This article originally appeared on The Croydon Edit.
"THE RAGE OF LONDON! THE WONDER OF THE AGE!'" exclaimed an ad in the Croydon Times in 1896, announcing a showing of 'living photographs' at the Horniman Hall.
It heralded a cultural revolution — the dawn of a new type of theatre. With the Lumière Brothers screening L'Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat at what is now the Regent Street Cinema, and the impresario Robert Paul doing the rounds with his 'Theatrograph' projector, cinema was about to shake up the world — and Croydon was hungry for the new medium.
You can tell just how hungry it was, by reading Allen Eyles and Keith Skone’s book, Croydon Cinemas, which shows that already by 1915, the borough had a staggering 21 picture houses. But Croydon wasn't content with simply screening films; it also wanted to make them, and swiftly nurtured its own version of Hollywood… and before Hollywood really existed, too.
Three major studios made up Croydon's pioneering scene: the Clarendon Film Company (established in 1904), the Rosie Film Company (1906) and Cricks and Martin (1908), although the firm was around from 1904 as Cricks & Sharp).
I won't pretend the output of these studios was on a par with a lot of today's movies (after all, filmmaking hadn't been around for five minutes), but they genuinely had their moments. Take Rescued in Mid Air, a farcically charming piece by Clarendon, in which director/trick photographer extraordinaire Percy Stow sends a lady (or, it would seem, a dragged-up man) into the ether with an explosion, has her soaring through the skies clutching an umbrella (a la Mary Poppins), then rescued from a church steeple by a crackpot inventor in a steampunk yacht.
Can you imagine how thrilling that would’ve been to watch in 1906?! I mean, it’s pretty thrilling now…
Another film which hones in on the early 20th century obsession with man-powered flight is Cricks and Martin's 1911 film The Pirates of 1920, in which a motley crew of Germans soar through the air in a rugby ball-shaped airship, plundering, pillaging, troubling the womenfolk and generally causing havoc. It all seems like doltish hijinks now, but Pirates was a harbinger of the dark things looming on the horizon; just four years later, an airfield was being hastily cobbled together at Beddington, to defend Croydon and London from — that's right — Germans in airships.
Some of these films are still really funny — and intentionally so. Take The Electric Leg, in which a one-legged man (he's called Mr Hoppit) visits 'Bound’s High- Powered Electrical Limbs' emporium in search of a prosthetic limb. Duly fitted with his new appendage, Hoppit soon realises the leg has a life of its own, and finds himself unwittingly booting the local bobby through a laundry window (the laundry is called Clarendon, a nod to the studio making the film). I wonder if this could have been the inspiration for Wallace and Gromit’s escapade The Wrong Trousers.
It’s also fascinating to see comedy used to address prescient matters of the day. Take Clarendon's self confessed 'comical absurdity' from 1913, Milling the Militants, which sees a husband forced to babysit the kids while his Suffragette wife goes out to campaign. The husband falls asleep, and falling into a reverie, dreams of being an iron-fisted Prime Minister who administers medieval punishments like the ducking stool to wayward women. "Oh dear," you might be thinking, "I don't like where this is going…". Except the joke's on the bloke; he winds up with a faceful of water for absconding from his paternal duties.
Not all of Crollywood’s films were scripted. Cricks and Martin also made documentaries, offering early behind-the-scenes insights into London's industries. A 1906 film — I think this must've been when they were still Cricks & Sharp — lifts the (biscuit tin) lid on the Peek Frean works in Bermondsey. We see ingredients being mixed, processed, packaged up and shipped out on horse and cart. You almost expect Gregg Wallace to pop up. (Urgh.)
A few years later Cricks and Martin filmed the Christmas cracker works at Clarke, Nickolls and Coombs in action. What I love about this is that, even though it's a documentary, they cannot resist weaving in a fantasy element, with a surprise ending involving an oversized cracker and an unexpected guest (watch the video at the top of this article). It was just too tempting to have all this newfangled trickery at your fingertips.
While I'm unaware of films at the time being made about the workings of, say, the Gillett & Johnston bell foundry in Croydon, some of these early films do give us an invaluable glimpse of the area in passing. Take The Man Who Never Made Good, a Rosie Film Company caper in which a Bean-esque ne'er-do-well turns a bunch of goofy tricks like tipping soup over diners' heads. What will really bring a smile to the faces of modern Croydonians, though, is an invaluable glimpse at Croydon High Street, complete with awnings advertising soda fountains, and Oxford Street-bound omnibuses rattling by. Later on, our insolent hero gets beaten up and half-drowned by some ragamuffins in a ford by Wandle Park. This is a smart, unspoiled Croydon that most of us never knew.
You can find some vintage Croydon films on YouTube (there’s a very helpful filmography of Clarendon’s Percy Stow on IMDb), but I'd also recommend keeping an eye on the David Lean Cinema's listings. Last year I went to a screening of Croydon shorts (including another comedy, The Nervous Curate, which I don't think is available online, but is pretty mirthsome, and features more footage of the town as it was) with live organ accompaniment. It's the closest you’ll get to seeing these films as they would have been seen by Croydonians well over a century ago
Croydonopolis: A Journey to the Greatest City That Never Was by Will Noble — which covers Croydon's film industry, and countless other moments in the under-appreciated town's past — is now available in paperback. It's published by Safe Haven.
