Pestilential hotbeds of vice - cinema management and morality in Britain, c. 1900-1950

A Historical Association and University of Plymouth History department talk.

Join us to investigate the activities of cinema managers across Britain in the first half of the 20th century. In this talk Dr Robert James, University of Portsmouth, will explore the practices of the cinema industry at this time, and the lengths managers went to in defending their trade against criticism.

How did cinema managers establish a balance between respectability and profit?

Learn about the care taken to promote the films in ways that would appease the sensibilities of regular cinema goers while equally retaining an element of excitement, and the activities managers participated in to situate cinema as an educational or civic-minded industry.

Robert is Senior Lecturer in Cultural and Social History, with a particular interest in aspects of popular taste and cinema-going in Britain.

As part of this talk you are also invited to participate in a live Q&A session with the speakers.