Metadata
WORK ID: NEFA 21366 (Master Record)
| Title | Year | Date |
| SEASIDE HOLIDAYS | 1946-1951 | 1946-01-01 |
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Details
Original Format: 9.5mm Colour: Black & White Sound: Silent Duration: 15 mins 29 secs Credits: Organisation: Newcastle Amateur Cinematographers Association Individuals: Leonard Winter Genre: Home Movie Subject: Urban Life Seaside Railways Family Life |
| Summary Made by amateur filmmaker Leonard Winter, this is a compilation of well-composed post-war seaside holiday footage, documenting trips to Southend-on-Sea, Whitby and Saltburn between 1946 and 1951. The film also chronicles the early childhood of Jean and Leonard Winter’s daughter, Maureen, born in Lambeth in 1947. Leonard Winter was later a member of ... |
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Description
Made by amateur filmmaker Leonard Winter, this is a compilation of well-composed post-war seaside holiday footage, documenting trips to Southend-on-Sea, Whitby and Saltburn between 1946 and 1951. The film also chronicles the early childhood of Jean and Leonard Winter’s daughter, Maureen, born in Lambeth in 1947. Leonard Winter was later a member of Cleveland Cine Club. This film is part of the Newcastle & District Amateur Cinematographers Association (ACA) collection.
The filmmaker’s...
Made by amateur filmmaker Leonard Winter, this is a compilation of well-composed post-war seaside holiday footage, documenting trips to Southend-on-Sea, Whitby and Saltburn between 1946 and 1951. The film also chronicles the early childhood of Jean and Leonard Winter’s daughter, Maureen, born in Lambeth in 1947. Leonard Winter was later a member of Cleveland Cine Club. This film is part of the Newcastle & District Amateur Cinematographers Association (ACA) collection.
The filmmaker’s wife, Jean Winter, is walking along the beach at Southend-on-Sea, Essex. Leonard Winter rushes down some steps to the beach. Jean washes her sandy feet with some water whilst seated in a deckchair.
General view of the Kursaal amusement park entrance on the Eastern Esplanade, Southend, (closed during WWII). Jean takes a ride on the water chute seated up front. Next, she’s walking by smoking a cigarette and takes a seat outside at a seaside café kiosk. There’s an extended sequence of Jean playing mini-golf, with many close-ups of her taking a putt, and missing.
A staged sequence follows. Jean and a woman friend share cigarettes under a tree in a country park. Jean walks off. Leonard Winter comes along and sidles up to Jean’s friend on the bench until she falls off the end trying to move away from the pest. He helps her back onto the bench but is a little over-familiar. To put him off, she points over to where Jean is standing, looking disgruntled at her (future?) husband.
Jean is now seated in a seaside shelter, teasing a baby in a pram. Close-ups follow of her baby daughter, Maureen, all snuggled up in her knitted bonnet and dress. Jean picks her up and holds her, posing for the camera. The baby cries a little and Jean comforts her.
The scene changes to the back garden of a terraced house, which may be the home of Leonard Winter’s parents in London. Jean carries the baby outside to bathe her in a tin bowl. A younger man and woman are also out back, who may be either family or friends of Jean and Leonard.
Leonard Winter is sitting on a beach, scrubby with beach grass. He has his trousers rolled up and his hat on. He brushes sand from his pipe and attempts to light it. Meanwhile, Jean is holding baby Maureen and paddling in the sea, dipping her baby’s feet in the water. Back at his patch, Leonard gets annoyed when his sand-filled pipe won’t light. Jean and the young man and woman (seen previously) are now lounging on a hill around a bandstand in a park. Jean is feeding the baby a bottle. The next shot is of Leonard Winter reclining on the beach sucking the baby’s milk bottle, having given up on his pipe.
In the same London terraced house (?) a young woman carries baby Maureen out into the back garden. She hands the baby over to an older woman, probably the grandmother. Jean is standing next to a corrugated iron Morrison bomb shelter in the garden, ready to snap a photograph. A portrait shot of the young woman (Leonard’s sister?) taking a swig of pop from a bottle, nudged by her sister.(?)
Now a couple of years old, baby Maureen runs across wet sand on a beach to her mother and grandmother, who both light up cigarettes. All are wearing winter coats. Jean helps the toddler make sandcastles. Portrait shot of grandmother. The mother and grandmother sit on a sand dune with Maureen, eating sandwiches. A group portrait of the three follows.
Jean and a female friend (or relative) leave a changing tent on Saltburn beach and run down to the sea for a paddle. They run back up towards a young man holding a toddler. A row of changing tents hugs the base of the cliffs along the beach. Portrait shot of the man (not Leonard Winter) holding toddler Maureen. Maureen’s mum, grandmother and the young woman carrying the toddler carefully scale a grassy cliff up from the beach.
Jean and family enjoy teas outside a wooden shack snack bar at Saltburn. Jean carries Maureen to a little fairground ride. The toddler recognises her father behind the camera and points over to him, grinning. She has a ride on the small carousel in front of the snack bar. Jean and the young woman push Maureen on shuggy boat swings. Jean and the young couple have a ride on a bigger carousel (4d for adults), the young man then lifting the toddler off when it finishes. Jean and family walk on the seafront promenade. Maureen runs towards her father, still behind the camera. Leonard Winter and the young man then walk Maureen together along the promenade.
Jean walks out of a Middlesbrough council house with the young couple in previous sequences. The young woman is holding her own baby. The rest of the family follow and they walk up the street, where there are still gas lamps.
A travelling shot follows from a train leaving Middlesbrough railway station, passing warehouses, terraces, the Whitbread & Co. Bottled Beer Stores and Newport Bridge.
Maureen and family are at Whitby Abbey. Maureen plays in an open stone grave with her grandfather. They all play with a goat up on the East Cliff. General view of the abbey ruins. The family walk down the steps from the cliff top. Next, they are seated on a beach at Whitby. The men play leap frog, then play with Maureen in the sea. Jean walks Maureen in the sea. Leonard and the younger man walk Maureen in the sea.
Back again at Saltburn beach (?), the two young families play in the sea, paddling. Toddler Maureen plays near the cliffs. Jean pours water over the young man’s feet to wash off sand. The families start to towel themselves dry and get changed.
Jean runs down to the sea with Maureen, now aged around 3 or 4. Jean is dressed in a fashionable bathing play suit as mother and daughter play in the sea and on the beach.
Context
It might be because Leonard was a member of the Cleveland Cine club that the short films put together in this family compilation are surprisingly well made: cut and framed in artistic ways with plenty of comic timing on display and some amusing performances by his wife Jean. Although Leonard did most of the filming, it is clear Jean also had an eye for it too. In one clip she films her husband relaxing on the sand while sucking on their daughter’s baby bottle having been unable to light his...
It might be because Leonard was a member of the Cleveland Cine club that the short films put together in this family compilation are surprisingly well made: cut and framed in artistic ways with plenty of comic timing on display and some amusing performances by his wife Jean. Although Leonard did most of the filming, it is clear Jean also had an eye for it too. In one clip she films her husband relaxing on the sand while sucking on their daughter’s baby bottle having been unable to light his pipe in the strong sea breeze. To have a women filmmaker in charge of the camera is not as rare as the film textbooks will have us believe, many of the early silent films were made for, and by, women. However in most family settings it is very often the case that men are absent in the photographs because they are taking the pictures. It is great that the films here are produced as a double act, with all the family involved.
The films are a mixture of intimate portraits and set pieces, some of which borrow from the silent era comedies of Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy. In one amusing sequence we find ourselves at the pitch and putt course with Jean trying to make various shots and missing. At one point we see the film reversed to suggest the ball going in, then flying out of, the 13th hole. In another more awkward set-up, Leonard makes unwanted advances on Jean’s friend in a park and she falls off the bench to escape. The family are also involved in these performances as later we watch them larking on film presumably at their home, pushing and shoving each other and acting up for the camera, perhaps at Leonard’s instruction. All the while grandmother holds the baby with a very stern expression. We don’t need to hear the audio, the faces say it all. Amongst the laughter there is also great tenderness. As the 15 minute film progresses we see their daughter Maureen grow from a crying baby bouncing in a Silvercross pram into a young girl running shrieking into the sea with her bucket and spade, her mother chasing not far behind. Some traditions never change. Like many families before and since, the Winters let their hair down at the beach. The popularity of the seaside as a location for family holidays has been popular for centuries but in the UK it had a particular moment in the post-war boom in the 1950s until the 1970s with thousands flocking to nearby resorts as their leisure time increased. There is a cheekiness here when the bathing belles emerge from their tent and has a flavour of the typical nod and wink seaside humour made famous by the postcards of Donald McGill. Many of these films here located at the beach and it is a place they must have visited often. We see friends and family relaxed and frolicking on sand and at shore, as well as on the nearby fairground rides. We also notice the changing fashion for women’s bathing wear too as the longer skirts at the beginning of film are replaced by a typical 1950s halter neck bathing suit that Jean dons at the end of the film. The bikini, although invented in late 1940s, only began to make an appearance in the early 1960s. Or perhaps Jean’s choices were more to do with the bracing Saltburn air. In one shot the men have fashionable Fair Isle tank tops poking out from underneath their suits to keep out the cold as they stroll around. Perhaps it is because we see how people walk, smile and talk with one another but there is something about family films that reveal much more than photographs about the personal lives of previous generations. In family albums we often see people standing stiffly, trying not to blur the image and occasionally raising a smile. However we can only guess from still images at how they actually acted and interacted with each other. Leonard’s films really bring the domestic to life and for that they are an everyday historical treasure. Whether at the beach or at home, life at the Winters looks like a lot of fun. References: https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/features/where-begin-early-women-filmmakers |
