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3658 Paving the empire road:Layout 1 30/6/11 08:45 Page 16 1 Radio, race, and the Television Service Well one thing I think that will interest West Indians is what is the attitude – of the English people as a whole, – how do they take to strangers. After all West Indians are coming over here in increasing numbers, and they’d like to know what sort of person they’re going to meet, and how they’re going to be treated. (West Indian humorist and Government Public Relations officer for Jamaica, A.E.T. Henry, on the BBC radio programme We See Britain, 1 June 1949
more controversial as viewers witnessed West Indian immigrants arriving on the Empire Windrush; an event televised to only a modest portion of the population given that fewer than 130,000 licences were held in 1948. There was no way to ignore this phenomenon, however, particularly when considering newspaper coverage and cinematic newsreels.5 A major component of this televised imagery was footage shot by the British Pathé Film Company that made its way from motion picture theatres into the homes of licence holders. Unlike before the war, programmers at the BBC during
the colonial empire. He notes how, as the Colonial Development and Welfare Act passed in 1940, after decades of imperialism being ‘least challenged politically by colonial nationalism, the British establishment turned its mind towards colonial development at precisely the point when its rule began to be undermined’.1 The Crown’s need for support among its colonies is apparent in the numerous radio broadcasts, newsreels, and films featuring West Indian troops as part of the war effort. However, as the war ended, concerns continued over an increase of immigration from
discontinuity. Perhaps the most underrated of these ‘writerly’ collaborations are the four films that Losey made with the West Indian screenwriter Evan Jones in the early 1960s. The pair first worked together on The Damned (1961), when Jones (who until then had worked largely in television) was brought in at the last minute for a hurried rewrite of Barzman’s original script. Losey had discovered the writer through
England and Britain represented for generations to come. Audiences soon had a choice of musical variety programmes, and a host of dramatic teleplays and informational talks, each demonstrating the ability of television to hopefully do what BBC radio had done for nearly fifteen years: entertain and inform a variety of publics on current, global, and national events. One such event occurred on 22 June 1948, as the troop transport Empire Windrush arrived at Tilbury Docks with West Indian immigrants eagerly searching for a better life within the British Isles. The group of
Screening the Hollywood Rebels in 1950s Britain explores the relationship between classic American films about juvenile delinquency and British popular youth culture in the mid-twentieth century. The book examines the censorship, publicity and fandom surrounding such Hollywood films as The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, Rock Around the Clock and Jailhouse Rock alongside such British films as The Blue Lamp, Spare the Rod and Serious Charge. Intersecting with star studies and social and cultural history, this is the first book to re-vision the stardom surrounding three extraordinarily influential Hollywood stars: Marlon Brando, James Dean and Elvis Presley. By looking specifically at the meanings of these American stars to British fans, this analysis provides a logical and sustained narrative that explains how and why these Hollywood images fed into, and disrupted, British cultural life. Screening the Hollywood Rebels in 1950s Britain is based upon a wide range of sources including censorship records, both mainstream and trade newspapers and periodicals, archival accounts and memoirs, as well as the films themselves. The book is a timely intervention of film culture and focuses on key questions about screen violence and censorship, masculinity and transnational stardom, method acting and performance, Americanisation and popular post-war British culture. The book is essential reading for researchers, academics and students of film and social and cultural history, alongside general readers interested in the links between the media and popular youth culture in the 1950s.
man (Rudolph Walker) laughing desperately at thickskulled sallies like “Nig nogs are affected by the moon”’.37 Without doubt, the Black actors who took part in such programmes were vulnerable to anxiety that they were contributing to the problem of racism, and failing to stand up for the rights of Black people. Finishing his time on Love thy Neighbour, Rudolph Walker was quick to state that he would not again take part in a similar programme. He told the West Indian World in 1977, ‘The series was stretching me to my limits mentally. I have now moved away from that
scandal. Also featured were a Turkish character who lost all his money gambling and a Black West Indian character who was dealing in stolen property.2 The images shown and promoted primarily served to reinforce the notion of immigrant life as culturally incongruent to Britishness. There were common findings among the reports and findings discussed: 1 ethnic minorities desperately needed more diverse representations on British television; 2 Black British audiences, much like Black American audiences, were now realising that there were alternatives to the disappointing
considered thereby illegitimate presences in the city experienced public space differently to white Londoners? And, finally, how did this feed into the development of musical multicultures in the city? Answering these questions involves a brief examination of migration from the Caribbean, which peaked in the years between 1948 and 1962 (although it did continue thereafter), and the patterns of settlement that took West Indian migrants into particular parts of the inner city. Here, in areas like Notting Hill, Hackney and Brixton, we see the emergence of what Hall et al
’s attempts to overcome the language/ cultural barrier. As Barbara is thanked for her efforts with a bowl of samosas, the audience is rewarded with opportunities for empathy. If the Monique Hyde story is read as a cataloguing of the experiences of the Windrush generation for contemporary audiences, the story of Abigail and Terence Bissette in episode two of the third series can be seen as an attempt to counter the myth that immigration had ‘jeopardized what little stability had hitherto existed within West Indian family life’, and the perception of irresponsible West Indian