Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 22050 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| PLACES AND FACES | 1954 | 1954-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 16mm Colour: Colour Sound: Silent Duration: 27 mins 57 secs Credits: Individuals: John Percival Staddon Genre: Amateur Subject: Working Life Transport Seaside Religion |
| Summary This film by amateur filmmaker John Percival Staddon looks at places and events mainly around the Sunderland and South Shields area. The film begins in Sunderland with Billy Smarts circus parading through the town followed by a study of traffic in the town centre. A visit to a local attraction at the coast is Marsden Rock at South Shields. A brief ... |
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Description
This film by amateur filmmaker John Percival Staddon looks at places and events mainly around the Sunderland and South Shields area. The film begins in Sunderland with Billy Smarts circus parading through the town followed by a study of traffic in the town centre. A visit to a local attraction at the coast is Marsden Rock at South Shields. A brief visit to the night lights in Manchester, then to the North East coast at Seaburn. Next, south to Aysgarth Falls in North Yorkshire is followed by...
This film by amateur filmmaker John Percival Staddon looks at places and events mainly around the Sunderland and South Shields area. The film begins in Sunderland with Billy Smarts circus parading through the town followed by a study of traffic in the town centre. A visit to a local attraction at the coast is Marsden Rock at South Shields. A brief visit to the night lights in Manchester, then to the North East coast at Seaburn. Next, south to Aysgarth Falls in North Yorkshire is followed by celebrations at a church in Houghton le Spring. Transport finishes the programme with the final remnants of the tram service in Sunderland and rare footage of the 'Halfpenny' Ferry on the river Wear.
Title: Overdale Presents
Title: Places & Faces
Title: The Circus Comes to Town
Billy Smarts circus parades along a Sunderland Street. Floats, performers and crowds take over the streets in an entertainment spectacle. Brass Bands, majorettes, horses and riders, camels, elephants go past the camera. In the background famous Sunderland stores such as Woodhouse’s furniture store can be seen.
Title: How Time Flies
A view of the clockface on the old Sunderland Town Hall along Fawcett Street.
Title: A Bird’s Eye View of the Traffic in Fawcett Street
A view of traffic taken at from the roof of a nearby building looking down onto a crossroads with a pedestrian zebra crossing.
Title: How the Motorist Sees the Pedestrian
A hive of activity as people cross over the road via the zebra crossing filmed in slow motion.
Title: (…) and This is how Traffic Appears to the Pedestrian
Traffic on the road below is speeded up.
Title: This Is How it Really Is
People and traffic move quickly over the crossing.
Title: City Lights in Manchester
Filmed at night views of neon advertising and shop signs in Manchester.
The first sign is for the News Theatre advertising 'comedy’ and ‘cartoons’. The next sign is colourful in the style of a sunrise, advertising ‘Bovril’. Next an sign show the location of a YMCA hostel followed by a sign advertising ‘Player’s Please’ [Players being a brand of cigarettes]
Next a sign showing the location of a ‘ABC Television’ building followed by ‘ The Gondola Coffee House Snacks and Grills’. A bread advert reads ‘Mothers Pride – with Freshness Baked Inside’. A wider view shows a street lit with a large number of neon signs including those for ‘Timpsons Shoes’ and ‘Hepworths’ (men’s tailors).
Title: A Visit to Marsden Rocks
General view of the top of Marsden rock covered with seabirds [filmed in slow motion]. From the beach views of birds perched on the rock face followed by a view of the sea with waves rolling on to the beach. Gulls and other seabirds in flight above and around the rock, again in slow motion.
A young girl plays with a piece of driftwood on the beach near to the rock, followed by a view of children playing on the beach and in the waves along the shoreline.
Children and adults walk through the arch in the rock followed by views of children playing . Out at sea view of a tanker followed by the cliff lift at Marsden.
Title: Spring Tide at Seaburn
Waves crash onto the lower promenade on the sea front. Children try to beat the waves as the water comes crashing over the steel fencing.
Title: …and at Overdale.
At the filmmaker’s home, a woman walks into the garden to admire the roses coming into full bloom.
Title: Aysgarth Falls
A trip to lower Wensleydale in North Yorkshire and one of its famous beauty spots. The film opens with a view of a bridge then general views of the famous triple flight of waterfalls, shaped over time by the River Ure.
General views follow of parts of the river. A family sits on the rocks at the edge of the falls followed by views show the waterfalls from varying angles.
Title: St Michael’s Church – Houghton Le Spring
General views show the church from the road. A closer view shows the clock on the church tower.
Title: Houghton Feast Sunday. Choir Boys of St Michael’s Church Singing on the Tower.
Choir boys, clergy and a small congregation sing at the top of the church tower.
Title: Houghton Feast Illuminations
The film opens on a Heath-Robinson/Rowland Emett type of novelty clock, the Guinness Festival Clock. People gather to watch figures move as the clock strikes.
General views follow of the fairground with various rides, carousels, swings and merry-go-rounds. Other attractions show illuminated stalls and some of the rides at night. One sign reads MUDC 1854-1954.
Title: The Last Trams At Sunderland
General views around Sunderland town centre streets, as the last trams in service at the time navigate their routes. Many of them advertise local stores including Binn’s department store. Some of them advertise Vernon’s Football pools. (A weekly competition based on results from all football matches played around the country on Saturday).
Title: The Halfpenny Ferry At Sunderland
The Sir Walter Raine ferry begins to cross the river and stops at the other side of the river. Passengers disembark, then the ferry makes the return journey. The next sequence shows the ferry making another journey across the river, this time with a view from on board. General views show an array of shipping activity on the Wear. The journey ends then starts again as one of the crew casts off. Some of the few passengers on board look back at the camera as the ferry moves off.
Ther film ends on a slow sunset looking towards Wearmouth bridge and finally fading out ends the film.
Title: Not A Glamorous Ferry You May Think, But What Can You Expect For A Halfpenny.
A halfpenny piece is stuck to the title card.
Title: The End
Context
North East Film Archive holds a small collection of 16mm films by amateur Sunderland filmmaker John Percival Staddon. His films ranged from short documentary clips of local and regional interest like the Shields’ ferry or Seahouses fishermen returning at dusk with their catch in the edited compilation Here and There (1955-1963) to beauty spot visits in the Yorkshire Dales and interesting home movie material featuring family, such as granddaughter Anne dreaming of steam trains in Playing with...
North East Film Archive holds a small collection of 16mm films by amateur Sunderland filmmaker John Percival Staddon. His films ranged from short documentary clips of local and regional interest like the Shields’ ferry or Seahouses fishermen returning at dusk with their catch in the edited compilation Here and There (1955-1963) to beauty spot visits in the Yorkshire Dales and interesting home movie material featuring family, such as granddaughter Anne dreaming of steam trains in Playing with Trains (1964). Amateur movies such as these constitute an important democratic and parallel insight into historical or social events and daily life. They are, to quote E. P. Thompson, ‘history from below’.
John Percival Staddon, husband of Emily May ‘Dolly’, nee Smith, was born on 12 January 1894 in Sunderland, the son of George Staddon and Elizabeth, neé Blanchard. George was a furniture dealer in Sunderland and originally from Devon. The furniture shop was on Hylton Road, Sunderland, and the business later expanded into selling prams, cycles and shoes, with a second shop in Houghton-le-Spring. John Staddon worked in his father’s retail business, continuing with his brothers after their father’s death. He was also an amateur photographer, experience which obviously contributed to his composition skills in filmmaking. He married Dolly in 1923 and their children were Eric (1924 – 2000) and Muriel (b.1928), both of whom feature in his films. Eric and his uncle, Albert Henry Smith, set up an Aero Modelling Club before the war. Both were draughtsman by trade; Albert a ship’s draughtsman, Eric the same, and later a plane draughtsman in Manchester. John Percival Staddon died in Sunderland on 15 May 1973. This compilation filmed in the 1950s opens with a parade of Billy Smart’s Circus including his menagerie of animals. The day the circus came to town was still the stuff of dreams at the time. The crowds gathered down Fawcett Street in Sunderland for the parade attest to the enduring appeal, enchantment and exoticism of the spectacle, the nostalgia for this age old showmanship and perhaps that glimpse of escapism in the travelling life of the circus for the child. Billy Smart was a British showman, fairground and circus proprietor who founded and owned his own circus. He worked on fairgrounds in London and South East England as one of a family of 23 children. In 1925, after his marriage to ‘Dolly’ Rigby, he and his brothers set up their own fair and, regionally, it became a regular attraction. Success was slow in coming and Smart was helped by a fellow funfair business man and future holiday camp millionaire, Billy Butlin, with whom he remained friends. However, at 52 years of age he bought the big top of Cody’s Circus, opening his New World Circus at a first show in Southall Park, Middlesex, in April, 1946. The circus and the existing funfair ran in conjunction with one another until 1952 when the latter was eclipsed by the popularity of the circus, one of the largest in Europe. Smart’s circus started to tour with a full menagerie of animals, in 1960, encompassing more than 40 horses, 15 elephants, and a large variety of exotic and wild animals. During winter months travel was less, but in a ‘smart’ move he had embraced television as a great opportunity for promotion and the BBC started broadcasting television specials in 1947. Over the years, Billy Smart's Christmas Spectacular would become a holiday tradition, which ITV took over in 1979 and continued until 1982. His flamboyant character and nose for publicity and self-promotion equally drove the popularity of his circus. ‘One of his greatest stunts was when he rode an elephant through the streets of Mayfair and parked it at a meter before inserting a shilling!’ The charismatic showman gave his last performance on September 25, 1966, after which he collapsed and died. His friend, now Sir Billy Butlin, announced to the press that Billy Smart "was the greatest showman of his time—and probably the last of the great showmen." Smart’s sons – Ronald, David, and Stanley – took over management of the circus. Stanley, otherwise known as ‘Billy Smart Junior’, was the youngest of Smart’s three sons and the ninth child out of ten born to Smart and his wife, Nelly ‘Dolly’ Smart (née Rigby). Smart Jr made his circus debut when he was twelve years old; he worked as an assistant ringmaster. Soon after, he started to perform with ponies and horses, but he become best known for his acts with a different animal: elephants. In fact, there was a famous incident involving Smart Jr managing to control a stampede of elephants in the ring. The circus survived for only 5 years. The big top was raised for the last time in 1971. An attempt at revival failed in 1993. Today the public are shown to be overwhelmingly opposed to wild animal acts in circuses and a high portion of people are against animal acts all together. In 2020, the Government pledged that the ban on using wild animals for travelling circuses will be implemented. The Cirque du Soleil introduced a new form of contemporary circus, theatrical, athletic, character-driven, and without animals. Their creative, resident shows play to more than 9,000 people a night in Las Vegas, the infamous U.S. capital of excess (until the Coronavirus emergency of 2020 that is). Back when Staddon made films, the process was challenging in different ways to those experienced in today’s digital age. The second short clip of Places and Faces showcases some of the trickery of analogue filmmaking loved by amateurs and professionals alike, and practiced by cameramen since the earliest days of cinema. This section is laced with humour as it mocks both pedestrians and motorists on Sunderland’s busiest shopping street through the use of slow-motion and speeded up footage. During Staddon’s time, this was not a simple feat that could be achieved in post-production on the computer. In order to create slow-motion footage, filmmakers would need to capture the film frames at a much faster rate than the playback rate. The process was described as ‘overcranking’. Fast-motion is referred to as ‘handcranking’ because the camera would be cranked (referring to the hand winding of film through old cameras) at a slower pace. Both techniques have often been used for comic or stylish effect in filmmaking. Perhaps one of the most visceral celluloid movies about boxing, Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980) used slow-motion to brutal effect in protagonist Jake La Motta’s (Robert De Niro) fight scenes. Some examples in the digital age include John Woo’s Face/Off, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne and Carrie-Anne Moss, and the much discussed bullet-time effects in The Matrix (1990), the dystopian, action-packed science fiction movie by the Wachowskis. When it came down to post-production editing, the two most popular machines used for 16mm and 35mm physical film stock were the Moviola and Steenbeck. The Moviola was an early concept by Iwan Serrurier which originated in 1917. When it was released, a lot of film studios adopted the equipment including Universal Studios, Warner Brothers, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Charles Chaplin Studios, and Buster Keaton Productions. As technology advanced, the Moviola was left behind, but in 2005, the editor for Steven Spielberg’s film Munich returned to the Moviola. The editor, Michael Kahn, went on to receive an Academy Award nomination for Best Film Editing. In terms of the Steenbeck flatbed editing machines, the company was founded by Wilhelm Steenbeck and, since 1931, the company became widely known in the film editing community. To get a flavour of how the machine was used, search out the documentary clips on YouTube of Martin Scorsese with his award-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker on the Steenbeck editing suite to cut Goodfellas. Also using slow motion in sequences, Staddon’s compilation records ‘A Visit to Marsden Rocks’. The distinctive formation, Marsden Rock, South Shields, is home to colonies of seabirds such as black-legged kittiwakes, fulmars, gulls, and cormorants. The large arch was created when rock crashed into the sea in 1911. The tidal erosion continued and, eventually, the arch collapsed in 1996, leaving the Rock to be split into separate stacks. In the interest of public safety, the smaller stack was declared to be unsafe and it was demolished in 1997. What remains of Marsden Rock overlooks the Marsden Grotto, a hybrid pub, restaurant, and bar, that is one of the few “cave bars” in Europe. It was first created in 1782 when Jack Bates, aka ‘Jack the Blaster’, a local quarryman, used explosives to expand the original cave to create a house. As a sideline, he provided refreshment for smugglers, charging a small fee to hide their contraband in his cave. In fiction, the Marsden Grotto is a key location in Ray Crowther’s novel, Schoolfrenz, as the story’s denouement takes place there. Another interesting fact about the Grotto is that it was believed to be haunted by Jack the Jibber, a smuggler who was reputedly murdered by fellow smugglers in a cave close to the present lift shaft after snitching on them to HM Customs. Near home, Staddon covers the annual Houghton Feast held in October, its origins in the 12th century Michaelmas festival of the dedication of the parish church of St Michael & All Angels, which survived for centuries. It was revived as a commemorative, ‘new style’ festival in 1967 after the Feast had lapsed during World War Two and lost its historic connection to the church, becoming more of a pub celebration. Tattoos and carnival parades became a feature. In Staddon’s film the ruddy-faced choir boys sing in Feast Sunday from the tower of St. Michael’s church, an impressive sandstone building dominating the Houghton area, which architectural historian Pevsner described as ‘the only surviving parish church of this type in the North East’. Over the years the Feast changed. In the 16th century the Rector Bernard Gilpin introduced the roasting of a hog to the celebrations. Horse racing was a big draw until the last race in 1938, and the large crowds of local miners and agricultural workers with a penny or two attracted stalls, show booths and marquees to the lake grounds and Houghton’s Market Place, erected by the likes of popular Tyneside showman Billy Purvis (1784 – 1853). Purvis was known for his performances as a clown, conjuror, hornpipe dancer and performer of condensed Shakespearean plays and melodramas such as Wild Man of the Woods, (amongst other talents). He is said to have initiated the anecdote that “North Shields is the sunny side (of the Tyne) but South Shields is the money side”, and dubbed his audiences on Tyneside 'Geordies'. By the late 1800s the travelling fair also welcomed the arrival of steam rides owned by showmen like Relph and Pedley, and exhibitions such as Manders Menagerie and Paine’s Bioscope, all regulars at north east events such as Newcastle’s Hoppings. In 1948 the ‘giant of the showground world’, ‘Big John’ Murphy, who lived in South Shields for 60 years, brought his newly built ‘Odeon’ Waltzer ride to the fairground (seen in this film). The ride was still toured in the North East when he died in 2019. Also of interest in this 1954 record of the Feast is a touring version of the whimsical Guinness Festival Clock with its quarter-hourly frenzied trooping out of characters and animals created by commercial artist John Gilroy to advertise Guinness (including the toucan). The creation made its first appearance in 1951 at the Festival of Britain in Battersea Park. Its popularity led to requests to borrow the clock from around Britain and versions toured to Ireland and the United States. The Clocks were in use for fifteen years until 1966 when they were withdrawn. Versions on tour in the 1950s and early 60s frequently make an appearance in amateur films of the period. Amateur films can connect with an audience as ‘records of loss’, even when the past they capture has not been experienced. In a little piece of transport history repeated up and down British towns and cities, Staddon documents the last days of the trams in Sunderland, their familiar red and cream livery and Binns advertising soon to vanish as the motorbus network, first appearing in the 1930s, and the motor car take over as kings of the road. It was with huge excitement that the opening of Sunderland’s Electric Tramways took place in the first year of a new century, on 15th August 1900. But tramway routes were gradually abandoned through the 1940s and 50s. With great ceremony, the last Sunderland tram (the No. 86 once known as ‘The Ghost Tram’) ran on 1st October 1954. The filmmaker chooses not to record this occasion but presents a short, silent elegy to their final days on lonely Sunderland streets, the everyday quietly observed. For further film on Sunderland's last trams: Going Places: The Story of Sunderland Transport References: https://www.c2dh.uni.lu/thinkering/historical-and-cultural-dynamics-home-movies Citing E.P. Thompson, ‘History from Below’, The Times Literary Supplement, 7 April 1966. https://wp.sunderland.ac.uk/seagullcity/fawcett-street/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_motion https://itchyfish.com/old-school-film-editing-machines-moviola-and-steenbeck/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munich_(film) http://www.circopedia.org/Billy_Smart https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wild-animals-circus-ban-england-2020-defra-government-a8230691.html https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsden_Rock hhttp://s113443122.websitehome.co.uk/RC/Author/Schoolfrenz/SG/RC-Schoolfrenz_Gazette.htmttps://marsdengrotto.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsden_Grotto Pevsner, N (1983) The Buildings of England: County Durham, Second edition revised by Elizabeth Williamson, Penguin Books http://www.houghtonlespring.org.uk/houghtonstar/ https://www.guinness-storehouse.com/Content/pdf/archive-factsheets/advertising/festival_clock.pdf http://www.searlecanada.org/sunderland/sunderland014.html http://www.simplonpc.co.uk/WearFerry/Wear_ferries_1179.pdf |
