Review
"Thorough and engaging . . . fascinating to a wide range of scholars and students . . . a terrific bibliography that will allow any scholar or reader wishing to delve into the motion picture industry an easy leg up on the literature . . . while the rich data set that Sedgwick uses is from 1930s Britain, the points he highlights are general and should appeal to anyone with an interest in the economic or social history of the movies . . . The theories he proposes and the models he creates to test them are general in scope and leave lots of room for future scholars to follow his path and extend his research. In the end, he has produced a top-notch study of an industry that is under-explored in the economics literature. While focusing on a narrowly defined data set, he manages to produce a volume that cuts a wide swath through the history of the motion picture industry. It is a highly recommended read." -EH.NET, August 2001
Product Description
In the 1930s there were close to a billion annual admissions to the cinema in Britain and it was by far the most popular paid-for leisure activity. This is an exploration of that popularity. John Sedgwick has developed the POPSTAT index, a methodology based on exhibition records which allows identification of the most popular films and the leading stars of the period, and provides a series of tables which serve as standard points of reference for all scholars and specialists working in the field of 1930s cinema. The book establishes similarities and differences between national and regional tastes through detailed case study analysis of cinemagoing in Bolton and Brighton, and offers an analysis of genre development. It also reveals that although Hollywood continued to dominate the British market, films emanating from British studios proved markedly popular with domestic audiences.