Sarah Hellawell is lecturer in modern British
history at the University of SunderlandAL
AM
Y/
GE
TT
Y^ I
M
AG
ES
Kate Meyrick, the so-called “Night Club
Queen”, opening a series of clubs in Soho
(and, despite the easing of restrictions,
receiving numerous prison sentences for
serving alcohol without a licence).
Meanwhile, hundreds of dance halls
popped up across the country, and jazz
bands, described by one dancer as the
“essence of happiness and jollity”, toured
the nation. One young man in Newcastle
upon Tyne described going to the local
“Palais de Danse” on a Saturday evening and
watching the “moving sea of dancers coagu-
lated in front of the stage”.Screen idols
Despite these descriptions of dancing and
decadence, in reality most Britons in 1921 let
their hair down not in a nightclub, but in a
cinema. The 1920s was a golden age of
Hollywood, and in working-class communi-
ties many people went to the pictures more
than once a week, even during the depression
at the end of the decade. One unemployed
worker from Lancashire captured the mood
perfectly when reporting how, after going to
the library to read the papers, “in the evening
we used to go to the pictures. That was how
we spent the dole money.”
If cinema was the leisure pursuit of the
1920s, then London-born Charlie Chaplin
was one of its greatest stars. On 9 September,
Chaplin returned home to London for the
first time in nine years. The “King of Mirth”those living in poverty, menaced by
unemployment, the cinema did some-
thing every bit as effective as the bright
lights of Soho and fast living of the
jazz age: it provided an invaluable
form of escapism from the realities of
everyday life.
So did Britain really roar in 1921? For
some, it certainly did. There’s little doubt
that people in work – especially those em-
ployed in the booming service sector and
buoyant light industries – had a greater
choice of how to spend their disposable
income. Leisure, travel, electrical appliances
and even motor vehicles were now more
attainable to more people than ever.
But these people were well and truly in the
minority. To most Britons in a time of
economic turbulence and sprawling slums,
the world of haute couture and high society
parties would have appeared impossibly
remote. To them, the “roaring” twenties was a
phenomenon that happened to other people- the preserve of the lucky few.
The 1921 Census of England and Wales
will be released on Find My Past on 6 Januar y
(PFO[RCUVEQWM). The Scottish census for that year is
due to be made available via the National Records of
Scotland in late 2022ONLINEhad crossed the Atlantic to promote his first
feature-length film as director and star,
The Kid, and he was welcomed like a con-
quering hero. One young lad presented him
with a letter that read: “You were one of us.
You are now famous over the world.”
Not everyone was in thrall to this cultural
invasion, though. By 1927, with anxieties
about the Americanisation of British life
reaching a crescendo, the Cinematograph
Films Act made it mandatory for cinemas to
show a quota of British films. Yet that wasn’t
enough to assuage the fears – voiced regularly
in the media – that cinema was too passive,
that sensationalised storylines did not depict
social reality, and that violent films would
lead to rising crime levels.
Britain’s self-appointed moral guardians
may have fretted over the nation’s direction of
travel as it advanced into the 1920s. But forScreen icons
The Tooting Electric Pavilion advertises
NOUHGCVWTKPIVYQQH*QNN[YQQFoUDKIIGUV
stars, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin.
INSET: Chaplin stars alongside Edith
Wilson in 6JG-KF, the second highest-
ITQUUKPINOQH