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²¹ Mass-Observation, The Journey Home London, 107.

²² Ferdynand Zweig, The British Worker Harmondsworth, 189.

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³⁷ Gore Vidal, Screening History (Cambridge, MA, 1922), 6, 32.

³⁸ See, e.g., Steven J. Ross, Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America (Princeton, NJ 1998).

³⁹ Douglas A. Spencer and Hugh D. Waley, The Cinema To-Day Oxford, 153; Balcon, Lifetime, 159.

⁴⁰ Robert Durgnat, Films and Feeling London, 135.

⁴¹ Jeffrey Richards and Anthony Aldgate, Best of British: Cinema and Society, 1930–1970 Oxford, 1–2, 5, 10; Marcia Landy, British Film Genres: Cinema and Society, 1930–1960 (Princeton, NJ, 1991), 4–5.

⁴² Andy Medhurst, “‘Victim’: Text as Context,” Screen 25, nos. 4–5 (July–October 1984): 35.

⁴³ Jane Thumin, Celluloid Sisters: Women and Popular Cinema London, 33–34.

⁴⁴ See, e.g., Sue Harper, “A Lower Middle-Class Taste-Community in the 1930s: Admissions Figures at the Regent Cinema, Portsmouth, UK,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 24, no. 4 (2004): 565–87; Julian Poole, “British Cinema Attendance in Wartime: Audience Preference at the Majestic, Macclesfield, 1939–1946,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 7, no. 1 (1987): 15–34. For a heroic attempt to establish the relative national popularity of films, see John Sedgwick, Popular Filmgoing in 1930s Britain: A Choice of Pleasures Exeter.

⁴⁵ Thumin, Celluloid Sisters, 33–34.

⁴⁶ Mass-Observation, “Film and the Public: Chance of a Lifetime,” Sight and Sound 19, no. 9 (January 1951): 349–50. More generally, see Jeffrey Richards and Dorothy Sheridan, Mass Observation at the Movies London; Annette Kuhn, “Cinema-Going in Britain in the 1930s: Report of a Questionnaire Survey,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 19, no. 4 (1999): 531–43; and Geraghty, British Cinema in the Fifties, 4–11.

⁴⁷ Sue Harper and Vincent Porter, “Moved to Tears: Weeping in the Cinema in Postwar Britain,” Screen 37 (1996): 173; Graeme Turner, Film as Social Practice London, 122.

⁴⁸ William Hughes, “The Evaluation of Film as Evidence,” in The Historian and Film, ed. Paul Smith Cambridge, 67–71.

⁴⁹ Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy Harmondsworth, 62–63.

⁵⁰ Mikhail Bakhtin first broached the notion of comedy as “carnival” in The Dialogic Imagination (Austin, TX, 1982). For an application of Bakhtin's ideas to British film comedies see Landy, British Film Genres, 332–33.

⁵¹ For Hay, see Landy, British Film Genres, 347–52.

⁵² File report 2260, June 1945, THMOA, 2. For a general view of films during the conflict, see Anthony Aldgate and Jeffrey Richards, Britain Can Take It: The British Cinema in the Second World War Oxford.

⁵³ A. L. Kennedy, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp London.

⁵⁴ Penelope Houston, Went the Day Well? London.

⁵⁵ For example, see Andy Medhurst, “Myths of Consensus and Fables of Escape: British Cinema, 1945–1951,” in Labour's Promised Land? Culture and Society in Britain, 1945–1951, ed. Jim Fyrth London, 39–46. On the politics of the studio, see Barr, Ealing Studios.

⁵⁶ Andrew Spicer, Sydney Box Manchester, 148–51; Robert Murphy, Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain, 1939–1949 London, 88–89.

⁵⁷ The Happy Family, directed by Muriel Box (1952).

⁵⁸ Geraghty, British Cinema in the Fifties, 136–37.

⁵⁹ Ibid., 56–63; Sarah Street, British National Cinema London, 64.

⁶⁰ Caroline Levine, “Propaganda for Democracy: The Curious Case of Love on the Dole,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 4 (October 2006): 846–74.

⁶¹ Richards and Aldgate, Best of British, 84–85.

⁶² Political and Economic Planning, British Film Industry, 203–8.

⁶³ T. J. Hollins, “The Conservative Party and Film Propaganda between the Wars,” English Historical Review 96, no. 379 (1981): 366–69; Peter Forster, “J. Arthur Rank and the Shrinking Screen,” in Age of Austerity, 1945–1951, ed. Phillip Sissons and Michael French Harmondsworth, 287–305.

⁶⁴ Harper and Porter, Decline of Deference, 267.

⁶⁵ Fielding, Thompson, and Tiratsoo, England Arise! 156–58.

⁶⁶ Geoffrey MacNabb, J. Arthur Rank and the British Film Industry London, 202–3; Richards and Aldgate, Best of British, 118–19.

⁶⁷ Spicer, Sydney Box, 148.

⁶⁸ Levine, “Propaganda for Democracy,” 849–50.

⁶⁹ Betty Box, Lifting the Lid: The Autobiography of Film Producer Betty Box, OBE Lewes, 212.

⁷⁰ This figure was established with the help of staff at the British Film Institute.

⁷¹ Cited in Jo Fox, “Millions Like Us? Accented Language and the ‘Ordinary’ in British Films of the Second World War,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 4 (October 2006): 837–38.

⁷² Murphy, Realism and Tinsel, 191.

⁷³ Cited in Alan Randall and Ray Seaton, George Formby London, 27–28.

⁷⁴ Philip Gillett, The British Working Class in Postwar Film Manchester, 80–87; Andrew Spicer, Typical Men: The Representation of Masculinity in Popular British Cinema London, 82–86; Spicer, Sydney Box, 84, 111–12.

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⁷⁹ Melanie Williams, “No Love for Johnnie,” in 24 Frames: The Cinema of Britain and Ireland, ed. Brian McFarlane and Roy Ward Baker London, 127–28; Harper and Porter, Decline of Deference, 239.

⁸⁰ The Years Between, directed by Compton Bennett (1946).

⁸¹ Vote for Huggett, directed by Ken Annakin (1948).

⁸² Just for Fun! directed by Gordon Flemyng (1963).

⁸³ Fielding, Thompson, and Tiratsoo, England Arise! 36–38, 61–62.

⁸⁴ No Love for Johnnie, directed by Ralph Thomas (1961).

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⁸⁶ Randall and Seaton, George Formby, 127–28.

⁸⁷ Daily Mirror, 11 February 1949; Daily Graphic, 11 February 1949.

⁸⁸ Penelope Houston, “Conscience and Comedy,” Sight and Sound 29, no. 4 (Summer–Autumn 1959): 163.

⁸⁹ Sunday Express, 19 July 1959.

⁹⁰ Star, 16 July 1959.

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