Cinema Memory and the Digital Archive

In 1992 Tom Walsh made contact with Annette Kuhn in response to a local radio item on 1930s cinema. He was contacted again in 1994 when Cinema Culture in 1930s Britain was launched, and he and his wife Margaret eventually joined the project's seventeen Glasgow-based core informants. Mr Walsh was born in Dalmarnock in 1922, one of four children; his father was a labourer and his mother a cleaner. He grew up in Bridgeton and subsequently lived in a number of other places in and around Glasgow, moving to his current home in Cambuslang in 1960. After four years of secondary education, he qualified for a Royal Air Force traineeship in wireless mechanics, and then served in the Air Force through World War II. After the war he entered a career in teaching. Margaret Walsh was born in Glasgow in 1928, also one of four children. Her father was a civil servant, and she and her siblings were brought up by two aunts after their mother's death when Margaret was only five. University-educated, she had been a teacher all her working life. The couple had no children. Mr and Mrs Walsh were interviewed at their home on 25 November 1994 and 27 January 1995.

Mr Walsh's forthright opinions dominate the conversations in both interviews. At the start of the first, he expands on his acute aversion to 'English' films before discussion turns to favourite Hollywood stars and genres, some Glasgow cinemas (sixteen in all are named in the course of the interview), ticket prices, children's screenings, live acts and organ music in cinemas, and Glasgow dance halls. He recalls shows and films he saw during War service, and both interviewees talk about films seen in recent years. The second interview expands on some of these themes, with mentions of cinema queues in the 1930s, dressing up to go to the pictures, and Mr Walsh's cycle ride from Glasgow to Blackpool to see the newly-released Snow White. Much of the interview is taken up with unprompted and detailed references, by both interviewees, to films and stars of the interwar and post-war years: in all more than forty films, dating from between 1931 and 1994, are named during the interview.

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