Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 17664 (Master Record)
Title | Year | Date |
MCQUEEN FAMILY HOLIDAYS: WARTIME SCENES IN TYNEMOUTH | 1937-1948 | 1937-01-01 |
Details
Original Format: 9.5mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 13 mins 33 secs Genre: Home Movie Subject: COUNTRYSIDE / LANDSCAPES ENTERTAINMENT / LEISURE FAMILY LIFE MILITARY / POLICE SEASIDE SPORT TRAVEL WARTIME |
Summary This amateur home movie compilation of McQueen family holidays in Jersey and Norway, day trips and leisure time at home in Tynemouth, spans the years 1937 through to 1948. Footage includes Digging for Victory vegetable growing in Tynemouth and portraits of Mac McQueen in uniform as a Home Guard officer and his son Neil in Air Training Corps cadet uniform at the start of the Second World War. |
Description
This amateur home movie compilation of McQueen family holidays in Jersey and Norway, day trips and leisure time at home in Tynemouth, spans the years 1937 through to 1948. Footage includes Digging for Victory vegetable growing in Tynemouth and portraits of Mac McQueen in uniform as a Home Guard officer and his son Neil in Air Training Corps cadet uniform at the start of the Second World War.
May and Neil McQueen stand beside a car in Jersey, following Neil’s return from war service in 1948....
This amateur home movie compilation of McQueen family holidays in Jersey and Norway, day trips and leisure time at home in Tynemouth, spans the years 1937 through to 1948. Footage includes Digging for Victory vegetable growing in Tynemouth and portraits of Mac McQueen in uniform as a Home Guard officer and his son Neil in Air Training Corps cadet uniform at the start of the Second World War.
May and Neil McQueen stand beside a car in Jersey, following Neil’s return from war service in 1948. May is walking on a Jersey beach. The camera pans around a bay with a castle, sited on a rocky headland.
There are various shots of May’s brother, Bob, playing bowls with a group of men on a bowling green in Tynemouth Park, with Victorian buildings in background. The McQueen family and friends gather in the garden of their home at Seafield View, Tynemouth.
There is a shot of the coast in Jersey. May and Olive pose in front of a bus and then get onto the bus. Waves lap at seafront concrete steps and a woman in swimsuit and swimming hat climbs up the steps from the sea.
The film cuts to views of Tynemouth beach and the bay, where two men are standing in the sea. Two young girls in swimsuits and hats play on the seafront path as a man (Neil) swims by in the background. May and family friend Annie sit in deckchairs in front of a streamline modern seafront building. In the next shot, Neil swims by in the sea. May, Annie and a third woman, dressed in coats, paddle in the shallow waves lapping on Tynemouth beach.
May McQueen and Olive stand on a windy cliff top next to a circular single storey tower painted in a checkerboard pattern, which may be a coastguard lookout post. (?)
The next sequence features views of the north bank of the River Tyne estuary filmed from a passenger ship as the McQueen family and friends set off on a trip to Norway. There are travelling shots of North Shields Fish Quay, the vast Knotts Flats housing development, and the Tynemouth Lighthouse.
The following scenes document the holiday in Norway and feature May, Mac and Olive McQueen, Anne Hindmarch and Doreen Balantyne. The McQueen family and friends visit various locations in Norwegian forest and mountain regions. The four women are pictured in cool sunglasses at a lakeside café and there are scenic views from a cable car ride.
Back home at Seafield View, Tynemouth, Olive is with a black Labrador and May is seated in the garden.
Various shots at a zoo depict pandas, a parrot, flamingos, and monkeys in caged enclosures.
May plays with a King Charles spaniel dog. Uncle Bob and Olive McQueen train the dog to beg for food. Olive and family friend, Annie, hold a baby watched by the baby’s grandmother in glasses. The grandmother rocks the baby.
Mac and Neil McQueen pose in the back garden of their home Seafield View, Tynemouth. Mac is dressed in his uniform as a Captain in the Home Guard during World War II and Neil is wearing his Air Training Corps (ATC) cadet uniform. Mac makes a victory salute. Both wave at the camera. A woman moves into the shot. A high angle shot documents the square at Seafield View, Tynemouth, which has been dug up for growing vegetables as part of the government's Digging for Victory campaign in wartime Britain. A brief portrait shot of Neil in uniform follows.
After an interior shot, Olive smiles at camera. Olive and the McQueen’s neighbours, the Stoddarts, come and go at the Stoddart’s holiday chalet in Rothbury. A boy aims a rifle towards the camera. Olive waves from a chalet window. In a staged shot, the boy leads the gang of McQueens and Stoddarts down the steps out of the chalet in some comic Cowboys and Indians role play, holding guns, tomahawks, a bugle, a spear, with an occasional hat or headdress, whooping and joking for the camera. They pose for several riotous group portraits outside the chalet. Mac takes aim with the gun whilst the young Stoddart girl, Audrey, beats her chest and dances around pretending to be a North American Indian.
View of a mother and her daughter, Carmen and Audrey Stoddart, arm-in-arm, walking their dog. Both are dressed in smart 1940s skirt suits. Carmen jokily strikes a fashion model pose. The two women walk around the Lady’s Well, near Holystone village in Northumberland.
A brief shot shows a lamb running across a field. Neil rides a pony at a farm. Neil and other children pose with two cute ponies. A young man and woman (tall and fashionable) walk towards camera, arm-in-arm. A portrait shot shows both with cigarettes in their hands. Olive and May McQueen pack suitcases into the family car's boot.
A young Olive and Neil play with a small puppy, the King Charles spaniel seen as an older dog in a previous sequence. Mac is fishing at a lake. There are various shots of Mac, May, Neil and a family friend walking through a country field, with Neil pulling faces at camera.
Three teenage girls and a younger girl in swimsuits or summer dress, including Olive, pose against a fence at Tynemouth open air swimming pool. The Stoddart parents (Carman and George) are seated beside them, George dressed in a suit and tie despite the sun.
[The next sequence is very under-exposed. Might record a parade with police on horseback].
The film closes with shots of the Tynemouth coast during a bad storm. Waves lash the pier and lighthouse. Tynemouth Priory and Castle are visible on the rocky headland known as Pen Bal Crag, which overlooks the pier.
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