Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article

Cork Independent, 10 February 2011

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 247)

Pictures at the Savoy

The summer of 1932 was a very eventful one for Cork. Apart from the Fair on the Carrigrohane Straight Road, Corkonians were also to witness the opening of the Savoy cinema on St. Patrick’s Street. That brought with it a sense of a modern dynamic like the fair that also captured the public imagination.

The cinema was another very popular form of entertainment in the 1920s. Indeed, it is difficult to disconnect the work of building a new Irish Free State and not perhaps comment on the influence of globalised entertainment venues like the cinema. For example, the Pavillion Cinema on St. Patrick Street opened in 1924 and popular silent movies shown there included Charlie Chaplain, Buster Keaton and Laurel and Hardy. In 1928 the first ‘talkies’ (films with speech) were made. In the post Wall Street collapse era of the early 1930s, the uncertainty of the time resulted in widespread popularity of fantastical and escapist cinema fare.

Newspaper coverage in the Cork Examiner on the 13 May 1932 has two pages full of insightful facts and figures about the Savoy cinema. The contractors of Cork’s Savoy cinema were the well-known firm of Meagher and Hayes, who were also responsible for the building of the Dublin Savoy cinema, which inspired the venture in Cork. The Cork building was completed in seven months from the time the foundations were laid. The labourers, skilled and unskilled, numbering about three hundred were all local hands with the exception of the workers of a few contractors. A total of 15,000 concrete blocks and close on 600 tons of steel work were used in the completion of the project.

The front of the cinema was executed in Hathern Faience of various colours. Its light-reflecting surface made flood lighting especially effective. It was manufactured and fixed by the Hathern Station Brick and Terra Cotta Co. Ltd or Loughborough, England, whose materials were extensively used for cinemas, hotels, business premises, shops, churches, etc. The cement used during the building of the premises was supplied by Norman McNaughton and Sons, Union Quay, Cork, and W.J. Hickey, Maylor Street, Cork and Charles Tennant and Co. Ltd., Cork and Dublin. The paints and distemper used were manufactured by Harringtons and Goodlass Wall, Ltd., Shandon Paint Works, Cork. Their paint was also used for the fair buildings in the Straight Road.

The Savoy comprised modern cinema architecture of its day from ventilation systems to phone systems to the projection room. The lighting was run off the cinema’s own plant, built by J.D. Carey and Sons, electrical contractors, 58, South Mall. The decorative scheme was designed and carried out by a London firm which had a worldwide reputation for furnishing and decoration on the “atmospheric style”. The aim was to create as the Cork Examiner suggests the “realms of romance, colour and sunshine of Northern Italy”. In the auditorium, the tableaux and scenic work were painted by well-known artist, Mr. Oswell Jones. Quaint archways, trees, fountains to images of magnificent scenes of the Grand Canal at Venice were painted on the walls.

Processioned seating assured that the occupier of every seat had an unobstructed view of the ‘picture’, projected on to the 40 feet long by 30 feet high screen. The well-known Cork firm, the Munster Arcade, completed the 2,500 luxuriously upholstered seats in moquette and as the journalist notes: “the colours being a perfect blending of grey, rose and blue”. The carpeting was done by this firm and the entire floor space was covered with Walton carpets in soft shades of rose. The Munster Arcade supplied the stage curtains (and their borders were of heavy satin in shades of gold and tango) as well as other curtains in other spaces in the cinema. The same firm also did the order for the uniforms and caps for the male attendants.

The opening ceremony was officially performed by the Lord Mayor, Cllr. Frank J. Daly. He spoke about Cork people having confidence in themselves and in their country. The resident manager was introduced, Mr. J. McGrath, a native of Roscommon. The General Manager was Mr. F.C. Knott, who was long established in Dublin as an entertainment provider. Mr. Hugh Margey was Catering Manager. Miss Kathleen O’Brien was the Restaurant Manager. For the operation of the Crompton organ in the auditorium, Mr Frederick Bridgeman was engaged. He had a nationwide reputation and was the Savoy’s top live entertainer for nearly thirty years. The attendants were recruited locally and employment was given to about seventy people. The Studios of Rank, United Artists, 20^th Century Fox and Columbia supplied new films to the Savoy and the programme changed twice a week on Sundays and Wednesdays.

In 1953, the Cork Film International Festival, originally called ‘An Tostal’, began. For one week each year, the Savoy was home to the festival. By 1970, the character of the Savoy was starting to fade. The departure of Fred Bridgeman signalled the end of the era of the cinema organ and the grand sing-a-long shows. In July 1973, the Savoy cinema closed. Today, part of the Savoy is a shopping unit complex with the old cinema site a night club.

To be continued….

 Captions:

 577a. Advertisement from Dowdens celebrating the Savoy’s opening (source: Cork City Library)

 577b. Façade of Savoy on St. Patrick’s Street, February 2011 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article 

Cork Independent, 3 February 2011

In the Footsteps of St. Finbarre (Part 246)

Building a National Identity

The Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair 1932 aimed to build on aspects of Ireland’s national identity through staging a spectacle to draw the viewer in and empower people to buy and support all levels of what it meant to be Irish in the Free State. Apart from Irish products, the Fair’s specially built art gallery showed oil-paintings, water-colours and black and white drawings, all by Irish artists sent in by the Cork School of Art and the Cork Technical School.

Listening to the music from the band stand, one could hear music that encompassed the idea of nation building. The No.1 Army Band played there a number of occasions in the first fortnight of the exhibition in May 1932. Their repertoire on the 17 May 1932, for example, included the following: March from Tannhauser and other pieces by Wagner, the overture from Orpheus by Offenbach, Hungarian Rhapsody by Reindel, a selection of music from Die Fiedemaus by Strauss, Pas des Fleurs by Delibes, Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck, the tango from Expressions by Brasse, overture from Masanillo by Auber, Reminiscences of Offenbach by Conrad and a selection of music from Faust by Gonnod. Historian Benjamin Curtis in a book on nationalist composers and nation building argues that music can create nations. From the role of folk sources in nationalist music, to the inspirations of landscape, language, and myth, to composers’ aspirations for their music, the idea of homeland can be stirred in the listener’s mind.

Apart from the band stand, the Fair’s ‘Concert Hall’ could accommodate 1,500 people and hosted many concerts for Irish born singers. In mid May, Mr. W.F. Watts, a Waterford tenor, gave a recital with the first performance of the ‘Exhibition Orchestra’. It was a specially formed orchestra and included many popular Cork musicians led by Miss D.E. Foley. It was conducted by Jonathan Thomas Horne who by 1932 had amassed huge career experience in playing organs and creating choirs in places such as Passage, Shandon, Dundalk and Kilkenny. Originally a Cork native, he was organist in St. Fin Barre’s Cathedral for 55 years (1922-1977).

Fashion parades were also held in the Concert Hall, which were organised by Messrs. Dowden & Co. of Cork. The press argues that at least 2,000 people attended one such event on the 9 June 1932, which showcased Irish clothing manufactures and styles of the day. The Greenmount Industrial School Band entertained the viewers during the fashion shows.

The organising committee of the fair also drew on other types of amusements that were common place across the world in similar fairs. Senses of carnival spirit, escape, magic, fantasy, otherworldliness, illusion, drama, absurdity, the dangerous, a world of role playing and the idea of the world as a lesson were represented. In a distinctly separate section to the display halls, the amusement section included a Cairo street with fifteen makeshift shops and in them Egyptians demonstrated their crafts. Walking along further one came to the ‘Waxworks’ building and the ‘Palais de Danse’ (a type of dance studio). Near the ‘Waxworks’ was a ‘Monkey House’ with over 150 monkeys populating the building.

There was a large, square building described as having a “rather freakish appearance”. The visitors looked in through cavern-like apertures in the sides and saw what resembled a water tank, only that this one was elongated to form a veritable maze. The tank held about two feet of water. One got into a boat, electrically driven from overhead wires and went sailing round and round the tank. The length of the waterway was half a mile.

Close by there was a hall for distorting mirrors and another for a big-scale version of the wheel-of-fortune. Below these was a large marquee known as the ‘Bavarian Restaurant’ and within which were to be concerts given by Swizz yodlers. There was an ‘Indian Temple‘ and an ‘African Village’ where fifty Africans worked at their expert trades plus gave the public an idea of their way of life. The latter group presented their work in some of Cork’s disused trams that had been taken off their rails in December of 1931. There was also a series of Tunisian stalls attended by natives. Tunisia, at that time, was under French protectorate but had a semi-independent monarchy. In the 1930s a campaign for independence from French rule began.

At the other end of the fair grounds was the ‘Ghost Train’, at the end of which the participant got their photograph taken. Next door was the ‘Wall of Death’, a large cylindrical and steel structure inside which a rider on a motor cycle rode around a vertical wall fifteen feet high. In a press interview with the manager of the Death Drivers Mr. E.T. Mysal, he noted that ‘Speedy’ Jack Sales and ‘Cyclone’ Morley were riding for nearly five years and had by 1932 visited eleven countries. They also held a ‘Wall of Death dance’ in the Arcadia or on the Lower Road, Cork, the proceeds of which went to a local charity. The Arcadia or ‘Arc’ opened its doors first in 1924 as an ice-skating rink but by the 1930s had transformed into a popular dance hall.

To be continued…

 Captions:

576a. Postcard Sketch of View of Irish Industrial and Agricultural Fair, 1932, Carrigrohane Straight Road, Cork (source: Cork Museum, my thanks to Stella Cherry and Dan Breen)

576b. Photograph still of the Fair’s ‘Concert Hall’ from British Pathe (source: www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=3001)