Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive

Interior of the Trocadero, Kentish Town, London (uploaded by Ken Roe). Creative Commons (Attribution) License via cinematreasures.org

The friends Rosalind Avadis and Mick (Maurice) Bloom heard about Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain through a Jewish Friendship Club in the London suburb of Harrow. They offered to share their memories, and eventually joined the eighteen core CCINTB informants based in and around Harrow. They were interviewed together on 27 July and 27 November 1995 in the Middlesex New Synagogue, Harrow. Mr Bloom was born in the East End of London in 1909 and lived there throughout the 1930s, moving to Harrow in the early 1950s. His father was a tailor, his mother a housewife. On leaving school at the age of fourteen he followed his father into the clothing trade. Mrs Avadis was born in 1921 in Notting Hill in West London and the family moved to Neasden, a few miles north, soon after. Mrs Avadis's father was a tailor, her mother a housewife. Mrs Avadis left school at sixteen and went into clerical work until her marriage in 1946, when she and her husband moved to Leeds. The family returned to Harrow in the 1960s.

The first interview covers the informants' early ventures to the cinema: Mrs Avadis remembers her local picture house in Notting Hill and the first talkie that she saw; and Mr Bloom talks about some of the East End cinemas he frequented. Both recall stars and films of the 1930s, with a special mention for the 1929 musical The Desert Song, acknowledging their differences of opinion on certain film stars. Mr Bloom talks about his collection of film posters, and Mrs Avadis reiterates that she liked "a good film with a good actor or a good actress."

In their second interview, Mrs Avadis and Mr Bloom leaf through contemporary film annuals and reference books, discussing numerous films and commenting on the acting ability, appearance, and careers, of upwards of fifty stars. They discuss the particular qualities of their favourite films and share snippets of gossip about the stars' lives.