Brighton & Hove at the dawn of the cinema

Numbers after entries link to the list of references.

 1885  The first long-distance telephone trunk line is installed between London and Brighton.

 1886  James A Williamson (1855-1933) moves his chemist's/photographic business to 144 Church Road, Hove (later renumbered as 156), taking over the premises from a photographer called S Grey, formerly in partnership as Wells & Grey. 
[Some sources give this address as 144 Western Road, Brighton—however, the last number in Western Road is 134, on the corner of Boundary Passage. The premises at 156 Church Road were still a chemist's shop in 1948 and, curiously, the new 144 was occupied by a photographer. The Church Road shop bears a commemorative plaque.]

 

 1889  William Friese-Greene (1855-1921), who has a  photographic business in partnership with Alfred Esmé Collings, builds a chronophotographic camera with which he takes 'animated photographs' and for which he applies for an English patent on 21 June. He lives at 20 Middle Street, Brighton (Map A—a plaque marks the house, click on it to see more about the house). The photographic business has had a studio at 69 Western Road, Hove ( Map B—opposite the floral clock) since 1888 as well as three studios in London and one in Bath. The partnership appears to be dissolved in 1891.

 1893  Friese-Greene is granted a patent for his chronophotographic camera.

 1893  Esmé Collings, no longer in partnership with William Friese-Greene, now has his own photographic business at 120 Western Road, Hove ( Map D; between Cambridge Road and Brunswick Road), where he remains until around 1916.

1894  George Albert Smith (1864-1959) [right] takes a lease on St Ann's Well Gardens, between Furze Road and Somerhill Road, Hove, from the Goldsmid family. The pleasure gardens include such novelties as a fortune teller and a hermit living in a cave. [The council acquired the gardens in 1908 and converted them into a public park. Most of  the original buildings were removed at this time and the well house in 1935.] Map G.

 1894  Alfred Darling begins an engineering business from his home at 47 Chester Terrace, Brighton.

 1895  Edison's Kinetoscope is installed at Brighton Aquarium. Map F

 1896 March 25  The first film show in Brighton (and first in the UK outside London) is given at the Pandora Gallery, opposite the West Pier, using a 'cinematographe'. (Sussex Daily News, 26 March 1896). The Melrose Restaurant occupies the site and carries a plaque to mark the event. Map C.

 1896 July 6  A film show of R W Paul's 'Celebrated Animatographe' is given at the Victoria Hall, (132) King's Road, Brighton ( Map C)—formerly the Pandora Gallery—beginning an extended run. Programmes run throughout the day from 11.30 am to 10.30 pm. Admission is 6d (2½p), reserved seats 1s (5p). R W Paul himself shoots a film during July of a small boat landing on Brighton beach, 'with comic incidents'.

 1896 summer  Esmé Collings makes a number of films in Brighton. His film subjects include a number shot during the summer, particularly in August: Brighton front on a bank holiday (King's Road), Boys scrambling for pennies under the West Pier, Children paddling and playing on the sands, Donkey riding (King's Road Arches), Hove sea wall in a gale, Bathers on the beach and Ocean waves in a storm. Train arriving at Dyke Station, filmed at the local beauty spot Devil's Dyke, mimics Lumière's work. He also films Woman undressing, sometimes credited with being the first 'blue movie'. Among other productions by Collings during the latter part of the year is a short drama, The Broken Melody, featuring the cellist Auguste Van Biene. Collings lives at 13 Alexandra Villas (Map E).
• Click for a listing of films made in Brighton in this and following years

 1896 September 18  Alfred Darling (1862-1931) carries out equipment repairs for Esmé Collings at his engineering works at 25 Ditchling Rise, Brighton, between Preston Road and Beaconsfield Road, in the shadow of the viaduct close to London Road Station. [Darling's works later move to Adas Works, South Road at Preston Park and could be looked down on from southbound trains about 400 yards south of Preston Park station. The firm, still run by members of the Darling family, is now located in Home Farm Road, Hollingbury.]

 1896 October 19  Chard's Vitagraph begins an eight-week run at the Empire Palace of Varieties. The programme includes some of Esmé Collings' local scenes.

 1896 November 19-21  Hove Camera Club's annual exhibition includes films made by James Williamson.

 1896 December 11  G A Smith, building his own camera,  commissions his first work from Alfred Darling.

 1896 December 24  Film is used briefly during the pantomime, Babes in the Wood and Robin Hood, at Brighton's Theatre Royal.

 1897 March 29  G A Smith includes 'animated photographs' ('The Rage of London. The Photographic Sensation of the day.') at the end of each programme of projected entertainment that he gives twice daily (at 3pm and 8pm) during the coming week at the Brighton Aquarium, adjacent to the Palace Pier ( Map F). Local scenes are included.

 1897  G A Smith, with a 'studio' plant now established at the Pump House in St Ann's Well Garden's, Hove, uses double-exposure in at least three films—The Corsican Brothers, The Haunted Castle and Photographing a Ghost—and patents the process.

 1897 [November]  Williamson again includes moving pictures at the Hove Camera Club's annual exhibition.

 1898 September  James Williamson moves his chemist's/photographic business from 144 Church Road, Hove to 55 Western Road, Hove ( Map H).

 1898  Among G A Smith's film productions this year is The Miller and the Sweep, involving a fight with flour and soot. During the year Smith has built up his film film processing and printing business with clients including not only local film-makers James Williamson and John Benett-Stanford but Warwick Trading Company (London), Prestwick Manufacturing Company (Tottenham), Riley Brothers (Bradford) and J Wrench & Son (London).
The Miller and the Sweep can be viewed by educational users and researchers at screenonline

 1898  John Benett-Stanford (1870-1947), an adventurer and son of Charles and Edith Benett-Stanford, who own Preston Manor, becomes the first person to make a film in war conditions at the battle of Omdurman in South Africa.

 1899 January  Programme of films by G A Smith and Georges Méliès runs at the Alhambra Theatre (later the Palladium Cinema). [0051]

 1899 November-December  Benett-Stanford films more Boer War scenes for the UK branch of Warwick Trading Company, managed by American Charles Urban.

 1899  Alfred Darling manufactures Biokam 17.5mm cameras and projectors.

 1900  Warwick Trading Company (WTC) builds a film studio [right] for G A Smith at St Ann's Well Gardens, Furze Hill, Hove ( Map G) at the start of a two-year contract. In the three years since starting production in 1897, G A Smith has made £2,000 profit from the medium. Urban distributes films made by Smith and Williamson, as well as representing the American parent, plus Lumière and Méliès. In September, the WTC catalogue describes Smith as 'Manager of the Brighton Film Works of the Warwick Trading Company'.

 1900  G A Smith introduces big close-ups in films, such as The Little Doctor. He also uses masking in As Seen Through a Telescope.
The latter film can be viewed by educational users and researchers at screenonline

 1900  Alfred Darling introduces the Duplex Model M camera, which takes 300 ft reels of film. [below]

 1900/01   James Williamson makes two landmark films with significant dramatic innovations. Attack on a China Mission—Blue Jackets to the Rescue, a scene from the Boxer Rising in China but actually filmed in Hove, is a 230-foot four-shot film (nearly four minutes) that intercuts a reverse angle shot to show the opposite point of view. Williamson has already made 122 previous films. In A Big Swallow [right] the camera tracks in towards a man's mouth and is apparently swallowed.

 1900 November 17  James Williamson premieres Attack on a China Mission at Hove Town Hall in Church Road.

 1901  Alfred Darling is commissioned to make a prototype three-colour camera to a design by Edward Turner's who is backed by Charles Urban.

 1902  G A Smith produces Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes.

 1902  James Williamson moves his Williamson Kinematographic Company to Cambridge Grove [right], off Wilbury Road, Hove, where he builds a glasshouse film studio.

 1902  Alfred Darling manufactures Junior Bioscope Darling cameras.

 1902-1903  Esmé Collings has a photographic business at 89 King's Road.

 1903  Charles Urban [right] leaves Warwick to set up the Charles Urban Trading Company to make and sell cinema equipment and films. He takes G A Smith's distribution rights with him. Having already assisted Edward Turner in the development of a three-colour film system (see 1901), he buys up the patents when Turner dies suddenly in March. Urban interests Smith in pursuing the project (see 1906).

 1903  G A Smith produces Dorothy's Dream.

 1904 January  Hove Council establishes a set of six rules for the conduct of cinematograph exhibitions in the borough. (National legislation is not introduced until the Cinematograph Act in 1909.) Click on paragraph to see the rules.

 1904  A H Tee takes over the lease on St Anne's Well Gardens from G Albert Smith, who moves to a studio ('Laboratory Lodge') in the garden of his home in Roman Crescent, Southwick.

 1906 July  G A Smith makes the first test films using his two-colour Kinemacolor process at Southwick. He has abandoned the three-colour approach of Edward Turner (see 1903).

 1906 November  G A Smith and Charles Urban patent the Kinemacolor process.

 1907  James Williamson's Natural Cinematograph Company opens an office in New York.

 1907-1909  William Friese-Greene has a photographic business at 203a Western Road [apparently next to the Imperial Arcade]. Friese-Greene moves c1907 to 9 Worcester Villas, Hove, close to Portslade station [right]. The house bears a blue plaque to mark his residence there.
[Photo: David Fisher, Terra Media]

 1908 July 8  Kinemacolor is demonstrated at a scientific meeting in Paris. The Lumière Brothers are in the audience.

 1908 December 9  Kinemacolor is demonstrated to the Royal Society of Arts in London.

 1908 December 14  First Kinemacolor public showing are held in London.

 1909 January 13  Electric Bioscope is opened in a converted shop at 130 Western Road, Brighton by Harold Speer. It seats about 50 people  (see also 1910). A cinema remains on the site until 1979, when it is absorbed into the Waitrose supermarket.
        The Court Theatre/Cinema in New Road, Brighton also starts intermittent film shows during the year.

 1909 February  The first presentation of 20 Kinemacolor short films is made in London.

 1909 February  To discuss the threat to European production caused by the moves afoot in the American film industry (which ends with the generally illegal creation of the Motion Picture Patent Company, aka the Trust), a Paris Convention is held, attended by Williamson and Urban among others.

 1909 March  Natural Colour Kinematograph Company is established by Charles Urban.

 1910  The first Kinemacolor drama production to be released is The Story of Napoleon.

 1910  The Electric Bioscope in Western Road expands into the next-door shop and is fitted out with dimmable auditorium lights, curtains revealing the screen and an orchestra. The name changes to Queen's Electric Theatre.

 1910 September 22  The first purpose-built cinema to open in Brighton is the Duke of York's Cinema at Preston Circus, which soon follows the renamed Queen's Electric Theatre. This is still operating under the same name as an independent art-house cinema.
        Four other cinemas open in converted buildings during the year: Empire Picture Theatre, Gem Electric Cinema, People's Picture Palace and Cinema-de-Luxe.

 1910  James Williamson moves his company to London. His premises in Cambridge Grove are acquired by G A Smith's Kinemacolor company, the Natural Colour Kinematograph Company, which also has a studio in the south of France. The rear of the Brighton premises, backing onto the railway line just to the west of the junction of the lines from Hove to Brighton and London, still shows the word Kinemacolor in large white letters, sadly with a small section missing where a window has been inserted in the otherwise blank wall.

 1911 April 11  Hove Electric Empire cinema opened in George Street, the first purpose-built cinema in Hove.
        No fewer than six cinemas open in Brighton and Hove during the year, including two that are purpose-built and two that will continue in operation for more than 60 years.

 1911 December 12  The coronation durbar of King George V is the subject of the first major colour film production, The Durbar at Delhi, shot in Kinemacolor.

 1911  Brighton Borough Council bans Sunday opening of cinemas.

Around this period, the future production team of the Boulting brothers, John and Roy, live in New Church Road, Hove.

 1912  Three more cinemas open during the year, two of them purpose-built, bringing the total number of active cinemas to 16 by the year end. 

 1912 December  Martin Thornton, in collaboration with the Natural Colour Kinematograph Company, makes In Golliwog Land, a colour film mixing live action and puppet animation.

 1913  Sunny South Film Company is formed by F L (Leonard) Lyndhurst [right] and local comedian Shoreham resident Will Evans and at Shoreham on the Sussex coast west of Brighton. The Fort was built c.1790s as part of the nation's defences against possible invasion by Napoleon, known as 'Palmerston Follies'. It is used as a film studio by Sunny South Film Company. The area surrounding the daylight-only studio becomes popular with film and music hall artistes and people with theatrical and film connections who build bungalows along Old Fort Road, many constructed from old railway carriages, giving the name Bungalow Town [left] to the area. [F L Lyndhurst was the grandfather of actor Nicholas Lyndhurst.]

 1913  Hove borough council passes a set of by-laws to regulate cinemas in the town. Among them are requirements to close all cinemas in the event of an outbreak of an infectious disease and for children up to the age of 14 to be accompanied by an adult in the evenings (see also 1931 below). An existing ban on Sunday opening of cinemas is retained but is challenged by exhibitors, who argue that no such ban applies in Brighton. The right to ban Sunday screenings is upheld in March 1915 by the Divisional Court of Appeal.

 1914  Kinemacolor's patent on its colour film process, the basis of a rigidly controlled monopoly, is challenged by William Friese-Greene.

 1915 February  The House of Lords finds against the Natural Colour Kinematograph Company in Friese-Greene's patent case against Kinemacolor. G A Smith's cinema interests are badly affected.

 1915  Shoreham Beach Film Studio, an all-glass structure, is built on the shingle foreshore at West Beach, at the western end of Shoreham beach by F L Lyndhurst's Sealight Film Company, successor to Sunny South. It measures 75 ft x 45 ft and is up to 30 ft high. The children's home at King's Gap is now on the site, which marked with a plaque.

 1916  Shoreham Beach Film Studio is sold to the Olympic Kine Trading Company.

 c1919  Shoreham Beach Film Studio is acquired by Progress Film Company, previously based in Manchester.

 1922  The Shoreham Film Studio is destroyed by fire. The site is marked by a plaque placed on the wall of a modern church hall. The view of the site [below] shows how close the studio was to the beach, which is behind the grassy ridge to the left of the photograph. The plaque is to the right of the window at the right of the picture.

[Photos: David Fisher, Terra Media]

 

and later . . .

1928 October Hove Borough Council conducts a referendum on Sunday opening of cinemas. Out of 20,890 polling cards issued, 6,579 (31.5 per cent) are in favour and 5,664 (27.1 per cent) are against. Sunday opening goes ahead. [Legislation permitting any local authority to hold a referendum on Sunday cinema opening was not passed until 1932.] [0052]

1931 Hove is among a small group of local authorities that, within their cinema licensing responsibilities, interpret the A certificate of the British Board of Film Censors as meaning that children under 16 are not allowed to see such films. The ruling is reversed on clarification by the Home Office that the classification is advisory to parents. [0033]

1931 June 24 The Cinematograph Exhibitors' Association conference is held in Brighton. The issue of distribution of British films in the US is discussed, for which Simon Rowson prepared a paper on 'The British exhibitor and Anglo-American relations'.

1938 September After years in his native USA and almost a decade in London, recently widowed Charles Urban moves to 7 Clarendon Mansions on the corner of East Street and King's Road, almost next door to the showcase Savoy Cinema-Theatre (Map K).

1942 August 29 Charles Urban dies at the Lees House Nursing Home, 12 Dyke Road, Brighton, to the north of the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Sick Children (Map L). [The numbering of properties in Dyke Road has since changed.]

1948 January 8 midnight Premiere of The Boulting Brothers' production of Brighton Rock, starring Richard Attenborough and shot during the previous year, is held at the Savoy Cinema (ABC), East Street. 

1948-1966 St Nicholas's Parish Rooms, the 1880 red-brick building occupying the east side of St Nicholas Road at the corner of Church Street, close to the junction with Dyke Road, is used a film studio. (Now flats.)

1957 G A Smith is among guests invited to the opening of the National Film Theatre in London. He lives in retirement at 18 Chanctonbury Road, Hove, until his death in 1959. The house bears a plaque to mark his residence there.

1962 Val Guest shoots his film Jigsaw, starring Jack Warner, at several locations in the Brighton area. Scenes for the Barbra Streisand musical On a Clear Day You Can See Forever are also shot in the town.

1965 May 13 Mobile Cinerama theatre in a tent seating 1,261 people, known as Itinerama [right], opens in Hove for two weeks.

1965-1966 Hippodrome Theatre in Middle Street is used as a television studio.

1968 The work of G A Smith and James Williamson is commemorated during the Brighton Festival.

1969-1976 Brighton plays host to the annual British Industrial Film Festival, based at the Bedford Hotel (now Holiday Inn) with film screenings at the Regent Cinema and Brighton Film Theatre and later Odeon Kingswest. The event is later held in Brighton in 1979 and 1981-1984. The BBC has also staged its annual programme showcase in Brighton.

1969 Richard Attenborough's film version of Oh! What a Lovely War is shot on the West Pier and at Sheepcote Valley.

1974 April After Hove Council's decision to allow an application by Ladbroke's to close the Granada cinema and convert it into a bingo hall, Councillor Mrs Patterson says, 'It seems ironic that Hove, which nurtured pioneering experiments in cinematography, will now be left with only one small cinema.' That single remaining site is the Embassy, right on the boundary between Brighton and Hove. But Hove never had many cinemas. [0053]

1975 British International Amateur Film Festival is held in Brighton.

1978 International Federation of Film Archives (FIAF) holds its 34th congress in Brighton, which is to have a seminal effect on the future study of early cinema, causing the re-assessment of the pioneer period and its films. A pamphlet about local film history is compiled for the event.

1979 August 23-26 At the 37th World Science Fiction Convention, held at the Metropole Hotel, attended by over 3,000 delegates, the Hugo Award for 'best dramatic presentation' goes to the film of Superman, beating Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the animated versions of Lord of the Rings and Watership Down and the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

1979 The mods and rockers riots of 1964 are recreated in the film Quadrophenia, shot in the original locations around the centre of Brighton.

1987 May 21-25 First Brighton Film Festival.

1989 September 8-10 Second Brighton Film Festival.

1993 May Brighton Film Festival.

1994 May 8-24 Brighton Film Festival.

1995 June 8 Nynex CableComms launches a community television pilot programme, The Line, on channel 8 of its Brighton/Hove/Worthing cable system. The weekly one-hour programme is transmitted every other hour throughout the week.

1996 An exhibition about George Albert Smith, James Williamson and the beginning of the British film industry is held at the University of Brighton Gallery and Hove Museum. Hove Pioneers and the Arrival of Cinema by John Barnes, Ine van Dooren and Frank Gray is published in conjunction.

1996 Brewery company Stella Artois provides free film screenings on Brighton beach.

1997 Jewish Film Festival is launched in Brighton.

1998 November 14-22 Second Jewish Film Festival is held in Brighton.

2001 May 24, 10:00 A plaque commemorating the Regent Cinema is unveiled on the site (now Boots store) by Susannah York for the Cinema Theatre Association. The plaque has disappeared.

2002 September 7 Stella Artois provides a free film screening on Brighton beach for the seventh consecutive year. Moulin Rouge attracts around 4,000 people. A screening on the previous evening was cancelled due to the danger that high winds would blow over the giant screen. The event had been postponed from 26-27 July following problems with the quantities of broken glass from drinks bottles in the shingle after a free Fatboy Slim concert.

2004 July 23 Stella Artois Screen Tour begins on Brighton beach with a screening of Master and Commander. Click here to see an animation and 360-degree panoramas of the event.

2005 October 17 ITV network launches a three-month trial of ITV Local, an online service for individual towns and cities, beginning with Brighton and Hastings.

 

Acknowledgements and sources
Brighton Public Library local history collection
John Barnes: The Beginnings of the Cinema in England
Luke McKernan: Charles Urban website
D Robert Elleray: A Refuge from Reality: The cinemas of Brighton & Hove
Judy Middleton: Film-makers, Cinemas and Circuses at Hove
South East Film and Video Archive
The Argus
Cinema Theatre Association

 

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