Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 14600 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| VALERIE & PAM | 1938-1940 | 1938-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Black & White / Colour Sound: Silent Duration: 18 mins 45 secs Credits: Individuals: Ruth Jacobson Genre: Home Movie Subject: FAMILY LIFE |
| Summary A series of home movie produced by Ruth Jacobson between 1938 and 1940 that focuses on her daughters, Valerie and Pamela, in their first few months of life. The girls are introduced to various family members and close friends at home in Newcastle. |
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Description
A series of home movie produced by Ruth Jacobson between 1938 and 1940 that focuses on her daughters, Valerie and Pamela, in their first few months of life. The girls are introduced to various family members and close friends at home in Newcastle.
The film opens on a nurse holding baby Valerie Jacobson. This is followed by the child walking into the garden of the Jacobson's family home at Gosforth, Newcastle.
Valerie is held by her parents Ruth and Lionel Jacobson who pose for the...
A series of home movie produced by Ruth Jacobson between 1938 and 1940 that focuses on her daughters, Valerie and Pamela, in their first few months of life. The girls are introduced to various family members and close friends at home in Newcastle.
The film opens on a nurse holding baby Valerie Jacobson. This is followed by the child walking into the garden of the Jacobson's family home at Gosforth, Newcastle.
Valerie is held by her parents Ruth and Lionel Jacobson who pose for the camera. There are various views of Ruth Jacobson and nurse interacting with the baby. The nurse puts the Valerie into a pram. Valerie looks up at the camera from the pram as it gently rocked. The nurse takes Valerie from the pram and holds a rattle in her other hand. Valerie smiles at the rattle and holds it in her hand. Ruth Jacobson hold Valerie shaking the rattle in front of the child's face. Lionel Jacobson holds a camera and prepares to take a photograph of Valerie who is being held by the nurse.
The film changes to show Valerie now aged 6 months old. She is sitting up in a pram in a garden. A woman holds a small teddy bear that is on a elastic cord in front of Valerie. In a garden two couples, identified as Vivienne and Jonas and Ruth and Lionel Jacobson, sun bath in deck chairs and play around together. Jonas and Lionel smoke cigarettes. Ruth and Lionel say their goodbyes to Vivienne and Jonas who leave by car. [This sequence is out of focus].
The film changes to show Valerie crawling and playing with toys on a blanket in a garden. She crawls towards camera. [This sequence is out of focus]
[Colour] General view of Ruth Jacobson holding baby Pamela Valerie wearing a bonnet and holding a teddy bear plays in the garden. Valarie stands next to a seated Ruth who is holding Pamela on her knee. Ruth puts Pamela into a pram as Valerie runs towards camera. Ruth and Lionel plays with Valerie in the garden.
The film changes to show Pamela, now a toddler, wearing a white cardigan .Valerie and Pamela stand together next to their nanny in the driveway of their home. Valerie takes a doll from her pram and holds it in her arms while Pamela sits on nannie's knee. Valerie kisses Pamela who is now sitting on a small chair being held in place by the nanny. She waves at the camera,
[B&W] General view of Pamela sitting up in a pram in the driveway of the house. An older man and woman, identified as Grandma and Grandpa Cohen, stands next to and play with Pamela. Grandpa Cohen holds Pamela in his arms while Grandma Cohen brushes his hair. A younger woman holds Pamela in her arms, Pamela is holding a hair brush.
Valerie playing with her dolls on the lawn of the family garden. Grandma Jacobson takes off her coat and cardigan. She sits in a chair as the nanny helps Pamela to walk. Pamela sits on Grandma Jacobson's knee while Valerie stands beside her. Grandma Jacobson holds Pamela on her knee. The film end with the nanny holding Valerie in the air.
Context
Born Birmingham, January 19, 1919. Died Newcastle, February 8, 2009, aged 90
Regarded as the grande dame of Newcastle Jewry, Ruth Jacobson moved to Newcastle as a bride of 18 and became a leading light in the city and the region, writes Faga Speker.
The youngest of four children of Rev Dr Abraham Cohen, chief minister of the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation from 1913-49, she received early training in charity work from her mother, Bessie. Armed with a receipt book and her natural charm, she...
Born Birmingham, January 19, 1919. Died Newcastle, February 8, 2009, aged 90
Regarded as the grande dame of Newcastle Jewry, Ruth Jacobson moved to Newcastle as a bride of 18 and became a leading light in the city and the region, writes Faga Speker. The youngest of four children of Rev Dr Abraham Cohen, chief minister of the Birmingham Hebrew Congregation from 1913-49, she received early training in charity work from her mother, Bessie. Armed with a receipt book and her natural charm, she was sent to collect annual subscriptions for the Poor Children’s Boot and Shoe Fund. Marrying in Newcastle in 1937, she was a mother at 19. Another two babies soon followed. Her husband, Lionel Jacobson, had gained a degree at Oxford and trained for the bar. But he went into his father’s business, Jackson the Tailor, founded in the early 1900s, and ran it with his brother before its 1953 merger with Burtons, of which he became chairman. Despite her young family, Ruth volunteered for war work and helped with the Women’s Voluntary Service until after the war. She also started her lifelong involvement in the local Daughters of Zion and joined Wizo, soon becoming branch chairman. Keen on local and especially smaller charities, she and her husband set up a trust fund. But their main endowment was the Ruth and Lionel Jacobson chair of clinical pharmacology at Newcastle University Medical School, twinned with the school of medicine at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. For over 40 years, each medical department of the university has invited a speaker from abroad to deliver the annual Jacobson Lecture. After Lionel’s death in 1978, their youngest child, Malcolm, joined Ruth as trustee. In the 1973 community amalgamation, the Jacobsons bought the site for today’s United Hebrew Congregation of Newcastle upon Tyne. The Lionel Jacobson House, the original house on the site, provides constantly used function and drop-in rooms, synagogue offices and a small shul for the daily minyan, as well as the kosher food facility. Keen collectors of contemporary art, the couple made generous loans to Newcastle and Durham Universities. Ruth was a life-member and fundraiser of the Friends of the Laing Art Gallery. A co-founder in 1948 of the highly successful amateur dramatic society, The Jewish Players, she appeared in many of its productions and led the company to its triumphant securing of two cups at the local drama festival. Involved with youth, she was chairman of the fundraising committee of the Northumberland Association of Youth Clubs, a governor of Rutherford Comprehensive School, and a member of the development trust committee of Newcastle Church High School. As founder-chairman of the League of Jewish Women in Newcastle, which she was asked to start in the mid-1970s, she became involved with the North East School for the Blind, where she used her thespian skills by acting out each character in the stories she read to the schoolchildren. Maintaining her interest in Wizo, she sat on its national executive committee and was a vice-president of Wizo UK until retiring in 2005 after receiving a Woman of Valour award. She was also active in the Newcastle Ladies’ Cancer Committee and was the first female board director of the Metro radio station, retiring in 1989 aged 70. In 1980 she was invited to join a group visit to schools and hospitals in China, organised by a London communal figure, the late Ruth Winston-Fox, with the aim of gaining emancipation for Chinese women. Asked by the deputy lord mayor of Newcastle, Labour councillor Bennie Abrahams, to serve as his deputy lady mayoress, she continued as his lady mayoress in 1981, as Mrs Marion Abrahams was too ill for public duties. Politically unaffiliated, she became a huge asset, especially with the lord mayor’s failing eyesight. She was appointed MBE in 1989 for her contribution to charitable services in north east England. But she retired from her positions as her oldest daughter, Valerie’s, health deteriorated with multiple sclerosis. Both Valerie and Valerie’s son, Nigel, predeceased her. She is survived by her second daughter, Pamela; son, Malcom; six grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Obituary: Ruth Jacobson: The Jewish Chronicle online, 26 March 2009 http://www.thejc.com/social/obituaries/obituary-ruth-jacobson |
