of cinema management's engagement with civic culture at the outset of their careers, had become anachronisms by their retirements remains to be seen. Between the wars, however, cinemas were commercial enterprises that simultaneously performed vital public services in local communities throughout Britain.