75 years ago, on the 26 November 1945, Noël Coward’s enduring masterpiece Brief Encounter was released to cinema audiences. A classic of post-war cinema, Brief Encounter came to symbolise the British restraint that had got the nation through the Second World War, its popularity enduring to this day. In this special blog, using newspapers taken from the British Newspaper Archive, we will take a look at the contemporary reception of Coward’s film, and how it was received by cinema-goers across the country. Celia Johnson …
cinema history
Anna May Wong, born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905 to second generation Chinese-American parents, is widely considered to be the first Chinese-American Hollywood star, and certainly the first Chinese-American actor to win international fame and attention. The Bystander | 27 May 1931 After gaining success in such films as The Toll of the Sea and The Thief of Baghdad in the 1920s, and fed up with the stereotyped roles she was given (the Coventry Evening Telegraph in 1961 remembers her as the ‘slinky …
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This week on The Archive we have added 63,650 brand new pages, giving us a total today of 39,709,184 pages, as we move ever closer to that spectacular landmark of 40 million pages available to view. With one brand new title added this week, covering the county of Somerset, we have updates to regional titles from across England, from Yorkshire in the north to Plymouth in the south, by way of Birmingham and Shropshire. So read on to find out which new title we have added this …
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In 1948 cinema attendance peaked with a staggering 1,650 million visits recorded in Great Britain throughout that year. This was the height of the golden age of cinema going, something that had begun in the 1920s and burgeoned throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The Regal, Altrincham, known as ‘the cathedral of cinemas’ | The Bioscope | 24 June 1931 In this special blog we will explore this golden age of cinema going and what contributed to its overwhelming success and popularity, using …
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This week has been another busy one here at The Archive as we have added 97,266 brand new pages to our collection – including one brand new title from Scotland. And it’s a lucky thirteen for our updated titles – with updates to newspapers from Rochester to Gloucester, from Ireland and Wales, as well as to some of our special interest publications. So read on to discover more about our brand new title – the Greenock Herald – and the other updates we have …