This film is among a large collection deposited with the YFA from Scarborough Museums – another is Tunny in Action (1933).  Another film from the collection about Scarborough, This Is My Town, made in the 1930s, provides an interesting comparison. It is not clear exactly what relation the maker of the film, Peter Hadingham, had with Swift Film Production, but their association certainly covered other films. The Scottish Screen Archive has one of their films made around the same time, in 1960,...

This film is among a large collection deposited with the YFA from Scarborough Museums – another is Tunny in Action (1933).  Another film from the collection about Scarborough, This Is My Town, made in the 1930s, provides an interesting comparison. It is not clear exactly what relation the maker of the film, Peter Hadingham, had with Swift Film Production, but their association certainly covered other films. The Scottish Screen Archive has one of their films made around the same time, in 1960, In The Event, documenting Civil Defence procedures in and around a factory following a nuclear explosion, sponsored by Distillers Company Limited (the Scottish company that became famous for the production of Thalidomide). The BFI catalogue gives a total of 58 films made by Swift Film Production. 

 

This is of course a professional and well made film; as it had to be given the context in which it was made. Not only was there great competition from other holiday resorts – not least those nearby, like Bridlington –but increasingly during the 1950s developments such as the roll-on, roll-off ferries and air package holidays meant that more people were going abroad for their holiday. In addition growing car ownership meant that holidaymakers were not so restricted to one place. All these factors led to an absolute decline in numbers holidaying in Scarborough, as with many other places, in the following decade (see Shaw, References).  It is worth mentioning too that Scarborough Council had recently purchased the Spa, in 1957, opened a restaurant there in 1958 and re-opened the ballroom in 1960, and so had good reason to promote these expensive outlays.

 

So, with many more going on holiday in the 1950s, it isn’t surprising that it was a time when films were being made promoting holiday destinations in Britain.  Some of these were made by independent commercial filmmakers, like Best Place Under the Sun (1953), on Southend-on-Sea, held with the East Anglia Film Archive. Others like the Shell guides to places in Britain made by John Betjeman, were only indirectly promotional films – on Betjeman’s films see the Context for Sheffield Lakeland.   Many were made by British Transport Films which was set up in 1949, after the nationalisation of the railways, under Edgar Anstey who had been a part of the British Documentary movement with John Grierson in the 1930s (see Reed and Smith, References).

 

Apart from the very many films made specifically on the railway itself, BTF also made films promoting tourist places, called travelogue films: for example Holiday (1957), on Blackpool, and East Anglian Holiday (1954).  These films were of a very high standard and would go to great lengths to make locations look as sunny and attractive as possible. However, the BTF films are often crafted as much as artistic works as they were for their content.  The maker of Having A Wonderful Time!, Peter Hadingham, had presumably learnt from these other films, but it is hard to judge it against similar films because it is very difficult to find any information on promotional films of this type. Tourism as a field of study is relatively new, and it appears that little, if any, research has gone into the history of local authorities promoting tourism, let alone finding any information on films like this one – being market orientated it is much more interested in current and future trends. What has received more attention is the influence of popular commercial films and TV have had on influencing tourism (see Beeton)

 

The influence of business on local government meant that even as early as the 1920 and 1930s seaside authorities hard gained parliamentary support for using rates for promoting local tourism. Yet although the United Nations gave an official definition of ‘tourist’ in 1960, as far as public institutions were concerned, it was still an industry in its early stages. The key date was 1969 when the Development of Tourism Act created the British Tourism Authority, and national Tourist Boards.

 

But of course Scarborough has probably become best known from the song Scarborough Fair. Thanks to patronage from Henry II, after the Norman ravaging of the North, Scarborough did indeed have a famous fair dating back until 1253, being held every year from the Feast of the Assumption (15th August) to St Michael’s Day (29th September), right up until 1788. This coincided with a charter for the building of a new quay at Scarborough, and a decree that prohibited the building of any other quays between Scarborough and Ravenser-Odd at Humber Mouth. As another example of local rivalry, when the fair was established similar markets in the area were also prohibited. The fair was mainly for local traders, attracting merchants from Belgium and Germany (and even further afield), but also included minstrels, jugglers, ballad-sellers, quack doctors and fortune sellers. The song itself however has only been traced to a Scottish ditty called ‘Elkin Knight’ from the seventeenth century.

 

Although already a well established spa town, Scarborough really grew into the holiday seaside town seen in the film in the second half of the nineteenth century, prompted by the early arrival of the railway in 1845, when the town grew rapidly and many of its well-known attractions were built. These include: the Victoria Hotel and Assembly Rooms in 1857 (where Charles Dickens gave readings), the Valley Bridge in 1865, the Grand hotel in 1867, the Promenade pier in 1869, the Pavilion in 1870, the Londesborough Theatre in 1871 ((later a cinema that closed in 1959), the South Cliff Railway (or Tramway) in 1875, the Opera House in 1876 (rebuilt as the New Hippodrome in 1908), the Aquarium between 1874 and 1877, the two and half mile seafront road, began in 1874, and the Gardens, began in 1887. Of course, much of this changed in subsequent years, and there were new developments in the twentieth century, such as Peasholm Park created in 1911-12, the Miniature North Bay Railway, opened in 1931, the South Bay pool in 1915, and the North Bay pool in 1938.

 

Scarborough has undoubtedly changed much in the 50 years since this film was made, and those looking for a first hand account of what it was like back then can consult the video made by John Edmonds of stories told by Scarborian Ray Edmonds (see References).  Among the changes that might be considered for the worse, high up on the list would be the closing of the South Bay Pool in 1989, filled in with 60,000 tons of rubble in 2003 – see also the Context for Sheffield Spartan Swimmers (1934) for more on this.  For more information on the history of Scarborough, and what it offers now, see the excellent Anglolang website (References).

 

Anyone having access to old programmes of the Grand Opera House, showing The Anonymous Lover might be able to date the film more precisely.  From the 1940s and through the 1950s York Repertory Company used to alternate their productions between York Theatre Royal and Scarborough. The Odeon is now the Stephen Joseph Theatre. This was initially based on the the first floor of the Public Library.  It was opened in 1955 by theatre pioneer Stephen Joseph as the country’s first theatre-in-the-round company (where the audience surrounds the stage). It has became better known as the place where Alan Ayckbourn was Artistic Director of the company from 1972 until 2009.

 

The Grand Opera House, although a Grade II listed building, was sadly demolished in 2004 due to flooding and arson (a casino is there now – in 2009); Marshall and Shelgrove was sold to estate agents in 1972 (though it was about to be renamed ‘Debenhams’ having merged with them back in 1919); the Aberdeen Picture House is now a furniture shop on Aberdeen Walk; the ‘Yorkshire Lady’ was renamed ‘Corona 2’ in 1968 (at the time of writing undergoing repairs);and of course we all know what happened to Woolworths.

 

References

 

Sue Beeton, Film-Induced Tourism, Channel View publications, Clevedon, 2005.

Bryan Berryman, Scarborough as it was, Hendon Publishing, 1971.

Mervyn Edwards, Scarborough 966-1966, Scarborough and District Archaeological Society, 1966.

Victor Middleton, British Tourism: the remarkable story of growth, Elsevier, London, 2005.

John Reed, Moving Images, Capital Transport, 1990.

Gareth Shaw and Allan Williams (eds), The rise and Fall of British Coastal Resorts, Mansell, London, 1997.

Paul Smith British Transport Films - The First Decade : 1949-1959
In The Event

Stories Of Scarborough In The Old Days

Scarborough Theatres and Halls

Anglolang