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PICTURES AND PROLETARIANS: SOUTH WALES MINERS' CINEMAS IN THE 1930s Stephen Ridgwell I travelled very widely, but nowhere could I find a greater interest in the cinemas than in the Welsh valleys. There the interest has developed into a great passion. Gambling and even drinking is on a smaller scale, but from the old Welsh traditions of culture and arts grew an immense interest in films. Of all forms of leisure and entertainment available in 1930s Britain there can be little doubt that the most popular and influential was the cinema. During these years of social and industrial change at home and political upheaval and turmoil abroad, the establishment of the cinema as 'one of the most important social institutions of the country' was predictably to be the cause of much debate, controversy and activity amongst politicians, moral and cultural 'guardians', local authorities, intellectuals and social observers even as it gave enormous enjoyment to millions of ordinary British people. Although by this time enjoying considerable appeal among all classes throughout Britain, the great mass of the cinema's vast audience continued to be drawn, as it always had been, from the industrial urban working-classes, a condition clearly illustrated by Simon Rowson's pioneering statistical survey of the British cinema industry carried out between 1934-6. According to Rowson, of the 963 million admissions to cinemas in 1934 (a figure later revised to 903 million), 43 per cent were for seats costing 6d. or less.3 Further, four fifths of the total were for seats costing not more than 1/ The high proportion of working-class patronage suggested by these figures was underpinned by the fact that the majority of Britain's 4,305 cinemas open in 1934 were situated in the predominantly working-class urban industrial areas of south Wales, northern England and Scotland.4 Indeed, by Rowson's estimate, south Wales boasted the highest proportion of cinemas per head of the population in Britain at this time. As the great surrealist chronicler of interwar Rhondda life and avid cinema-goer, Gwyn Thomas, recalled in his 1968 'autobiography of sorts', the valleys teemed with cinemas seats were cheap; one could indulge oneself endlessly'.5 Cheap and accessible, the cinema was generally within reach of even the poorest sections of the community (Thomas himself was unemployed at the time of the above recollection) as well as being available to those, most notably women and children, often excluded from other popular 2 Ferdynand Zweig, Men in the Pits (London, 1948) p. 107. D.C. Jones (ed.), The Social Survey of Merseyside (Liverpool, 1934) vol.3, p.279. The best general account of cinema and society in 1930s Britain is Jeffrey Richards, The Age of the Dream Palace (London, 1984). For the cinema in Wales during this period see Peter Stead, 'Wales and Film', in Trevor Herbert and Gareth Elwyn Jones (eds.) Wales Between the Wars (Cardiff, 1990) pp.161-85; David Berry, Wales and Cinema: The First 100 Years (Cardiff, 1994). Simon Rowson, 'A Statistical Survey of the Cinema Industry in Great Britain in 1934', Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 99 (1936), p.7 1 s Rowson, 'Statistical Survey p.84. Gwyn Thomas, A Few Selected Exits (London, 1968) pp. 100-1.