Here are significant or revealing (or in a few cases just quirky) events in Greenwood’s life and work in the form of a timeline. The information included mainly bears on his literary and political biography, though perhaps some of the ‘quirky’ inclusions contribute more to a relatively holistic account of his life. Though not its only function, the timeline shows just how much and how consistently Walter Greenwood was in the public eye for forty years, from 1933 onto the early 1970s. As one would expect with this format, information is often given as relatively ‘raw’ facts, but I have increasingly put commentary in where an explanation seems helpful, or where themes or connections across Greenwood’s life and career seem worth pointing out. I have also added links to other articles which expand coverage of relevant material more discursively (though it may be best to ignore these if they distract from the onward unrolling of the time-line). I will continue to add further detail as I discover more about Walter’s activities throughout his life.
Sources are briefly indicated within the entries or in brackets at the end of each. Chapter Three, ‘Walter Greenwood: Life and Writings’ in my book Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole – Novel, Play, Film (Liverpool University Press, 2018) is the fullest published hard-copy account of his life. The concise biography on this site is the fullest published online, and adds considerable further material and insights discovered in my research since the book publication in 2018. Not all the ‘raw facts’ / ‘points in time’ in the timeline are incorporated into the online narrative biography (indeed the timeline includes a great deal of new material discovered since 2018, much of which needs further interpretation and analysis), so it may be worth consulting both. See Walter Greenwood: a Biography
Walter Greenwood (1903-1974): Biographical Time-line
17 December 1903. Walter Greenwood (hereafter WG) born at No. 56 Ellor Street, off Hankinson Street, in the ‘Parish and Ward of St. Thomas, Pendleton’, Salford (memoir, There was a Time). His mother was Elizabeth Matilda, neé Walter, and his father was Tom Greenwood.
1913. WG’s father dies, probably from T.B., aged forty-three (though Kunitz and Haycraft say his father died of alcoholism in WG’s entry in Twentieth Century Authors – a Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, the H.W. Wilson Company, New York, 1942, p. 573, probably using autobiographical information supplied by WG himself – see 1941 entry below); There was a Time).
1916. WG leaves school (Langworthy Road Council School) aged thirteen, having completed his Board of Education ‘Labour Examination’, which allowed boys with a deceased father to leave school a year early in order to work to support their family (There was a Time).
1916 – 1928. Employment in a variety of jobs – pawnbrokers’ clerk, clerk at the Co-operative Society in Manchester, stable-boy, boy at a racing stables, clerk (including at Ford Motor Works, Trafford Park), crate assembler, wholesale packer at a drapery firm, clerk/typist (There was a Time and brief biography on rear inside flap of dust-wrapper of first edition of the novel of Love on the Dole). See for some additional occupations at this period entry about WG’s biography under 1941.
9-12 May 1926. The General Strike. Love on the Dole is set between the years 1924 and 1931, and yet very oddly makes no reference to these surely crucial days in British working-class history.
1928-1933. Unemployed and on dole (until dole stopped after application of the Means Test). Writes first short stories and attempts first novel(s). The first story he wrote was called ‘Jack Cranford’s Wife’ and was later published under the title ‘The Cleft Stick’ in his and Arthur Wragg’s book, The Cleft Stick (1937). (There was a Time).
Between 1928 and 1931 WG has two attacks of double pneumonia while out of work (rear inner flap of dust-jacket of the first edition of the novel of Love on the Dole, 1933, and an article about WG in The Vegetarian Messenger, July 1935, p. 222 – see Walter Greenwood: Vegetarian Messenger (1934-1935) *).
1931. First published story (‘The Maker of Books’) accepted by StoryTeller magazine, which appeared monthly and was then edited by Clarence Winchester (sadly I have not yet discovered in which month’s issue WG’s story was published). (There was a Time).
1931? Sends some of his short stories in manuscript to the novelist Ethel Mannin and receives advice (presumably by letter) to turn his collection of short stories into a novel in order to make a living as a writer (see the Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser, 5 March 1935, p. 6 – the only paper where I have found any detail of this exchange). This re-cast work became Love on the Dole. (‘Author’s Preface’ to The Cleft Stick, 1937). The original short stories (plus two new stories) are published in The Cleft Stick in 1937, and largely treated by reviewers as a sequel – though in some respects it might also be seen as the original version of Love on the Dole.
1 October, 1931. Battle of Bexley Square, Salford (demonstration against the Means Test by unemployed men and women: narrated with differences in both Love on the Dole and There Was a Time). WG was certainly present (There was a Time).
December 1932. Love on the Dole praised but politely rejected by publisher George Putnam because they have already accepted Hans Fallada’s German unemployment novel, Little Man What Now? (Kleine Mann, was Nunn? originally published in 1932, translated by Eric Sutton, 1933), which they thought was quite similar to Greenwood’s novel (There was a Time). See The Novel Putnam Published Instead of Love on the Dole: Hans Fallada’s Little Man, What Now? (1933)
January 1933. Jonathan Cape accepts Love on the Dole for publication (There was a Time).
27 April 1933. WG’s first ever press interview under the unflattering headline ‘Turned Idle Days to Money’ (Manchester Evening News, p.1). See: Walter Greenwood’s First Press Interview: ‘Turned Idle Days to Money’ (Manchester Evening News, 1933) * .
15 June 1933. The Daily Dispatch reports that the novelists Naomi Mitchison and Graham Greene have each sent letters to WG in praise of Love on the Dole.
September 1933. Novel of Love on the Dole published by Jonathan Cape (according to the Sheffield Independent in an article on WG’s career so far, 9 April 1935, p.4). See To Begin at the Beginning: Love on the Dole, the Novel, by Walter Greenwood (1933)
25 September 1933. The Daily Despatch and Evening News reports that the well-known Salford social worker and expert on maternity and birth control, Charis Frankenburg, has criticised Love on the Dole as giving an inaccurate representation of Salford, of its women, and of its midwives. There is a subsequent correspondence between WG and Frankenburg arguing their cases in regard to the depiction of Salford in The Cleft Stick – see below under 25 September, 1937 (for an introduction to Charis Frankenburg, often known as Mrs Sydney Frankenburg, 1892-1985, see her Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charis_Frankenburg).
November 1933. WG stands for election in the Municipal Council elections in the Seedley ward of Salford. He is not elected though the contest is quite close (the Liberal candidate won with 1, 400 votes to Greenwood’s 1, 000). (Election manifestos; recorded election results).
12 November 1933. Novelist, playwright and journalist Beverley Nichols states that Love on the Dole is the novel he has liked best since the war and that if all MPs had to read it it would change the way they viewed unemployment and poverty (the Sunday Times, 12 November 1933, p.iii).
- Love on the Dole published in the US (New York: Doubleday, Doran).
February 1934. Play of Love on the Dole (co written with Ronald Gow) produced at Manchester Repertory Theatre. See Fame: Love on the Dole (the Play, 1934, co-written with Ronald Gow).
April 1934. Article about Greenwood as a vegetarian novelist and playwright published in the Vegetarian Messenger (April Issue, p. 261). See also July 1935 below.
1 November 1934. WG was now elected as a Labour Councillor in the St Matthias ward of Salford (winning it for Labour by 750 votes). (Election manifestos; recorded election results). The Daily Express reports significant ‘Socialist’ gains in the by-elections, including a gain of six council seats in Salford. It draws attention to the fact that ‘one of the new councillors is Mr W. Greenwood, author of a recent best-seller, Love on the Dole‘ (2 November, p.1). He serves as a councillor until the summer of 1937, according to a brief article in the Daily Herald (23 August 1937, p.8).
His Worship the Mayor or ‘It’s Only Human Nature After All’ is published (London: Jonathan Cape). This draws on his recent experience of local politics. We know from a recently discovered letter that the reader was the important and influential publisher’s reviewer Edward Garnett – see Walter Greenwood Enjoys his Early Successes: a Letter (6 March 1934)
1935. US edition of his Worship the Mayor published under the title The Time is Ripe (New York: Doubleday, Doran).
1935. Greenwood contributed his short story ‘The Practised Hand’ to The Hospital Centenary Gift Book, published by George G. Harrap & Company and edited by Dr Robert Ollerenshaw, which raised money for a new convalescent block for the Manchester Children’s Hospital. See Walter Greenwood’s Two Manchester Hospital Stories (1935 and 1945)
January 1935. Play of Love on the Dole (co written with Ronald Gow) produced at the Garrick Theatre, London. It is an immediate and longer-term success, producing significant income for both authors. See Fame: Love on the Dole (the Play, 1934, co-written with Ronald Gow) and https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/love-on-the-dole-the-actors-1934-1937/ and https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/walter-greenwoods-finances-and-love-on-the-dole/
Invited as a delegate to the International Writers’ Congress in Paris (first trip abroad?). The British delegation also included E.M. Forster, Aldous Huxley, John Strachey, Christina Stead, Ralph Fox, Winifred Holtby, Storm Jameson, Naomi Mitchison and James Hanley (Andy Croft, Red Letter Days: British Fiction in the 1930s, Lawrence & Wishart, 1990, p. 51).
31 January 1935. The novelist Ethel Mannin goes to see the opening night of Love on the Dole at the Garrick Theatre and is photographed with WG (the Daily Mirror, p.11).
February 1935. WG is a guest on the BBC Radio programme ‘In Town Tonight.’ Salford City Reporter (15/2/1935) reports that ‘He spoke briefly but interestingly of his early days of struggle . . . then [of] the writing of Love on the Dole in all sorts of odd corners, upon scraps of paper, including wall-paper’ (clipping in WG’s Press-cuttings Book: WGC 3/34/1).
14 February 1935. The Stage reports that on Wednesday 7 February, thieves hid in the Garrick theatre after the end of the performance. They failed to break open the theatre safes (where the takings from Love on the Dole for that day were presumably kept), but stole a number of personal items belonging to theatre staff and actors, as well as ransacking the bars allegedly in search of cigarettes. Personal items stolen included ‘an antique silver cigarette case, a wedding present from the late Edgar Wallace to Catherine Nesbit [playing Mrs Hardcastle] [and] a rare edition of a book, the property of Walter Greenwood’ (p.8). We know that WG collected editions of George Bernard Shaw’s works once Love on the Dole began to bring in money, so perhaps this book was one of those? See George Bernard Shaw, Wendy Hiller, and Walter Greenwood * . The only other paper to report the theft was The Times, which sadly showed no interest in the rare book theft: it reported that the thieves had failed to break open any of the theatre’s three safes and had escaped ‘only with a quantity of small items, such as an alarm clock, and refreshments’ – perhaps suggesting alcohol – or chocolate? – rather than cigarettes were taken? (8 February 1935, p.11). I have no report of the thieves being identified and arrested nor anything about any recovery of the missing objects.
15 February. Salford City Reporter records that WG has been a guest on the BBC radio programme ‘In Town Tonight’ where he spoke a little ‘of his early days of struggle’ and ‘the writing of Love on the Dole in all sorts of odd corners, upon scraps of paper, including wall-paper’ (in ‘Of Salford Men and Matters’, signed by ‘Ignotus‘ [i.e. ‘Unknown’].
2 March 1935. Manchester Guardian reports that Gracie Fields has expressed a wish to play the part of Sally Hardcastle if there is to be a film of Love on the Dole. See Walter Greenwood and Gracie Fields
4 March 1935. Sir Herbert Samuel during a debate on unemployment advises MPs to go and see the play of Love on the Dole, which ‘paints in very poignant fashion the position of those 400,000 families who are in the state which I have just described’ (Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, House of Commons, 5th Series, Vol 298, Col 1665).
23 March 1935. A farmer protesting in East Lothian against the Milk Marketing Board referred to Love on the Dole. The Board confiscated eight cows, because the farmer had not paid the required levy, and tried to auction them, but no local farmers would buy them. This protest is unusual in linking the clearly urban play to rural conditions. Each cow was supplied to the auction sale with a satirical political (or even surreal?) stud aimed at the National Government thus:
- Misrepresentation by Statement out of Promoter.
- Legalised by Parliament out of Error
- Bothwell Street by Star Chamber out of Justice
- Ruin by Trial out of Errors
- Nat. Government by Strange out of True
- Levy by Tariff out of Imports
- Love on the Dole by Worker out of Rates
- Nation by Wake Up out of Dreaming (Aberdeen Press and Journal, p.7).
Did the Milk Marketing Board officials not notice the drift of these alleged stud records? After the unsuccessful auction the cows apparently disappeared to no-one knew where.
March-July 1935. Five supportive letters to WG about Love on the Dole from Edith Sitwell (now held in the Walter Greenwood Collection at the University of Salford, catalogued in file WGC 2/1/1-8). Includes a letter saying that she thinks the play version works well, but that the novel has ‘greater intensity’ (WGC 2/1/4, p.1).
24 March 1935. Edith Sitwell publishes a supportive article about the novel Love on the Dole and WG’s new novel, His Worship the Mayor in the Sunday Referee (p.12).
30 May 1935. WG was not a frequent book-reviewer, but clearly accepted a commission from the Daily Herald to review three ‘monster novels’ (each 500 pages plus). He liked one (p.15).
April to June 1935. The Sheffield Independent newspaper uniquely serialises the novel of Love on the Dole in full (the text is the same as in the published novel, but a considerable number of sub-titles are added to existing chapter titles so that the presentation and rhythm of the narrative is somewhat different). See: Love on the Dole in Sheffield: a Unique Story
April to June 1935. The Newcastle Sunday Sun does something similar to the Sheffield Independent but serialises the play-script of Love on the Dole, rather than the novel. The paper supplies quite substantial introductory material, as well as sub-headings not in the original text for all the scenes, so that as with the novel serialisation there is some difference in content and rhythm compared to the two (somewhat different) published play texts by Samuel French and Jonathan Cape. See Love on the Dole in Newcastle – Another Unique Story, or, Anyway, Play-script (April 1935)
19 April 1935. Letter from Edith Sitwell refers to the fact that WG has promised to send tickets for the play of Love on the Dole [at the Garrick, London] to Edith, Osbert, and Sacheverill Sitwell and also to Siegfried Sassoon. In a subsequent letter Edith tells WG that she will go to see the play on Monday 22 July, but that her brothers cannot go on that date. On 23 July she writes again saying that the actors do very well and that the play is very moving, though she thinks the novel has more intensity (Walter Greenwood Collection, Salford University Archives, WGP 2/1/2, WGP 2/1/3 and WGP 2/1/4). This correspondence must surely have reinforced WG’s sense that he had made it as an author.
May 1935. WG is one of thirty-eight artists and writers who put their names to a ‘Protest against the [Royal] Jubilee’ in Left Review (Vol.1, no.8, p.191). Given ‘growing unemployment’ and ‘poor law relief’, ‘we consider that rejoicing is out of place, and we protest against the arranged celebrations’. In a more popular vein, the Daily Express had already made a related point with specific reference to the play of Love on the Dole: ‘Try Love on the Dole if you want to feel sad about jubilating England’ (22 April 1935, p.6).
June 1935. Lady Isobel Cripps invited WG to their country house, ‘Goodfellows’ in the Oxfordshire village of Filkins, to meet her husband Sir Stafford Cripps, together with Canon Dick Shepherd and Arthur Wragg. There Sir Stafford Cripps suggests that WG and Wragg should collaborate on a book (undated letter from Wragg to Shepherd, V&A Art & Design Archive, ‘Arthur Wragg’s Correspondence’ (AAD/2004/8) and a subsequent undated letter from Wragg to Shepherd in the same box; there is a reply from WG making it clear that the two have not yet started work on the project by the start of July 1935: letter from Greenwood to Wragg dated 2/7/1935 misfiled in the V&A Archive of Art and Design box AAD/2002/11, titled ‘Correspondence Copies 1940-1945 Beltane School’.
July 1935. An interview with Greenwood about his work and his commitment to vegetarianism published in the Vegetarian Messenger (July 1935, p.222). See: Walter Greenwood: Vegetarian Messenger (1934-1935)
2 July 1935. Letter from WG to Arthur Wragg making clear that Wragg would like to start work on The Cleft Stick collaboration. WG is willing but says he is preoccupied by film work (on No Limit with George Formby – see below 28 October 1935). (Arthur Wragg Uncatalogued Papers, V&A Archives, AAD/2002/11).
21/22 July 1935. WG seen lunching with George Bernard Shaw (Weekly Dispatch, London, p.3; Manchester Evening News, p.6).
August 1935. WG is named in Left Review (Vol.1, no 11, p.463) as a signatory to the aims of the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture, which include opposing war and Fascism. The Association was particularly active during the Spanish Civil War, but this predates that and so shows Greenwood and other writers’ concerns about Italian and German Fascism at this earlier date.
19 August 1935. Film released: Where’s George? (later retitled The Hope of His Side), (British and Dominions, directed by Jack Raymond, written by Walter Greenwood, Bert Lee, Jack Marks and R.P. Weston. See: http://tony-collins.squarespace.com/rugbyreloaded/2013/6/8/wheres-george-rugby-leagues-forgotten-feature-film
27 August 1935. Edinburgh Evening News announces that WG will give one in a BBC wireless series of ‘talks [to the] unemployed’ to begin in September (p.11).
29 August 1935. WG is appointed as a judge for an Isle of Man literary competition open to visitors to Man. The task was a 500 word essay on ‘What Impressed Me Most about the Isle of Man’ (Edinburgh Evening News, 29 August, p.3). Perhaps WG was in Douglas for the filming of No Limit ? See below 28 October 1935. The Cotton Factory Times reported that one of its regular contributors, George Eglin, was awarded the second prize of £5, and that his essay was praised for ‘fine descriptive writing’. The same paper also reported with satisfaction that thirteen other residents of Lancashire were also listed for ‘supplementary and consolation’ prizes in the competition (6 September 1935, p. 2). The Cotton Factory Times was an extraordinary paper aimed specifically at Lancashire mill-workers, and there was considerable input into it from textile trade unions. It promoted publication of items from the shop-floor. Nevertheless, its circulation declined in the thirties and it closed in 1937. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Factory_Times.
24 October 1935. WG and Ronald Gow attend ‘stage supper’ and dancing for the cast of Love on the Dole at the Winter Garden Theatre to celebrate its 300th performance (the Stage, p. 8). Lancashire Hotpot is (naturally) the main course.
28 October 1935. Film released: No Limit (Associated Talking Pictures, directed by Monty Bates, written by Tom Geraghty, Fred Thompson and Walter Greenwood). Starred George Formby in his first full feature film, about a motorcyclist whose home-made bike triumphs in the Isle of Mann TT races (and he gets the girl too). This was a great commercial success nationwide (Formby had made two previous films, but they had revue-like structures, bound together by minimal plots with limited narrative continuity, though they were reported to be much liked by Northern audiences). See: Walter Greenwood and George Formby and Doleful Humour: Laughing Off Unemployment Between the Wars? *
September to October 1935. Extended debate in letters column of the Aberdeen Press and Journal about the theological underpinning (or absence thereof) of the play of Love on the Dole. This is one instance of considerable interest and public debate about the significance of the play by clergy of a number of denominations. See Love on the Dole and the Clergy
November 1935 to February 1936. Criminal charges bought against what appears to be a case of theatrical fraud involving investment in a non-existent production of Love on the Dole. A key witness does not appear at the trial and the case is dismissed. Neither WG nor Ronald Gow were involved in the proceedings. However, WG later described another case of successful theatrical fraud actually engineered in 1935 during the interval of a performance of Love on the Dole at the Garrick. For both cases see Love on the Dole and a Case of Theatrical Fraud – Or Was It?: Feltham Police Court and the Central Criminal Court (November 1935 – February 1936). * ‘
November 1935. Alice Myles, WG’s long-standing fiancée, brings a breach of promise case against him. He admits a degree of liability and agrees to a settlement (Salford Reporter, 27 and 29 November 1935, in Walter Greenwood Collection WGC 3/34/3 and WGC 3/34/4). The Daily Express (uniquely) records both that Alice was a significant influence on Love on the Dole and that she too, like WG, was a local Labour Party activist (27 November, p. 2). In the same article, the paper also reported Alice’s own statement that she did not wish to bring the breach of promise action against WG, but that her male cousin insisted on pursuing it because he felt that she had been wronged and must have redress (p.1).
22 November 1935. WG publishes article in The Spectator titled ‘Poverty and Freedom’. It includes some revealing comment about his self-education while unemployed: ‘There was . . . the consolation of the public library and of the evening study classes provided by political organisations. Here one could seek historical explanation of one’s predicament’ (p.860).
29 November 1935. WG published a (pretty disillusioned, or bruised?) article in the Daily Express about contemporary attitudes to love and marriage. The paper is presumably cashing in on WG’s current breach of promise case (though it was of course the author’s own – unwise?- decision to accept the commission at this point) (p. 14). Just before his marriage to Pearl Alice Osgood two years later WG published a more up-beat interview about contemporary love and marriage. The interviewer Constance Forbes added the odd sharp comment to this including that ‘Walter Greenwood is thirty-three with all his illusions intact. And he comes from hard-headed Lancashire’ (‘Author of Love on the Dole Plans to be a Model Husband’, Daily Express, 23 September 1937, p. 3).
22 November 1935. WG published an article in the Spectator titled ‘Poverty and Freedom’ (Walter Greenwood Collection WGC 3/35/1).
28 November 1935. WG publishes a sharply critical half-page article about all forms of fortune-telling, headlined ‘Old Hags who Suck the Blood of the Poor’ (Daily Mirror, p.12). It clearly draws on the séance / fortune-telling by Mrs Jike in the novel and play of Love on the Dole, but here the topic is treated without any hint of humour or satire or sympathy for it as a form of free or cheap entertainment. Greenwood says that all classes are prone to the self-delusion that the future can be predicted, but sees it as a practice most harmful to poor and working people. He worries particularly about mill-girls: ‘young women who can spare a shilling out of their hard-earned coppers as a fee for a glimpse of the future when their inescapable future is so painfully apparent in the lives of an older generation about them’. The piece is accompanied by an unsigned and stereotypical illustration of a fortune-teller who uses playing-cards.
4 December 1935. WG is guest at the Pendleton Jorrocks Club Christmas dinner at a stables in Pendleton. WG was President of the Pendleton Jorrocks Club, which encouraged people to learn to ride – WG had worked as a stable boy during the nineteen-twenties and learnt to ride. Horses as well as riders attended (Lancashire Evening News, 5 December 1935, p.7). I have so far not been able to find out when the Jorrocks Club was founded, but it was of course named after the character invented by the sporting writer R.S. Surtees (1805-1864) – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._S._Surtees. It seems to have been a national society to which local riding clubs could seek affiliation; the earliest mentions I can find in newspapers date to the 1890s. This news item is one of only two clues that WG maintained an interest in horses into the years of success after the publication of the novel and play of Love on the Dole.
December? 1935. In a BBC ‘synopsis of great events of the year’, Love on the Dole is pronounced the ‘outstanding play’ of the year (recalled in the Norwood News, 9 October 1936, p.9, when a production of the play came to the Wimbledon Theatre).
1936. Standing Room Only or ‘A Laugh in Every Line’ published (London: Jonathan Cape). Novel about a working-class author who has a play accepted for production but then largely loses control of its finances and indeed the performance play-text.
1936. WG begins to work for some of the year in Polperro, Cornwall, which hosted an artists’ colony. This stems from his friendship and collaboration with the artist Arthur Wragg, who already worked there for a number of months every year. Continues this pattern until his (theoretical rather than actual) retirement in 1965, when he moves to the Isle of Man. See Walter Greenwood Among the Artists: Polperro (1936 to 1965).
18 January 1936. The Sunderland Daily Echo and Shipping Gazette reported under the headline ‘VISIT TO THEATRE; that:
About 80 members of the Sunderland branch of the Old Contemptibles’ Association and their wives attended the second house performance of Love on the Dole, at the [Sunderland] Empire Theatre last night. The visit was arranged by Mr E. Gay and Mr E. Hollands, manager of the theatre. The Old Contemptibles assembled In Bedford Street and marched to the theatre (p. 4).
The ‘Old Contemptibles Association’ was founded in 1925 to bring together old soldiers who had been sent as the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France on 15 August 1915. They were members of the Regular Army before the declaration of war and suffered heavy casualties in the opening year of the war, while helping prevent a swift German victory in 1914. The ‘Old Contemptibles’ nickname came from a probably mythical order by the Kaiser in August 1914 that Britain’s ‘contemptible little army’ be exterminated. These men two decades later do not necessarily seem an obvious audience for Love on the Dole, though they might have seen the story as exemplifying how the homes for heroes promise had not been realised. Anyway, this report again suggests the variety of audiences the play did seem to attract. I note that the visit was organised by the theatre manager, so it might have had publicity purposes too (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Expeditionary_Force_(World_War_I)).
30 January 1936. The Nottingham Evening Post in its radio listings (p.6) includes a broadcast of Greenwood and Gow’s play Love on the Dole in Sweden on Stockholm Radio (426.1 metres, 704 kc) from 6.30 to 8 pm. Was this in translation or in English?
2 February 1936. First US production of play of Love on the Dole (Shubert Theatre, Broadway, New York). WG travelled to the US to be present at rehearsals. Met Pearl Alice Osgood at a theatrical party. Production on till June 1936.
February to March 1936. British papers report that Love on the Dole is a success on Broadway (though most emphasise it as Wendy Hiller’s success in the role of Sally Hardcastle – for example the Halifax Evening Courier, 25 February 1936, p.7 and the Bystander, 11 March 1936, p.3).
10 March 1936. The New York Sun publishes a brief report under the title ‘Young Peer Gets Ideas on Liner’ that during a transatlantic crossing on the Cunard ship the Aquitania, the aristocrat Lord Burgh has had some conversation with WG in which Burgh outlines his project for granting unemployed ex-miners land on the Isle of Wight which they can farm to make their living (WG’s reaction is not recorded!). The ‘young peer’ referred to must be the 6th Lord Burgh (1906-1959), who was therefore 30 at the date of the encounter (the National Portrait Gallery, London has a number of photographic portraits of him: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw121568/Alexander-Leigh-Henry-Leith-6th-Baron-Burgh?LinkID=mp82934&rNo=1).
WG was presumably on his way to contribute to the Broadway production of the play of Love on the Dole (clipping on p.57 of WG’s ‘Clippings’ Book’, Vol.1, in the Walter Greenwood Collection at Salford University Archives).
15 March 1936. BBFC (British Board of Film Censors Scenario Notes) judges that a film version of Love on the Dole will not be acceptable in British cinemas, on the grounds of its representation of political, sexual and moral matters. The film company British Gaumont Picture Corporation submitted not just a scenario, but the Cape edition of the play, so that the censors are able to object not just to the overall topics handled but also to detail, including specific scenes and uses of language (BBFC File 1936, pp. 42 and 42a, Reuben Library, British Film Institute, London South Bank). Unusually, the submission was read by both the censors, at this time Colonel Hanna and Miss Shortt, suggesting it was seen as important, potentially problematic and likely to be controversial due to the clear success of the novel and play and a demonstrable mass audience.
March 1936. First production of the play adaptation of the novel, His Worship the Mayor: Give Us This Day, Manchester Repertory Theatre.
2 April 1936. BBC Radio Northern Region broadcasts an eight minute extract from Love on the Dole, consisting of the whole of Act II, Scene 2 (which is devoted to Larry and Sally’s ramble on the high moors outside Hanky Park, and their thoughts about their own lives and that of their peers).
2 April 1936. New York World Telegram prints brief piece ‘My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt, which includes her going to see the Broadway production of Love on the Dole.
25 April 1936. The New York Post published an article on WG’s response to what he saw of US families on unemployment relief (he was in New York for the Broadway production of Love on the Dole) under the title ‘ British Writer sees US life on the Dole -the Story of the Morands’. WG was introduced to the Morand family, and without underestimating the impact of their circumstances he was very struck by differences between British and US poverty:
Here’s a family . . . that you simply wouldn’t find on relief in Manchester. They’ve a radio, a refrigerator, a bathroom . . . the standard of destitution is higher over here’ (WG’s ‘Clippings’ Book’, Vol.1).
Of course, these differences are partly a matter of considerable cultural differences, including the date of the widespread adoption of electrical domestic appliances and some better housing in some US cities. Equally though, under Means Test rules, this family if based in Britain would have been forced to sell ‘unnecessary luxuries’ like the wireless and the fridge.
23 May 1936. The Daily Dispatch reports briefly that ‘Mr Walter Greenwood . . . has decided not accept an offer to join the board of the North British Film Corporation, Blackpool’. No further context or explanation is offered.
12 June 1936. Atlantic Film Productions resubmitted WG and Gow’s play-script in the Cape edition to the BBFC. This time it is read only by Colonel Hanna, who wrote: ‘I have read the play a second time, but cannot modify the first report in any way. I still consider it very undesirable’ (BBFC File 1936, p.87).
June 1936. Stays with Gracie Fields in her villa on Capri. See: https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/walter-greenwood-and-gracie-fields/
July 1936. One-act play, The Practised Hand (a dramatic version of what was published the next year as a short story under the same title in The Cleft Stick collection), produced in July 1936 (Hulme Hippodrome, Manchester). Some reviews were positive, others were shocked by the subject-matter. See A Unique (?) Typescript Acting Copy of Walter Greenwood’s The Practised Hand, with Rehearsal Notes, and Two Character Sketches by Arthur Wragg (1935) * .
16 July 1936. Aberdare Town Football Club published an apologises to Vernon-Lever Productions, Ronald Gow and WG for having given an unlicensed amateur performance of Love on the Dole. The authors waive their performance fees on condition the Club donates half of its profit from the play (£10) to the Actors’ Benevolent Fund (The Stage, p.8).
17 July 1936. WG published an article in the Spectator titled ‘On the Dole’ (in Walter Greenwood Collection WGC 3/35/2).
19 July 1936. WG quoted in Daily News article titled ‘Wales Fights Means Test’ (p.15): ‘impossible for the present or any Government to humanise the Means Test’. This was in response to recent reforms to Means Test rules, and was taken from an interview the previous day in the News Chronicle.
September 1936. The Era prints (without comment) a piece by Chester B. Bahn from the Syracuse Herald (USA) which criticises the Federal Theatre Project for funding in the form of drama what is in effect ‘indirect propaganda’ for Roosevelt’s overall ‘Work’s Progress Administration’, part of his ‘New Deal’. Bahn says that this propaganda for Roosevelt’s Administration is ‘markedly instanced by the production at the Civic University Theatre here last week of the English play Love on the Dole‘ (23 September 1936, p.8).
26 November 1936. The Evening Chronicle reports that if there is a film version of Love on the Dole, WG would prefer (unlikely though this might seem) to cast Barbara Stanwyck as Sally Hardcastle rather than the much suggested Gracie Fields (though she was a friend). The article records that Ronald Gow does not agree but would prefer ‘the Lancashire star’.
1936-39. Play of Love on the Dole toured nationally by two companies, reaching most cities in Britain. See: Who Went to See the Play in the Thirties? The Reception of Love on the Dole Revisited
1937. Czech translation of the novel of Love on the Dole published under the title Láska Na Podporu (publisher, Družstevní prace, Prague). See Don’t Forget to Look Behind the Dust-wrapper! a Hidden Feature in the Czech edition of Love on the Dole (1937) *
March 1937. French production of Love on the Dole, under the title Rêves Sans Provisions at the Comédie des Champs Élysees (translation by Charlotte Neveu). (Notice in the Era, 25 March 1937, p.2).
18 March 1937. The Left Book Club in an advert quotes a comment by WG on George Orwell’s The Road to Wigan Pier:
I’ve just finished reading it from cover to cover. I found parts of it revealing, parts most interesting & still other parts downright infuriating. But I read it right through, which is more than I can say of other books.
The advert also quoted three other authors’ views: Douglas Goldring, Marguerite Steen and James Hanley. Greenwood’s quotation is the most critical (Daily Express, p.8). Though WG did write a brief review of Orwell’s book, this comment is not in fact taken from it, though its content is similar (for a substantial quotation from WG’s review see towards the end of the following article: Walter Greenwood: Vegetarian Messenger (1934-1935) *).
16 – 20 March 1937. A performance of Greenwood’s play adaptation of his second novel, His Worship the Mayor (1934) given at Wakefield Opera House. It was usually produced under the title Give Us This Day, but this performance was played under the title Special Area – the official euphemism for what had originally been termed ‘Distressed Areas’ (Bradford Observer, 16 March 1937, p.5).
23 April 1937. WG best man at wedding of Alderman James Park and Joan Sharp. James Park was WG’s accountant once the writer began to make money from Love on the Dole, and the two were partners in the founding in December 1938 of their film production company Greenpark Ltd, as well as later a theatrical production company called Parkgreen Ltd. The photograph of the wedding group includes the Mayor of Salford and several other councillors and aldermen. Joan Sharp had been an actor in the Manchester Repertory Theatre and then played the principal part of Meg Teagle in Greenwood’s play Give Us This Day during 1936. I take it that Joan and James had met through Greenwood or through his play (Manchester City News, p.1). Park was later a financial partner with WG in a number of theatrical companies and productions, and became Mayor of Salford in 1941.
26 June 1937. Revês San Provisions published in the French periodical, La Petite Illustration, with a substantial commentary in an afterword by Robert Beauplan (from copy of the publication in the author’s collection). I like to translate the French title as Dreams without Means.
August 1937. The Daily Herald reports that WG is to move from his ‘cottage in Walton-on-Thames’ to ‘a studio near Westminster’. This was presumably his 59 Ebury Street S.W.1 address from where he signed his ‘Author’s Preface’ to The Cleft Stick in the same year. He and Pearl lived some of the time in this studio until it was hit in the Blitz in 1941, – see below. In the same column the paper reports that WG has announced that he will not stand for re-election to Salford City Council (‘he no longer has the time for local politics’ the paper comments, neutrally or otherwise). Presumably WG still had a base in Salford while he was a councillor between 1934 and 1937, perhaps at the house where his mother and sister lived.
11 September 1937. The Daily Mirror reports that though WG had been earning £100 a week from the play of Love on the Dole, he has now lost all his money by lending it to friends who have not repaid their debts to him. See next entry though!
12 September 1937. The Sunday Chronicle quotes a statement by WG denying that he has lost all his money and denying that friends borrowed but did not repay. The origin of the Daily Mirror story remains mysterious.
23 September, 1937. Marries Pearl Alice Osgood at Caxton Hall Registry Office in London (the artist Arthur Wragg was best man). The Sheffield Independent reports that during the honeymoon in France the two plan to attend a ‘Friends of Soviet Russia’ meeting in Paris chaired by Lord Listowel (p.1).
26 September 1937. The Weekly Dispatch (London, pp. 1 and 3) reports that Alice Myles, WG’s one-time fiancé has married Francis McNally, a Salford Corporation bus conductor. Wife and husband had tried to avoid publicity, but the Weekly Dispatch reporter tracked them down and (rather unfeelingly?) used this article to generate a story about WG and to retell the breach of promise narrative, whatever his interviewees’ feelings about the matter (see above November 1935).
25 September 1937. WG and the distinguished social worker Charis Frankenberg resume the newspaper dispute they began in 1933 in regard to Love on the Dole. Here The Cleft Stick provokes Frankenberg further to query the accuracy of WG’s picture of Hanky Park. She argues that his portrayal of Salford women is exaggeratedly negative: ‘We surely cannot pass without comment that every time Salford women are mentioned they are described on their doorsteps with unwashed faces and matted hair . . . idly watching their filthy half-naked children playing in the gutter’. WG replies that it is not the whole area he has in mind but ‘a notorious slum’ (Manchester Evening News).
2 October 1937. The Manchester Evening News has an interview with local Councillor Walter Crabtree in which he says that he plans to ask Walter Greenwood for help with his nearly completed memoir of Salford life, provisionally titled This, My Native City (p.4). Walter Crabtree also took a part in early productions of Greenwood’s play adaptation of his second novel, Give Us This Day, playing the part of Councillor Hopewell. Indeed, the Lancashire Evening News reported at the same time in a paragraph under the sub-headline ‘Literary Lights’ on the joint activity of local councillors:
Salford Council is becoming noted for its literary lights. There has been the rise of Mr, Walter Greenwood and Mr. C. P. Hampson, and now Mr. W. Crabtree, another councillor, is busy on a book about his native city. Mr. Crabtree is a man of many parts, and for a time played on tour in Greenwood’s Give Us This Day. He is a witty speaker, the Labour representative for Mandley Park Ward and is on the National Labour Party’s panel of speakers (2 October 1937, p. 4).
C. P. Hampson published articles about local history in the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society (one in 1932 about the history of glass-making in Lancashire, and another in 1935 about Kersal Cell, the remains of a monastery and/or a 16th century house built on the confiscated land – information derived from items on sale on 17 October 2024 on AbeBooks UK and https://lancashirepast.com/2018/04/15/kersal-cell-and-kersal-moor-salford/). I have found no evidence that Walter Crabtree’s memoir of Salford was finally published.
October 1937. WG contributed ‘additional dialogue’ to a comic revue, It’s in the Bag, by Cecil Landeau and George Frank Rubens, which had a trial performance at the Manchester Palace, before moving to the Saville Theatre in London. Harold Conroy in the Daily Mail claimed that this was the writer’s ‘rebellion’ against being known as a ‘writer of sordid, low-life dramas’ (‘Mr Greenwood Rebels’, 11/9/1937, p.6). A more reliable interpretation is that WG was always open to opportunities to write, a result probably of his pride in being an author and of his ever-present memories of living in poverty for most of his life up until 1933. Indeed, the Daily Express specifically reported that his involvement was motivated by a determination ‘to re-establish himself in the places where money is big’ (11 September 1937, p.15).
October 1937. WG writes two articles in the Daily Express (26 and 27 October) arguing that cinemas should be allowed to open on a Sunday (something then not permitted because of Sunday observance laws).
18 October 1937. The Lancashire Evening Post reports that a magistrate at Lytham (Lancashire) asks a defendant called Walter Greenwood ‘are you an author?’. The defendant replied, ‘no sir, I am just an ordinary bus driver’. The paper then states that a Salford man called Walter Greenwood wrote the famous play Love on the Dole. The curious story (or non-story?) is presumably published by the paper (without comment) as a kind of comic aside on the fact that WG is so famous that everyone, even magistrates, know his name (even if it does not occur to them that Walter Greenwood is not a rare name) (p.7).
1935-37. Correspondence with Edith Sitwell, who reviews his work very positively in several newspapers.
1 November 1937. WG and Pearl visit Edith Sitwell at her apartment in Paris (Letter in Walter Greenwood Collection, University of Salford Archives, WGC 2/1/5).
1937. The Cleft Stick or ‘It’s the Same the Whole World Over’, with illustrations by Arthur Wragg, published (London: Selwyn & Blount). See https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/walter-greenwood-and-arthur-wraggs-the-cleft-stick-1937/ and https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/word-and-image-in-walter-greenwood-and-arthur-waughs-the-cleft-stick-1937/
24 November 1937. The Bystander publishes a photograph of a relaxed WG in a jumper sitting in an armchair – perhaps in his Ebury Street studio? – reading a typescript. In the background is a bookcase on which is a miniature bust of Shakespeare. The photograph is signed Baron, the professional name of the well-known photographer Stirling Henry Nahum (1906-1956), who post-war increased his celebrity through royal portraits and the founding of Baron Studios (see https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp61466/baron-studios). The caption for the photograph concisely records WG’s success with the novel and play of Love on the Dole, his recent new work The Cleft Stick, and his admiration for George Bernard Shaw. It concludes with the rather nonchalant comment that ‘he also has an absent-minded interest in golf which helps him to think as he takes his seven shots per hole’ (p.283).
26 November 1937. Advertisement of WG and Arthur Wragg’s book-signing and lecture for The Cleft Stick at Whiteley’s department store, London (Daily News, p.15).
8 December 1937. WG sends a specially (hand)written short story to Wragg as a Christmas present (Arthur Wragg’s Uncatalogued Papers, V&A Archives, AAD/2002/11). This story was never published but for an account of its form and content see Walter Greenwood’s Christmas Present for Arthur Wragg (1937) * . It is an anti-war story set in Hanky Park during the First World War.
10 December 1937. Edith Sitwell publishes a letter in John O’London’s Weekly defending WG against criticisms made by the writer H.E. Bates of The Cleft Stick in the previous edition on 3 December. Sitwell says that she read the review with ‘distress’ and though she admires H.E. Bates she cannot ‘understand how any writer of distinction could fail to realize that the short story from which the book takes its title has real greatness. Others are almost equally admirable and I cannot imagine what Mr. Bates means when he says that Mr. Greenwood lack capacity to compress. The stories have a controlled fire which makes them, for this reader, most impressive’ (clipping in WG’s Press Cuttings Book, Vol. 1, WGC3/1, Walter Greenwood Collection, Salford Archives). For further discussion of Bates’ response to the short story collection and of ‘The Cleft Stick’ story itself see Word and Image in Walter Greenwood and Arthur Wragg’s The Cleft Stick (1937) *.
1938. US edition of The Cleft Stick published (New York: Frederick Stokes).
1938. Novel Only Mugs Work: a Soho Melodrama published (London: Hutchinson).
1938. Novel The Secret Kingdom published (London: Jonathan Cape).
29 January 1938. WG publishes a short story sequel to Love on the Dole in John Bull (p.22 and 24). The story focuses on Sally and is titled ‘The Prodigal’s Return’ – see: What Sally Did Next: Greenwood’s Sequel to Love on the Dole (‘Prodigal’s Return’, John Bull, January 1938).
2 February 1938. Newspapers continue to report that Gracie Fields may play Sally Hardcastle if a film of Love on the Dole is made.
26 February 1938. ‘Wendy-Love-on-the-Dole Hiller’ (as she is described) gives an interview about her career so far, including in Greenwood and Gow’s play and in the film of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. Towards the end she strongly champions the viability of a film adaptation of Love on the Dole:
What I would really like to do after Pygmalion . . . is to appear in a film version of Love on the Dole. I have no patience with people who argue that because it deals with social conditions and problems, with slums and unemployment, it is too sordid for the cinema . . . I believe producers have greatly underestimated the intelligence of the film-going public. I am convinced that that public is ready to see and to appreciate the presentation of really serious and important social problems on the screen — provided, of course, there is a good story. For this reason I am convinced that as a film Love on the Dole would be a sensation (Picturegoer, p. 13).
The article ended with a question posed by the magazine: ‘Now picturegoers, what do you think?’. Hiller herself gave some later interviews where she had become less keen on reprising her stage role of Sally on screen, fearing she would become type-cast. Here though she is clearly contributing to WG (and her husband Gow’s?) fightback against the decision of the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) in 1935 and 1936 that a film of the play would be too sordid to be exhibited in British cinemas.
1938. Founded Greenpark Limited – a stage and film agency and production company (with his Salford-based accountant James Park). The company produced at least thirty mainly short information films between 1942 and 1950. See: Walter Greenwood and Film
11 May 1938. Letter from WG (at his Ebury Studio address, London SW1) to his friend the artist Arthur Wragg suggesting that WG had some involvement with the Board of Advisers of Peace News, a pacifist publication. The letter also updates Wragg on WG’s current publishing activities – he is clearly very busy. He says that he has received nine copies of the US edition of their co-produced The Cleft Stick and that he will ask his literary agent, A.P. Watt to send on three copies to Wragg. WG says he will send some copies abroad to see if they can ‘sell translation rights’. Reports that his new novel, The Secret Kingdom is due out on May 17, and that he has finished ‘the gangster novel’ and is halfway through a play [not sure what this was – was it already a theatre adaptation of his gangster novel? – see below]. Says he will try to come down to Polperro for a few days when the play is finished. See the following entry for more on ‘the gangster novel’ (Arthur Wragg’s uncatalogued papers at the V&A Archives, file AAD/2002/1).
13 May 1938. Letter from WG to Arthur Wragg reporting that ‘Hutchinson’s write to say that Only Mugs Work, which is The Con Man‘s new title is “one of the best Emglish crime novels they’ve read”. My chest is still inflated’. [Not all reviews of Only Mugs Work concurred with the publisher about the quality of WG’s only crime novel]. WG adds that he should be able to come down to Polperro in June. (Arthur Wragg’s uncatalogued papers at the V&A Archives, file AAD/2002/1).
April 1938. Reviews of a touring exhibition of fifty paintings from the Royal Society of Portrait Paintings annual show, including a portrait with ‘much character’ by James A. Grant of Miss Drusilla Wills as Mrs Jike in Love on the Dole (Coventry Evening Telegraph, 14 April, 1938, p. 16). See One of Our Portraits is Missing: ‘Drusilla Wills as Mrs Jike in Love on the Dole’ by James Arden Grant (1938) * .
16 May 1938. WG publishes article in the Daily Mail, titled ‘We Owe All this to Lancashire’ (p.10).
12 July 1938. The Daily Herald reports that WG is a godfather at the humanist christening devised and held by the novelist Frank Tilsley for his daughter Jill; the context, as Tilsley explains, is his view that the Church has done little to reduce the risk of another European war (p.8)
29 July 1938. WG publishes article in the Daily Mail, titled ‘Can You Really Get away from It All?’ (p.8).
30 September 1938. WG along with nine other authors signs a letter to the West London Observer declaring their support for Czechoslovakia and democracy against Fascist violence and plots fomented against the country by Nazi Germany.
September 1938. The Evening Chronicle reports (28/9/1938) that WG is to stay in Manchester for a month to collect material [presumably interviews] for his next book, How the Other Man Lives.
1939. How the Other Man Lives published (London: Labour Book Service). Is made up of thirty-seven short sections each describing an occupation, and based on interviews with a worker in that trade.
1939. Czech translation of novel of Only Mugs Work published under the title Špinavá práce (publisher, Přátelé Hodnotné Detektivy).
April 1939. Play version of Only Mugs Work produced at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, April 1939. Pearl Alice Osgood played the female lead, Susie Gaye, an American dancer.
6 March1939. The Reverend G.C. Needham, vicar of St Philips, Sheffield, argues that the state should provide financial aid to young couples wishing to marry who cannot otherwise afford it. The report refers specifically to WG’s Love on the Dole as an influence on the vicar’s (radical?) thinking (Daily Express, p.7). For broader discussion of the widespread clergy responses to WG (and Gow’) work, see Love on the Dole and the Clergy *.
22 July 1939. Clue 19 down in the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) crossword (no 51) is: ‘resources of theatrical love’ (two words) (3, 4) (p. 433). The solution supplied with crossword (no 52) on 29 July was, of course ‘the dole’, fully explained in a note as ‘Love on the Dole‘ (p. 459). Clearly, the TLS expected Greenwood and Gow’s work from 1935 to have established itself in its readers’ memories.
15 February 1940. The theatre columnist Paul Holt reported in a brief note that he has the day before had a phone call from WG in Polperro about Love on the Dole in which the author tells him that:
The play was seen by 3,000,000, including the King and Queen. But it will never be a film. Application to the British Board of Film Censors has drawn the tart reply that it would never be passed for exhibition as the theme is not acceptable under present war conditions.
The theme is unemployment. I should have thought it would have been better for the authorities to get rid of unemployment first and worry about an unemployment play after (Daily Express, p.11).
This is the earliest reference I know of to the BBFC’s third and least known (and missing) 1940 rejection of the story as a film. The last sentence seems to be a verbatim quotation of WG’s own transmission on the phone of what the BBFC told him and of his own response to it. He never made quite this objection again, but instead produced a number of other arguments against this act of censorship – as can be seen in entries below. I think we can assume that WG spent the next few days considering the matter before launching his more concerted press campaign on 27 February.
27 February 1940. WG sent a letter to the editor of the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer protesting against the most recent refusal of the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) to allow a film to be made of Love on the Dole. WG puts this in the context of the war being fought for liberty and freedom of expression (p.6). WG also sent the same letter to the Western Morning News (26 February, 1940, p. 4). We can also glean from the letters that WG had signed a contract for the film with British National films in the first week of February with the agreement that there would be no major alterations to WG’s story, including aspects previously considered problematic by the BBFC.
The same day the Daily Herald published an article about the BBFC censorship of the film based on a telephone interview with WG in Cornwall as well as on direct quotation from a letter from the BBFC, apparently to WG’s literary agent, who was by then A.P. Watt (as is shown by a letter from him to the BBC on WG’s behalf written on 29 April 1940, concerning a possible radio adaptation of Only Mugs Work and held in the BBC Written Archives). The BBFC letter must have explained the rationale for the Censors’ continuing ban on the film of Love on the Dole (27 February 1940, p.5). There is further press interest in the story in the following days, with support for WG and/or criticism of the BBFC in the Liverpool Daily Post (15 May 1940, p.2) and the Birmingham Mail (29 February, 1940, p.4).
6 March 1940. The leading theatre and film critic James Agate titles a section of his weekly cinema column ‘That Censorship!’ and queries the consistency of the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) in banning a film production of Love on the Dole. Agate asks if ‘immorality is a fit subject . . . only if and when it is treated flippantly’ and not when it is given ‘serious and thoughtful treatment’ (the Tatler, 6 March 1940, p. 8).
1940. The Secretary of the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors), Joseph Brooke-Wilkinson, contacted Ronald Gow and WG to say that a film of Love on the Dole was now a priority: ‘this film’s got to be made’. The striking reversal of a long-held BBFC decision is thought to have been due to pressure from the MOI (the Ministry of Information) and its developing support for the ‘People’s War’ narrative (as brilliantly discussed by Carole Levine in her ‘Propaganda for Democracy: the Curious Case of Love on the Dole’, Journal of British Studies, Vol. 45. October 2006, pp.846-874). See The Film of Love on the Dole (1941) and also my part follow up to Levine’s work, ‘ “The Army of the Unemployed” : Walter Greenwood’s Wartime Novel and the Reconstruction of Britain’ (starts on p.103 on the following pdf file: https://raymondwilliams.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/key-words-10.pdf. I am unclear about the date of Brooke-Wilkinson’s phone-call, but it presumably came after WG’s letters to the press, which had I take it been noted by someone in the MOI as more than merely an author complaining and were presumably another factor in the MOI’s sudden interest. See also the 15 February 1950 account by Gow where a lunch meeting is where the conversation takes place in 1940, rather than over the phone, and where the two authors are blamed by the Secretary to the BBFC for paying any attention to the censors (a nonsensical argument).
May 1940. The Sunday Mirror reports that ‘at last, the Censor’s ban has been raised, and the film of Lancashire low life is to be made’ (12 May, p.18). I note with slight surprise the disapproving term ‘low life’ from the populist Labour(ish) Sunday Mirror.
20 May 1940. The Manchester Evening News prints a brief article under the heading ‘Blinkers’ which says that the paper understands that though a film production of Love on the Dole is now permitted the BBFC has nevertheless attached conditions so that it will have to be changed from a ‘sturdy social document’ to ‘something quite different’: the ‘street fight’ and the current ending with Sally becoming Sam Grundy’s ‘housekeeper’ must be ‘left out’. Through a rather mixed metaphor the ‘Blinkers’ title is picked up in the final sentence of the article which comments that ‘British filmgoers, it seems, must still have their heads forcibly buried in the sand’ (p. 4). In the final film both these elements are retained, but the testimony of one of the three screenwriters suggests just how difficult it was to escape from the puritanical supervision of the BBFC, even after they bowed to MOI pressure and even during production itself: Screenwriter Barbara K. Emary Looks Back on the Making of the 1941 Love on the Dole (1988)*.
May 1940. Kinematograph Weekly also announces that the BBFC ban on a film of Love on the Dole has been lifted and adds considerable further detail about British National’s initial production plans: John Corfield (1893-1953) is to produce and David MacDonald (1904-1983) will direct (16 May 1940, p.33). For some information about Corfield and MacDonald see their respective IMDB and Wikipedia entries: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0179825/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_MacDonald_(director). In fact, MacDonald was reassigned to another film and John Baxter replaced him as director (see August 1940 below).
May 1940. The Birmingham Mail praises the decision by the BBFC to allow production of a film of Love on the Dole to go ahead. The BBFC ‘will earn the gratitude of all who have the freedom of the British film industry at heart’ (17 May, p.5).
June 1940. WG reported by Kinematograph Weekly to be working in his house at Polperro in Cornwall on a film-script of Love on the Dole (13 June, p.35).
1940. British dancer and film star Jessie Matthews auditions to be Sally Hardcastle in film of Love on the Dole, but is not cast by the director John Baxter because she brings an already established ’star’ persona with her (account given by Matthew Thornton in his book Jessie Matthews, (Hart-Davis and MacGibbon, London), p.156)
25 June 1940 The Scotsman reports (p.7) that production of the Love on the Dole film will be delayed while David MacDonald completes another British National Film, This England (see the rather minimal entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_England_(film)). Kinematograph Weekly confirms this on 27 June (p.4) and also assures us that when made Love on the Dole will be ‘given a final twist that will satisfy all critics’. I take it that this is a reference to censorship issues rather than the aesthetics of the film plot, though both are possibilities.
22 August 1940. Kinematograph Weekly reports that John Baxter is to join the Board of British National films and that he will now direct the film of Love on the Dole as his next project (p.4).
1 September 1940. The Sunday Mirror reported that:
At last – after seven years – the film of Love on the Dole is under way. Author Walter Greenwood has been up North in search of a leading lady, and I think the search is ended. Censorship, and Greenwood’s refusal to have his play tampered with, have held up production. ‘One eminent film-director wanted me to let Gracie Fields play the part of twenty-two year-old Sally Hardcastle,” Greenwood told me. ” and also to bring in one of Gracie’s famous ‘ cheer-up ‘ songs.’ Greenwood’s reply was terse, pointed but quite unprintable’ (p. 15).
September 1940. Kinematograph Weekly reports of Love on the Dole that ‘the script of this subject has just been passed by the BBFC’ [British Board of Film Censors] (5 September 1940, p.31). This sounds as if WG and John Baxter have submitted the film-script which WG has now completed rather than as in 1935 and 1936 the Cape edition of the play.
19 September 1940. In a substantial and carefully considered article (pp.9-13) titled ‘Children and their Books’ on what ‘middle school boys . . . aged 13+ and 14+’ should usefully read, the Bookseller recommends plays, including those with ‘contemporary success, such as Journey’s End or Love on the Dole‘ (p.13). Given the sometimes controversial reception of the play in 1935, the frequent statements by theatre managements that the play was not suitable for those under 16, and the repeated prohibition for even adult viewing of a film version by the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors), this seems extraordinarily unexpected advice. The article’s author was A. J. Jenkinson, Lecturer in Education at Manchester University and was based on extensive research for his book What do Boys and Girls Read? (Methuen, London, 1940?; there was a 1946 reprint, but it was clearly first published before that date).
October 1940. Kinematograph Weekly reports that John Baxter as director will start filming Love on the Dole at Rock Studios Elstree for British National in early November (31 October 1940, p. 22).
November 1940. Kinematograph Weekly reports on 7 November (p.21) that though filming of Love on the Dole has started, the part of Sally Hardcastle has still not been cast, though there have been numerous screen tests. By 21 November the same publication can announce that the virtually unknown Deborah Kerr has been cast as Sally and Clifford Evans as Larry, and that indeed all parts have now been cast (p.23). See Deborah Kerr, Stardom, and Love on the Dole *
15 November 1940. the Ramsbotham Observer reports very fully a talk to the Left Book Club group (presumably at Ramsbotham in Greater Manchester) by the notable theatre producer and communist activist Joan Littlewood about ‘The Theatre and the People’. This extraordinary commentary has never been previously noted by critics. Littlewood is critical of conventional plays of the time in many of which ‘the author took it for granted that everybody drank cocktails and dressed for dinner’. However, she did not see playwrights such as H.L. Hodson and WG as offering something radically different. She claimed that their work said:
I was a worker; it was all very interesting, but I am not like that now. They wrote plays like Love on the Dole which were nothing but travesties of working-class life’.
While it is true that the success of his work in some respects took WG away from his own class origins, I cannot readily agree that the play of Love on the Dole showed that he had only a distanced memory of working-class life in Salford or that it is a travesty of working-class life in depressed and deprived areas. Littlewood might have been disappointed with the play measured against communist expectations in that it did not do what she says later in the article true ‘People’s Theatre’ should do – that is show ‘the beauty of a suffering class rising up in all its power and majesty’. It is is true that Greenwood and Gow’s play shows the suffering, but not the emergence predicted by Marxism of the new power of the proletariat through the dialectical class struggle (p.2). Love on the Dole may also have disappointed Littlewood because of its essentially realist mode: she champions in the article something more Brechtian, in which the theatre was a place where:
‘Actors and audience met to talk about their problems and their lives together. It had to be made a sharp weapon in the struggles of the people towards a better life’.
If not through Brechtian means, I think a case can be made for Love on the Dole seeking as its very core rationale to change the lives of the working people of Britain, though by invoking the support of other classes as well as (skilled and better-off?) workers (clearly not a revolutionary dynamic). The accuracy of this local newspaper report of Joan Littlewood’s complex political and theatrical ideas is in itself also remarkable.
1941. During the London Blitz the Greenwoods’ London home (a studio flat at no 59 Ebury Street) was damaged by bombing and two manuscript volumes of WG’s unpublished historical novel trilogy The Prosperous Years about the industrial revolution in Lancashire were destroyed – as a note in the surviving second volume records (WGC1/1/1). Pearl was injured, perhaps seriously [see 26 December 1941 below]. Sources on the London Blitz of 1940-1941 suggest that Ebury Street was hit on 16 April 1941, when the Red Lion pub was completely destroyed by a bomb which killed the landlord. However, Greenwood’s letter from Edith Sitwell about this trauma dates to late December 1941, some seven months later (see below). I think that locations of bomb strikes were not reported too precisely in newspaper reports and nor were injuries to celebrities due to considerations about controlling information of use to the enemy and to issues of morale. Edith Sitwell might well therefore have not heard about Walter and Pearl’s experience until Greenwood wrote to her. The interactive map at the Bombsite site records a high explosive bomb hit adjacent to Ebury Street (http://bombsight.org/#17/51.49170/-0.14707), while a photograph caption records the destruction of the Red Lion at 150 Ebury Street as having happened on 16 April 1941 (see https://londonwiki.co.uk/LondonPubs/StGeorgeHanoverSquare/RedLionEbury.shtml). It was an area much patronised by writers at various stages of their careers. The best-selling writer and journalist and later Royal Navy Ordinary Seaman Godfrey Winn (1906-1971) records damage to his Ebury Street apartment – one originally acquired essentially because he felt it was the right kind of place for a writer to live. The date of the damage is not clear though perhaps spread across several nights: ‘most of the windows of the house were blown in not once, but several times, while the ceiling of my living-room fell down the night they killed our neighbours’ (Home from the Sea, Hutchinson, 1944, p.15). A number of sections of Ebury Street were demolished and rebuilt after the war so the damage was presumably extensive in the area (see relevant parts of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebury_Street). Indeed, a June 1945 article in a local newspaper summarising blitz damage to the area across the whole war supports the lack of reporting at the time: it too lists a hit on Ebury Street on 16-17th April 1941 (Westminster & Pimlico News , ‘Bombing Incidents Recalled’, June 15, 1945, p.6). The night of 16/17 April 1941 recorded especially heavy raids, the most intense of the war thus far – the raid on the 16th ‘lasted from 20.50 to 05.18 and was concentrated on central and south London’ (John Conen, The Bombing of London 1940-41: The Blitz and its Impact on the Capital, Matador, London, Kindle Edition, p.298).
January 1941. Kinematograph Weekly reports that Baxter has now completed the filming of Love on the Dole (16 January 1941, p.39).
19 January 1941. The Sunday Express runs a whole page piece headed ‘Robert Donat Cross-examined by Walter Greenwood, Margaret Rawlings and Benn Levy’. The three-handed interview makes it a slightly cumbersome piece in my view, but gives the three inquisitors opportunities to put questions to Donat about if acting careers can really be planned, what makes a distinguished actor, if commercial stage successes swamp real dramatic and acting genius, relationships between theatre and film, and whether an obsession with casting stars distorts the intentions of writers for stage and cinema. WG needs no introduction at this point. Margaret Rawlings (1906-1996) was a successful stage actress from the nineteen-twenties until the nineteen-seventies, with a number of film and television roles in addition. She was married for a period (1927-1939) to Gabriel Toyne the director of the Manchester Repertory Theatre’s world premiere of the play version of Love on the Dole in 1934-35. Benn Levy (1900-1973) was a successful playwright and screenwriter in the thirties and on to the nineteen-fifties. In 1945 he was elected as Labour MP for Eton and Slough, a role he kept until standing down in 1950. Surely, this was a pretty diverse and distinguished team of interviewers: they put some probing questions to Donat who robustly put his own point of view.
30 January 1941. The Liverpool Daily Post prints an apology to WG that its now defunct sister paper, the Liverpool Weekly Post, without naming WG, published a report in May 1940 that ‘the author of Love on the Dole‘ had fled the country on a liner to New York to escape from bankruptcy proceedings brought against him by the Brighton Bankruptcy Court. The Liverpool Daily Post regretted the inaccuracy of the report and acknowledged that WG had at no stage been involved in either any bankruptcy nor any legal issues resulting (p.4). This is a mysterious item of news about which I can find little further evidence: the apology implies that it was a case of mistaken identity, but supplies no further explanation. Neither WG nor Ronald Gow could seriously have been in danger of bankruptcy during 1940 given the sustained income from the play of Love on the Dole since 1934, as well as new projects. Perhaps the Liverpool Weekly Post was sold a fake story?
18 February 1941. A letter in the Mid-Sussex Times gives us (if rather at third-hand) the only evidence I have seen that WG was briefly associated with ‘The People’s Convention’. The letter is from a correspondent who is deeply suspicious of the Convention seeing it as Communist front organisation and one which aimed to bring about the immediate fall of the present (in effect National Party) coalition, at that point still led by the Conservative prime minister Neville Chamberlain. The letter is signed by W. Faulkner of Surbiton, who also indicates that he is a Fellow of the Royal Economic Society and therefore a professional economist and/or academic (the Society was founded in 1890 and granted a royal charter in 1902 – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Economic_Society). The letter is written in response to a previous letter by a JP, Mrs Corbett, arguing for the bona fides and good intentions of ‘The People’s Convention’. After his critical account of the Convention he observes at the end of the letter that:
I . . . suggest to Mrs. Corbett, with all due respect that she will be well-advised to disassociate herself from the People’s Convention. She is not the only one who has been misinformed and deceived by the promoters of the Convention. Quite a number of well-known people have been kicked by the Communists and have now withdrawn. Among the latest to withdraw is Mr. Walter Greenwood, author of Love the Dole. I hope Mrs. Corbett will do the same (p.5).
One of the aims of the Convention was to replace the present government with a more progressive and popular one which would engage the whole population in the war with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, a broad idea which might well have initially appealed to WG given his support in the following years of the conflict for it to be ‘a People’s War’. I do not know in what way (if any) WG had himself ‘been kicked by the Communists’, though he was certainly more of a Labour Party supporter.
The history of the Convention is complicated (and one factor obvious at the time and worth recalling is the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact which was still in force until Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941). Angus Calder in his classic study of ‘the People’s War’ gives some other helpful contexts:
On July 7th, 1940, as France was falling, a national ‘People’s Vigilance Committee’ was set up, which proceeded to call for ‘friendship with the U.S.S.R.’, for the re-establishment of ‘democratic rights’, for the defence of the people’s standard of living and an end to profiteering, and for a new Government, ‘truly representative’ of the people of Britain, which could pave the way for an enduring ‘people’s peace’. It followed this manifesto with an appeal to members of the Labour Party to dissociate themselves from their leaders in the Government (The People’s War: Britain 1939-1945, Random House, Kindle Edition, 2020, location 5316; first published by Jonathan Cape, 1969, revised edition by Pimlico, 1992).
Calder also suggests the kind of appeal which these aims might have had for a quite broad left/liberal audience:
When, in September 1940, the People’s Vigilance Committee issued a summons announcing a great convention in support of its aims, the signatories included, besides well-known Communists and fellow-travellers, such non-Leninist personalities as the Reverend Mervyn Stockwood (later Bishop of Southwark), the authors Olaf Stapledon and Rosamund Lehmann, and the actor Michael Redgrave (location 5324).
To this list we can now (tentatively?) add WG at least for a period between September 1940 and mid-February 1941.
December 1940 to March 1941. Though filming of Love on the Dole is in fact completed, numerous local newspapers publish a substantial column by the novelist Ethel Mannin (also a friend and early mentor of WG – see 1931 above) discussing the dangers of wartime censorship outside the realm of denying intelligence to the fascist enemy. Mannin consciously links censorship to totalitarianism:
NO MORAL GESTAPO HERE
Thin Edges of Thick Wedges
During wartime some diminution of the freedom of the individual is to be expected but it is a diminution which should be carefully watched. Freedom is more easily disposed of than gained. . . . How many of the great mass of film goers, for instance, realise that the British Board of Film Censors has no authority but what it gives itself, that it is not a Government body? This powerful unofficial body determines what films the public shall see and what they shall not see. It has just decided that they shall not see the film Love on the Dole despite the popular success of the novel and of its stage dramatisation before the war (Buchan Observer and East Aberdeenshire Advertiser (31 December, 1940, p.7).
Though no national newspapers carried it, exactly the same column appeared in the Dalkeith Advertiser (9 January 1941, p. 3), the Ramsbotham Observer, 10 January 1941, p. 8), the Hampshire Telegraph (17 January, 1941, p.1), the Sunderland Echo and Shipping Gazette (20 January 1941, p. 4), the Lurgan Mail (1 February, 1941, p. 3), and finally the Motherwell Times (28 March 1941, p.7). These papers presumably had some form of syndication arrangement, but nevertheless the column kept both the general issue of censorship in the air in places ranging from southern England and parts of the north as well as in Scotland and Northern Ireland. It also kept the particular instance of Love on the Dole in people’s minds, and might prepare them to be interested when the film was finally released from its long censorship.
1 March 1941. Picturegoer (p.17) published a recipe for ‘Coconut Pyramids’ written by Deborah Kerr who is ‘starring in British National’s Love on the Dole‘. It is a wartime recipe so is frugal, containing just desiccated coconut and a tin of condensed milk. Deborah Kerr writes that ‘Coconut Pyramids are easy to make, require no sugar and are grand for tea’. John Baxter deliberately cast Kerr as Sally Hardcastle because she had no pre-existing star persona, but of course film periodicals soon started to construct one for her. Still, this modest recipe seems a very modest piece of star persona projection, perhaps even suitably homely!
20 April 1941. The Sunday Express (p.6) publishes a substantial and fascinating three-handed discussion about what the film-going public want to see during the war (under the title ‘The Shelterers’ Verdict’ on the grounds that people actually have a chance to discuss recent films while in air-raid shelters). The article is by the paper’s film reviewer Ernest Betts and his three experts are one film director (Michael Powell,1905-1990, no less!), and two cinema managers: Bill Thornton from the Odeon, Leicester Square and Charles Kohn from the Granada Woolwich representing ‘high-class’ and more usual ‘ninepenny seat’ cinemas. Betts introduces the piece by saying that directors rarely have a chance to meet the picture-house managers who have more direct contact with audiences and perhaps therefore more insight into audience preferences. A vigorous discussion follows. Both Kohn and Thornton report that the public do not want to see war films, but ‘escapist films’ which let them get away from the present reality. Powell argues that for films to appeal they must be in touch with real life and not just escapist, and Thornton agrees that some recent films which are not escapist have been successful, naming The Stars Look Down, directed by Carol Reed, released January 1940 (‘it broke all records at the Odeon’) and the not yet generally-released Love on the Dole (‘that’s going to break records’). Powell gets the last word with his argument that what is needed is films which are ‘real’ but not necessarily war films. The article notes that Powell has just completed The 49th Parallel (general UK release October 1941, production by Ortus Films). For an introduction to Powell’s extraordinary film oeuvre and his long and productive partnership with Emeric Pressburger see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Powell.
31 May 1941. A very early (pre-release?) review of the film by Jonah Barrington at the Daily Express gives an entirely positive review and one which appreciates John Baxter’s deliberate non-star cast and small budget aesthetic and sees its appropriateness to this narrative:
Urgently, vividly and (I hope) unforgettably, author Walter Greenwood and producer John Baxter paint the picture of Britain’s pre-war unemployment . . . They did it for £25,000 with lesser-known artists and the result is a great British film – perhaps the greatest (‘New Film’, p.3).
June 1941. Film of Love on the Dole released in the UK (British National Pictures; directed by John Baxter) – received dozens of positive reviews in a great variety of newspapers, and drew audiences in British cinemas continuously from 1941 onto 1946. The Film of Love on the Dole (1941)
June 1941. Stanley J. Kunitz records in his Twentieth Century Authors First Supplement (the H.W. Wilson Company, New York, 1955, p. 388) that ‘during the war [WG] wrote a film for the merchant navy’. This is also stated as the case in WG’s DNB entry by Geoffrey Moorhouse which uses the words ‘during the war he also wrote the screenplay for a documentary about the merchant navy’ – sadly neither source gives an exact title for the work (DNB 1986, with a somewhat revised version by an unnamed DNB editor in 2014, though this detail is unaltered). I think that Geoffrey Moorhouse’s knowledge of the film probably comes from what the DNB lists in its sources as ‘personal knowledge’, in this case conversation with WG. Equally Kunitz makes it clear in his Preface to the First Supplement that living authors have supplied updated ‘biographical and bibliographical data’, supporting the idea that WG was himself the direct source of this claim to authorship. There is one further but sadly quite unclear reference in a Spectator review of the film of Love on the Dole, which does give the slightly incorrect title of Our Merchant Seamen and at least implies the involvement of WG (6 June 1941, p.32 of WG’s ‘Clippings’ Book’, Vol.2) As is made clear below I remain slightly puzzled by the lack of any further direct evidence of WG’s hand in the film-text itself.
However, as far as I can see the only possible film for WG’s involvement is indeed the semi-documentary Merchant Seamen, dated June 1941 by the IWM (Imperial war Museum), since no other wartime film matches the topic given by Kunitz and the topic and genre given by Moorhouse. While there were two other wartime films about the Merchant Navy, both with documentary elements, they were on the whole more drama than documentary. These were both significant films, but have writers other than WG fully credited: Convoy, 1940, directed and co-written by Pen Tennyson, with the co-writer Patrick Kirwan, produced by Ealing Studios, and Western Approaches, 1944, directed and written by Pat Jackson, and produced by the Crown Film Unit (for further information see IMDB and Wikipedia entries for both films).
The credits to Merchant Seamen name J.B. Holmes as director, with Ralph Elton as assistant director, and state that it is a Ministry of Information Film produced by the Crown Film Unit. Constant Lambert is credited for the music (which is played by the Sadlers Wells Orchestra), but neither WG nor any other writer is credited. While the entire cast is, the opening credit states, played by officers and men of the Merchant Navy (presumably with the exception of the convoy commodore who is, as was usual in reality, plainly a retired Admiral), there clearly is a written script feeding into the dialogue of what is a hybrid narrative-documentary picture. The story and dialogue are unremarkable but well-enough crafted, though I do not detect any particular Greenwood themes or touches.
The film was highly rated by Kinematograph Weekly. The cinema professionals’ paper gives both a useful story summary and an evaluation of the high quality of the production and filming, as well as praising its ‘information’ impact on public understanding of the central function of the convoys:
Here we have a forcibly interesting and suspenseful featurette, made by the Crown Film Unit, describing the hazards willingly accepted by those who go down to the sea in ships in wartime. The narrative opens with the torpedoing of a British merchant ship and the rescue of members of its crew. Nipper. a youngster, is one of those saved, and he takes a course in gunnery [i.e. as a Merchant Navy gunner]. Later he and his colleagues sign up again. Their ship is one of a convoy, but fog overtakes them. Suspense tor a time is terrific, but they eventually sail into clear weather. Suddenly a submarine is spotted. This is Nipper’s big opportunity. Under the instructions of the gunnery officer, he fires on the submarine and it is hit. This ship and the rest of the convoy then proceed serenely on their lawful occasions. The compilation, photography, commentary, characterisation, and dialogue are excellent. In fact, so real is the picture, that those seeing it will never again waste a particle of food or a drop of petrol. Outstanding featurette (29 May 1941, p. 29).
The whole film (25 minutes) can be seen on the IWM site: https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/1060006247. It is clearly a film with a decent budget since there is considerable action, good shipboard settings, use of convincing models to stage submarine attacks and a subsequent retribution by Merchant Navy gunners, as well as exterior scenes shot at real locations, including the launch of an RNLI lifeboat. Given the release date WG must have been working on the project during or after the production of the film of Love on the Dole. Perhaps the MOI did not feel attaching WG’s name to the film was helpful, given the controversy about the filming of Love on the Dole, though given its focus on the active and dangerous contribution to the war effort of working-men in the merchant navy, this seems odd. Equally odd is the contrasting keenness of the film firmly to credit Constant Lambert’s contribution as composer of the score, when the screenwriter is left unnamed. If WG was keen to put on record where he could his contribution to a documentary about the Merchant Navy, a biography of Constant Lambert ironically reports that the composer was not very taken by the commission:
Perhaps the subject-matter of the film . . . did not appeal to Lambert . . . At all events he produced a score which, while perfectly adequate as film music, completely lacks the distinction of Walton’s work for the cinema (Richard Shead, Constant Lambert — his Life, his Music and his Friends, Simon Publications, London, 1973, p.126).
Nevertheless, Lambert’s subsequent Merchant Seamen Suite (1943) achieved considerable success with the wartime musical public.
17 August 1941. The Sunday Mirror (p.7) publishes an article by WG which reflects on the novel, play and film of Love on the Dole, and on their relationship to what a very different post-war ‘New Britain’ should look like. See Walter Greenwood’s People’s War Manifesto (Sunday Mirror, 1941) .
August to October 1941. In these months at least Walter seems to have been driving a car, as evidenced by ‘motor fuel ration coupons’ valid for those months and issued by the Board of Trade on 29 July 1941. These were retained among WG’s papers and are held in the Walter Greenwood Collection in the Salford University Archives (WGP8/5/1 and WGP8/5/2 under the former cataloguing system in use until 14 December 2005: ‘ Other Miscellaneous Material’). The number-plate was RJ 6384, a number issued in the Salford B area in the period between June 1931 and April 1938 (see https://www.oldclassiccar.co.uk/registrations/rj.htm).
We can surely discount the idea of WG owning a car anytime before the financial success of Love on the Dole (perhaps most likely that of the larger monetary rewards of the play adaptation from 1935 onwards?). However, he might have bought the car in Salford at any point from then on. It seems likely that since he bought it in the Salford area, it will have been before his resignation as a Labour councillor in August 1937 and his move to his Ebury Street property in London in that same month (see August 1937 above). The make and model of the car is not recorded as far as I can find out. Still, its ownership surely marked WG’s success as a professional author and presumably made it easier to maintain that vocation, as well as his work as a Salford councillor. Biographical information in Kunitz & Haycraft (see below, 1942) records WG’s claim that he had tried his hand as a chauffeur while working at whatever jobs he could get in the period between 1928 and 1931. Driving tests were not compulsory in Britain until 1 June 1935, so perhaps WG was able somehow to learn to drive more informally before that date (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_driving_test). In fact, Greenwood records in his 1967 memoir that while working as a stable lad between circa 1917 and 1920 the groom just turning chauffeur told him ‘Take my tip – learn to drive’ (p.134). Perhaps the chauffeur helped him further at that point?
26 December 1941. Edith Sitwell responds to letter from WG to say how sorry she is to hear that the Greenwood’s Ebury Street studio has been damaged by bombing and that Pearl has been injured. Sitwell says she understands WG’s ‘anxiety for Pearl’s life and for her pain’. She realises that Pearl’s recovery is bound to take a long time, but is glad Pearl has been able ‘safely’ to join her father [in the USA?]. This clearly implies that Pearl sustained a serious injury, but I do not know of what kind. Sitwell also takes the opportunity to say that she is happy to hear what a ‘great success [the film] of Love on the Dole has had’ and that she ‘longs to see it’ (All information contained in a letter from Renishaw Hall dated 26 December 1941 and now in the Walter Greenwood Collection , WGP/2/1/8). See above under 1941.
1942. Kunitz & Haycraft published their invaluable reference work Twentieth Century Authors – a Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature (the H.W. Wilson Company, New York, 1942). It has a substantial and useful entry on WG (pp. 573-74), with autobiographical information supplied by the author himself. This includes some information not found elsewhere, adding to the ‘dead-end occupations’ usually claimed by WG three further ones of ‘milkman’s helper, sign-writer, and chauffeur’, p. 573 (his list in most autobiographical statements included ‘office boy, stable boy, repairman in a packinghouse, warehouseman and salesman’, all also claimed here on p. 573). The entry also gives WG’s own list of ‘his favourite recreations’ as ‘riding, rowing, sleeping, arguing and propagating Socialism’. Rowing is mentioned by WG nowhere else, but ‘riding’ suggests his continuing interest in horses, as also evidenced by his being President of the Pendleton Jorrocks Society in 1935 (see above 4 December 1935). ‘Arguing and propagating Socialism’ represents WG as more combative than he was and is often perceived to be.
After the auto/biographical material is a concise critical /evaluative account of the writer’s work (presumably by Kunitz or Haycraft or one of their researchers?). In the case of WG, he is not given very much credit for creativity or literary invention: ‘his novels are all primarily social documents, drab and photographic’, ‘there is little characterization’ and ‘his books are almost pure propaganda, and sentimentalised propaganda at that’ (p.574). His work is seen as motivated by ‘indignation but the indignation is based in a dull despair’. On the plus side, his narratives are ‘forceful and straightforward and few writers have had the first hand experience of the things of which he treats’; ‘He is himself a proletarian and has never forgotten that fact’. Moreover, the commentator has some hope that wartime conditions may be beneficial: ‘What difference the war and the social changes actuated by it will make in his writing remains to be seen’. On the whole WG’s reception in Britain during his lifetime was more positive than this, and certainly credited him with some gift for the comic, if often in a grim strain.
October 1942. First production of the play of Love on the Dole in Eire by the Gate Theatre Company at the Gaiety Theatre, Dublin. The reviewer notes that many Dubliners will have seen the film version first but thinks himself that the play is more economical and more powerful (Irish Independent, 8 October 1942, p.2).
August to November 1943. Served in the Royal Army Service Corps, training for the Army trade of clerk. Discharged as unfit for further military service. However, WG told the Manchester Evening News (25 September 1945, p. 8) that he had then been a firewatcher and in the Home Guard (this is wholly compatible since many men served in the Home Guard precisely because they had been considered not fit enough for the regular Services). I do not yet know where WG served with the Home Guard (he may have had homes at this time in London, in Sussex, and in Polperro, Cornwall, though I think the London studio was uninhabitable due to bomb damage). I am dubious that deploying WG as an RASC clerk (with all respect to the usefulness of that Army trade) was the best use towards the war effort of the scriptwriter of the influential wartime film of Love on the Dole (see Walter Greenwood’s People’s War Manifesto (Sunday Mirror, 1941)).
15 January 1944. Letter from WG to Arthur Wragg telling of some recent ‘unhappy things’ (not all specified) and of a subsequent nervous breakdown. Events referred to include call-up to the Army, even though he should have had deferment because he was working on a film production of The Secret Kingdom, and basic training at a Glasgow barracks close to a slum area which vividly brought back to WG his own earlier life. Though not mentioned, it is possible that his divorce from Pearl was also a contributory factor . WG also writes that he has just completed a first draft of his new novel England Arise [finally published as Something in My Heart in 1944 – see below], and that the filmmakers the Boulting Brothers are interested in filming it (Arthur Wragg’s Uncatalogued Papers, V&A Archives, AAD/2002/1).
1944. Something in my Heart (London: Hutchinson). Greenwood’s only novel written and published during the War. It is about the fortunes of two formerly unemployed Salford men who join the RAF, and about what a new post-war Britain should look like, and what the responsibilities of post-war state and central government should be.
1944. Publication of the French translation of Something in My Heart under the title Mais Aussi des Hommes (Correa, Paris). The translation was by Henri Delgove and Claude Vaudecrame. The Walter Greenwood Collection has an inscribed copy: ‘To Mr Walter Greenwood – this is how your child looks in a French garb. Hope you will give it part of your parental love! With best wishes and regards, Henri Delgove’ [list of WG’s published work].
1944. Walter and Pearl divorce (without any publicity).
26 October 1944. The Stage reports that a new theatrical production company called Arena Productions Ltd has been formed by Bernard Miles, Roy Boulting and Walter Greenwood in order to put on the first play about the LDV (Local Defence Volunteers, later renamed the Home Guard) which Miles has written. It is to be called They Also Serve and will have its premiere at the Pavilion, Bournemouth, in November:
It will be the first play about our citizen army and it is by Bernard Miles, himself a member of the original L.D.V. It is a comedy of an English village preparing to meet the full force of Hitler’s legions in the dark days of 1940. Bernard Miles, well known for his character- studies of English rustics, will play the leading part of an old country veteran of the Boer War (‘Chit Chat’ column, p. 4).
There were performances of the play in Blackpool, Glasgow and Liverpool in November 1944, but it does not seem to have then opened in London as its backers hoped it would. Miles later play about the Home Guard with the title Let Tyrants Tremble! may have been a revised version, and it did have a short run in London in March to April 1946 (see brief Wikipedia entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_Tyrants_Tremble!).
Greenwood too seems to have served in the Home Guard after November 1943. Clearly the play was a predecessor of the later hugely successful TV series, Dad’s Army (written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft and broadcast to large audiences by BBC 1 between 1968-1977). Greenwood’s involvement suggests his interest in theatrical entrepreneurship.
October – November 1944. Something in My Heart was widely and mainly positively reviewed in the British press, including in reviews in the Manchester Guardian, John O’London’s Weekly, the Daily Telegraph, the Western Mail and the TLS (WG’s ‘Clippings’ Book’, Vol.2). A number of reviews see the novel as a wartime sequel to Love on the Dole; some think the ideas are vigorous, but some of the writing less good, some think it is polemical (‘Strong story for Socialists’ said the Daily Sketch, 5 October 1944), some think it works well in exploring what has happened to the ‘unwanted’ unemployed now that the wartime economy needs everyone to be mobilised. See Walter Greenwood’s Wartime Novel: Something in My Heart (1944) .
A Scottish newspaper in an article about the strong links between miners’ unions and the National Council of Labour Colleges notes that WG had once been an N.C.L.C student:
Among the many hundreds of well-known miners who have been students of the National Council of Labour Colleges is Mr B. L. Coombes, now a well-known novelist and writer on mining problems. Walter Greenwood, author of Love on the Dole, although not a miner is another old N.C.L.C. student who has made his name as a literary champion of the Working Class Movement (Kilmarnock Herald and North Ayrshire Gazette, 22 December 1944, p.7).
1945. Greenwood contributed his short story ‘The Mutineers’ to Voices on the Green, edited by A.J.R. Wise and Reginald A. Smith, and published by Michael Joseph, which raised money for St Mary’s Hospital for Women and Children, Manchester.
22 February 1945. Kinematograph Weekly reports that the film of Love on the Dole has just been re-issued, and comments that this ‘challenging sociological melodrama . . . was highly praised when first reviewed in the KW issue of April 10 1941, and a second look confirms our enthusiastic first impression. True, it leans slightly to the Left, but all the same much human drama emerges from its ugly atmosphere and stern propaganda’ [in fact KW was much more tolerant/progressive the first time round!] (p. 32).
February 1945. Kinematograph Weekly advertises trade shows of the reissue of Love on the Dole to take place in Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, and Newcastle. Clearly KW judges there is still considerable life on this 1941 release – perhaps because as victory and therefore the post-war began to look at least possible the film’s raising of issues about the relationships between the thirties, the forties and Britain after the war comes again into sharp focus? (p.50).
Early to late 1945. There seem to be quite a number of repertory and amateur stage productions of Love on the Dole, some certainly stimulated by a sense that the play was especially relevant to current discussions about the shape of post-war Britain and then by the 1945 general election in early July 1945. Of course, the film version which continued to show regularly in cinemas between 1941 and 1946, no doubt also supported renewed interest in the play. One play production presented to raise funds for the ‘Boston Homecoming Trust Fund’, is advertised under the banner: ‘you may have seen the film, but EVERYBODY should see the original version of Love on the Dole‘ (Lincolnshire Standard and Boston Advertiser, 29 September 1945, p. 6). For specific examples of connection made between the story, pre-war, wartime and post-war possibilities, see below under 19 April and 6 October 1945, as well as the related film showing of Love on the Dole under 17 August 1945.
19 April 1945. The Western Guardian (Totnes) reports that the Buckfastleigh Amateur Dramatic Group which has performed ‘only comedies and farces’ since 1940, has now decided to present Love on the Dole, ‘a tragedy following the Slump after the Great War’. A.E. Sproston, who played Sam Grundy, spoke:
the prologue to the play, saying that while history is repeating itself in the titanic conflict now raging throughout the whole world, due to men’s disregard of the fundamental lesson of 1914-18, the post-war years must not be allowed to echo the years of trade depression and slump arising theretofrom. The world has been given a second chance. If it is disregarded there may never be a third.
There is, of course, no prologue to the published play, so this is clearly a remarkable addition by the company to emphasise what they saw as the play’s new and continuing relevance. This idea might well be partly inspired by the film version’s re-contextualisation of the thirties story in terms of the nineteen-forties, and perhaps specifically by A.V. Alexander’s afterword caption to the film which made a related point about the lesson for the future. (From clipping in WG’s Clippings Book, Vol. 2, WGC/3/2).
22 April 1945. WG was invited to be an expert at a Brains Trust held at the Connaught Theatre. The audience were asked to pose questions ‘concerning the theatre and public entertainment generally with emphasis on the future of the theatre’ (Worthing Herald, 6 April, 1945, p. 13).
17 August 1945. Miss Margaret Herbison, newly elected Labour MP for North Lanark, holds a ‘political rally’ in conjunction with ‘the city Labour Party, the Trades Council and the Co-operative Party’ in the Cosmo Cinema. ‘The film, Love on the Dole, Walter Greenwood’s portrayal of the depression of the nineteen-thirties will be shown’. Margaret Herbison ‘is expected to say something interesting about the legislation of the Labour Government as foreshadowed in the King’s Speech’ (Glasgow Evening Times, 17/8/1945). Clearly, Love on the Dole had already become a classic text to draw on to argue that the mistakes of the thirties must never be repeated. Margaret Herbison (known as Peggy) was MP for North Lanark until her retirement in 1970, and also held a number of ministerial posts.
31 August 1945. The Odeon in Sevenoaks advertises that it is again screening Love on the Dole at ‘your request’ – again a sign of the post-war mood? (Sevenoaks Chronicle and Kentish Advertiser, p.1).
3 October 1945. Bernard Miles is interviewed for the Evening News and says that the film-maker and WG are working on the screenplay for a film adaptation of a play about the Tolpuddle Martyrs called Six Men of Dorset (1934 play by Miles Malleson and H. Brooks). (WG Clippings Book Vol 2, WGC/3/2).
4 October 1945. WG is interviewed by R.B. Marriot for the Stage in an article titled ‘Theatre of Peace: Walter Greenwood Looks Ahead’. Greenwood thinks there will be a demand for ‘well-made plays’, and that with ‘the growing consciousness of social and political things, there is emerging a large audience with a taste for plays dealing with current topics. The dramatists who can treat serious social and domestic problems . . . without preaching will be particularly well-received, I’m sure’.
6 October 1945. The director, A. J. Willord, of an amateur production at Boston Memorial Hall described Love on the Dole as ‘being a social document of the highest importance to all who are concerned with our national welfare’ (Lincolnshire Standard, Boston; from clipping in WG’s Clippings Book, Vol. 2, WGC/3/2).
10 October 1945. The Daily Record reports that WG is working on a new play about Liverpool dockers to be called Outer Circle (WG’s ‘Clippings’ Book’, Vol.2, p.110). There is no other record nor sign of this project.
October 1945. Original play version of So Brief the Spring produced at Oldham Repertory Theatre. See: Walter Greenwood and Dora Bryan
12 October 1945. The 1941 film of Love on the Dole released in the US four years after its British release by the distribution company Four Continents Inc. It seems to have been shown only in cinemas specialising in ‘foreign’ and art-movies. There was considerable speculation in the US press about why a release was so delayed: some reported (without any evidence) that while prime-minister Churchill had requested it not be released in the US. See Four Publicity Photos and the US Release of Love on the Dole (Four Continents Inc., 12 October, 1945) * .
19 May 1946. The People reports that a group of Hollywood writers have organised a private screening of the film of Love on the Dole to draw attention to the lack of ‘mature films’ in the US film industry and to point out that escapist films ‘cannot compensate for loss of reality’ (p.4).
19 December 1946. Kinematograph Weekly ran a full page advert by John Corfield Productions Ltd (founded as early as November 1940) for four films they are currently putting into production, all adaptations of novels:
- Vera Caspary’s Bedelia
- Flora Sandstrom’s Milk White Unicorn
- Walter Greenwood’s Secret Kingdom
- Elizabeth Vernon’s Without Armour.
All four are being made at Nettlefold Studios, Walton-on-Thames by John Corfield’s independent production company, with a statement that work on the last two is ‘commencing’ on 24 March 1947. The distributor is to be General Film Distributors Ltd.
Bedelia, based on a 1945 American novel, was indeed filmed and released in the UK in May 1946 (though its author much disliked alterations to the setting – see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedelia_(novel) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bedelia_(film). The Milk White Unicorn was a new novel, first published in January 1946, and was released as a film in the UK in October 1947 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Unicorn). Without Armour, was also first published by Collins in 1946, but does not seem to have made it through production to release. Greenwood’s fourth novel, partly based on the lives of his mother and father, was first published by Cape in 1938, and so is the odd one out, though he clearly had had hopes of a film version in 1943/44 [see above under 15 January 1944]. However, like Without Armour, The Secret Kingdom sadly did not appear as a film at this point (though it was still listed as a planned production in Kinematograph Weekly on 2 October 1947, p.41, after which there are no subsequent mentions). John Corfield (1893-1953) was the producer of the 1941 Love on the Dole film when he worked for British National Films and presumably retained an interest in Greenwood’s work from then. Bedelia and Milk White Unicorn seem to have been quite successful at the British box office so it is a pity Greenwood’s fairly romantic but working-class story did not join them. It had to wait until May 1960 for a BBC TV adaptation.
For a little further information about Corfield’s successful career see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Corfield ; for an introduction to the once very important Nettlefold or Walton Studios, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton_Studios. This John Corfield project must relate to the ‘unrevised’ film treatment by Greenwood of The Secret Kingdom held in his papers at the Walter Greenwood Collection in the Salford University Archives (WGC/1/6/3) and dated there as ‘1940’s?’. This may date back to 1943 since we know that WG had hopes of a film adaptation just before he was called-up into the Army [see January 1944 above]. However, WG might also have returned to or begun this treatment post-war and worked on it further during 1946 to 1947 before, for whatever reason, the production fell through.
- Play published: The Cure for Love: a Lancashire Comedy in Three Acts (London: French).
1947. Documentary film released: A City Speaks (Films of Fact / Paul Rotha Films, directed by Paul Rotha, screenplay by Greenwood, Ara Calder Marshall and Paul Rotha). A documentary about the post-war reconstruction of Manchester sponsored by Manchester City Council. Can be watched on BFI Sscreenplayer: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-city-speaks-1947-online
26 January 1949. Film released: The Eureka Stockade (Ealing Studios; directed by Harry Watt, screenplay by Harry Watt and Walter Greenwood). See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_Stockade_(1949_film)
6 February 1950. Film released: The Cure For Love (London Film Productions; directed by Robert Donat, screenplay by Walter Greenwood, Albert Fennell, Alexander Shaw and Robert Donat). See: https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/walter-greenwood-and-robert-donat/
15 February 1950. Ronald Gow’s account of how J. Brooke-Wilkinson of the BBFC (British Board of Film Censors) surprisingly summoned him and WG in 1940 to tell them that a film of Love on the Dole must now be made as a matter of national importance is usually described as first surfacing in a letter from Gow to the Guardian on 3 April 1984. However, Gow had already told a similar story to the Wolverhampton Express and Star as early as February 1950, though this important story seems not to have been picked up by any other paper, regional or national. Gow’s original telling has some more colloquial features compared to his later letter and notably shows Brooke-Wilkinson apparently blaming the two writers for having paid any attention to the BBFC’s absolute prohibitions. Though I have searched I have never found any criticism in the US press of the banning of the film of Love on the Dole, but I have not even begun to search as yet the rather more expansive field of the ‘foreign press’. The whole account bears setting in the record in full. It was notably titled ‘Film Made by Order – of the Censor!’:
Dudley Little Theatre’s next production, which will be seen in a fortnight’s time at Netherton Arts Centre, is Love on the Dole. It is an adaptation by Walter Greenwood and Ronald Gow of the former’s novel. Ronald Gow, who, with his actress wife, Wendy Hillier, is a vice-president of the Dudley Little Theatre, has written to them about the production. He has also given them a hitherto untold story about the film version of Love on the Dole. ‘I think it is the only film which was made by order of the censor,’ he writes, ‘Around 1940 a copy of the book was sent to the British Board of Film Censors, who decided that they could hardly approve of some of the things in it. Greenwood and I were at variance on some points of production, and we let the idea of a film slide. Somehow it got into the U.S. A. and foreign press that Love on the Dole had been banned in Britain. Soon afterwards the late Brooks Wilkinson, then secretary to the Board of Censors, invited Greenwood and me to lunch. He said: “Now, you silly– (using a word well known in Lancashire). Life’s too short for all this nonsense, Get this film made as quickly as you can, and let me tell you that it’s an order from higher up” ’. ‘We never learned who gave the order, but obviously someone saw that it was a bad advertisement for democracy to ban it’ (p.5).
Joseph Brooke Wilkinson (1870-1948) was not himself a film censor but was secretary to the BBFC for a long and crucial period, from its foundation in 1912 until his retirement through ill-health in 1948. His DNB entry (by Sian Barber, 2015) suggests that ‘despite his considerable influence, he was a shadowy figure who thrived on secrecy, preferring to exercise his considerable power from the background’ (drawing on arguments in J.C. Robertson’s Hidden Cinema: British Film Censorship in Action, 2nd ed., 1993, p. 99 and 165). His deployment here by the BBFC and/or MOI certainly seems to support this view, as does his attempt to deflect blame from the BBFC onto the writers themselves of Love on the Dole. Gow’s account of Brooke Wilkinson’s language here seems remarkable in that the Secretary had a reputation for not deviating from positively Victorian standards of behaviour throughout his life (and he was already seventy when this conversation took place).
24 April 1950. Film released: Chance of a Lifetime (Pilgrim Pictures, directed by Bernard Miles, screenplay co-written by Miles and Greenwood). ‘Critics will decide today if the major cinema circuits were right or wrong in refusing to book the £150,000 independent film, Chance of a Lifetime. It is the first film to get a West End premiere by order of the Board of Trade’ (Daily Mail, 25 April 1950, p.3). See: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_of_a_Lifetime_(1950_film)
7 October 1950. A letter (signed LISTENER) to the Leicester Daily Mercury approves a protest against BBC Radio’s decision not to broadcast a play by its then Head of Drama, Val Gielgud (1900-1981, brother of John Gielgud). The play was Party Manners, said to be ‘detrimental to the interests of the Socialist Party’. The LISTENER says ‘it is good to see Labour novelist Walter Greenwood (Love on the Dole and The Cure for Love) join forces with Socialist publisher Victor Gollancz to attack this banning of Mr Gielgud’s work’ (p. 4). WG knew Val Gielgud well, since they often corresponded about radio adaptations of Greenwood’s work, as letters in the BBC Written Archives show. There is a brief Wikipedia entry for Party Manners which labels it as a ‘political farce’, and records that it had a number of stage performances from August to December 1950. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_Manners. Another correspondent in the same letters column expresses the view that the BBC was correct in its decision since the Labour government has had to deal with unprecedented press hostility ever since its election in 1945.
14 December 1950. Kinematograph Weekly runs full page trade advert by British National listing twelve @British Box-Office Winners’ These still at this date – nine years after its first release – include Love on the Dole.
- Lancashire: the County Books Series (London: Robert Hale Ltd).
5 May 1951. A radio adaptation of the film A Chance of a Lifetime was broadcast, with Greenwood and Bernard Miles credited as writers.
- Novel version of So Brief the Spring published (London: Hutchinson).
Play: Too Clever for Love: a Comedy in Three Acts (London: French).
- Novel: What Everybody Wants (London: Hutchinson).
Production of Saturday Night at the Crown (Morecambe, starring Thora Hird). See: https://waltergreenwoodnotjustloveonthedole.com/walter-greenwood-and-thora-hird/
Play: Saturday Night at the Crown (London: French).
1956. Down by the Sea (London: Hutchinson). This novel completed The Treeloe Trilogy (So Brief the Spring, What Everybody Wants, Down by the Sea).
2 October 1956. WG accompanies his friend and collaborator Thora Hird to a car showroom in Preston so she can consider buying a Rolls-Royce, as George Formby has done, to mark her recent successes which have put her into ‘the very top rank’ of ‘Lancashire stars’ (Lancashire Evening Post, 3 October, p.8).
12 April 1957. The Sussex Express reports that WG has acquired (bought?) a new home in the picturesque village of Mayfield (and notes that he had lived on a nearby farm at Framfield before being called up into the Army in 1943). The paper says he is working on a new comedy with a Lancashire setting for Thora Hird (presumably Happy Days – see below 1958). It also says he: ‘also has plans for a comedy based on the much-maligned stately homes of England, and is working on book of boyhood reminiscences’ (p.8). The reminiscences are clearly what some ten years later emerged as There Was a Time, but there seems to be no surviving evidence at all of the stately homes project (which seems a long way from WG’s usual interests, but perhaps stemmed from an interest on his part in their post-war status as they opened to the public either privately or as part of the National Trust in order to keep going?).
15 September 1959. The Manchester Evening News published an article by WG titled ‘King Cotton has Packed up his Sceptre and Flown’. It is about the decline of the Lancashire cotton industry and the role in this of competition from abroad. It also discusses positive relations at this period between mill owners, managers and workers – perhaps picking up interests from A Chance of a Lifetime? [see above 24 April 1950], (p. 4).
November 1958. Play Happy Days produced at the Coliseum, Oldham; then plays in June 1959 at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool, in both cases starring Thora Hird.
1959. Saturday Night at the Crown (London: Hutchinson). WG’s last published novel.
25 February 1960. Memo from Ronald Gow to BBC Radio head of copyright about forthcoming new radio adaptation of Love on the Dole reminding him/her that in all publicity the play must be referred to as jointly written by Ronald Gow and Walter Greenwood (Ronald Gow Copyright File 1 1927-1962, last item, BBC Written Archives).
March 1960. Salford Corporation marked the association between WG and his birthplace by presenting Greenwood with the no-longer needed ‘sixty-year old wooden name-plate from Hankinson Street, Pendleton, which gave its name to Hanky Park . . . the street is being demolished under a slum clearance scheme’ (The Guardian, 10 March 1960, p.18; I wonder where the name-plate is now?).
25 April 1960. BBC TV broadcast an adaptation of Love on the Dole. There are mixed reviews.
Early 1960s. WG’s birth-place in Ellor Street and much of Hanky Park area demolished to improve poor living conditions and build new high-rise housing and the Salford Shopping Precinct.
May 1960. WG’s 1938 novel The Secret Kingdom is serialised on BBC television. Press reviews are mixed.
19 October 1961. WG writes to contribute to a debate in The Stage about whether a recent growth in bingo is adversely affecting opportunities for acts and performers to play in clubs. WG’s point is more though about bingo as a new gambling addiction – he says he has heard that people are now returning to the old custom of pawning to raise money to spend on bingo (p.5).
February 1963. Play Happy Days produced at the Victoria Theatre, Salford.
February 1963. An interview with WG is filmed (it seems to be a clip – only 2 minutes 49 seconds long – perhaps part of a local Two Cities cinema black and white newsreel?). This is the only filmed interview with him apart from the 1973 video interview by the Kersal Flats Co (see Walter Greenwood: the kersal flats.co.uk Interview (1973) * ). Sadly, WG was never interviewed for television. At the [abrupt?] beginning of the clip WG is talking about a new play of his which is about to open at the Victoria Theatre, Salford but the play is not named! It must have been his play about a working men’s club called Fun and Games, from which we can date this otherwise undated interview to February 1963. WG worries that people are no longer going out to the theatre so much but staying in to watch TV ‘night after night’. He was then asked if the North has changed greatly since Love on the Dole days. He says it has – with new flats to live in and the Welfare State. He thinks there is ‘still a long way to go’ but that it’s been ‘a marvellous job, considering’. He says as for going back to the thirties, ‘no thank you!’: Salford was ‘a great fight for life’, though it also produced humour and ‘great comedians’ and ‘the wonderful fortitude of the people’. The Northwest Film Archive states that the interviewer was Gay Byrne (1934-2019 – see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Byrne. (Clip held by the Northwest Film Archive, Manchester Metropolitan University, catalogue entry at https://www.nwfa.mmu.ac.uk/viewVideo.php?token=7291agw43551dw71040027P5nxZYm4767b49Hq2d; the Salford Archive Walter Greenwood Collection also has a video copy: WGC/7/8).
1967. There Was a Time published (London: Jonathan Cape). Greenwood’s memoir of his life in Hanky Park (but only covers 1903 till 1933, with a brief coda set in 1966 – that leaves thirty-three years of his life untouched – what we might call his ‘prosperous years’ – which I am trying to fill in). See Walter Greenwood’s Memoir: There Was a Time (1967).
26 January 1967. Granada TV adaptation of Love on the Dole broadcast. Most reviews are very positive. See: Love on the Dole in a Time of Full Employment: Granada/ATV’s Television Adaptation (1967)
October 1967. Play version of There Was a Time (revived in 1971 under the title Hanky Park). Mainly good reviews (Coventry Evening Telegraph says ‘Greenwood autobiographical is as moving as Greenwood fictional’, 18 May 1967, p.10).
1970. Musical adaptation of Hanky Park (Nottingham Playhouse; revived Woking, 1996, and a limited edition CD recording – JTT-1 – made by Just the Ticket Theatre Company). See Love on the Dole: the Musical (1970) * .
1971. WG gives a series of interviews related to the production of the play adaptation of There was a Time at the Mermaid Theatre, London, directed by Bernard Miles under the title Hanky Park. See: Walter Greenwood: ‘Those Turbulent Years’ Interview (John Tusa, BBC Radio 4, 1971 ; Walter Greenwood: ‘Old Habits Die Hard’ Interview (George Rosie, the Radio Times, 1971); Walter Greenwood: ‘Dole Cue’ Interview, (the Guardian, Catherine Stott, 1971)
July 1971. WG was awarded a D. Litt (honorary degree) by the University of Salford (reported in The Times, 6 May 1971, p.18).
8 November 1972. Interview with WG published by the Manchester Evening News under what seems the eccentric title ‘Chew a Dandelion Leaf to Keep Fit says Walter’ (p. 3). WG is treated (willingly since he clearly plays along!) as somewhat of an eccentric elderly relative for Manchester folk. He explains that he bought twelve very good quality shirts in 1945 and that they have worn very well and are all still in use – indeed he is wearing one today (though he does laugh at himself for complaining that recently a button has fallen off a thirty-year old suit!). He is described as having ‘strong beliefs’ about ‘food, fitness, tranquillity and the benefits of chatting with strangers’. It is at this point that WG advises on the (alleged) health benefits of chewing a dandelion leaf while you work (though I am something of a WG fan, I have not yet tried this). I think this was his last newspaper interview – and one which found him in high spirits. WG is in Manchester on a visit from his Isle of Man home in connection with the production at Oldham of Hanky Park, the stage version of There Was a Time.
Also notably, WG reports that his ‘big novel based on Manchester police has been put on the shelf. It’s just not quite right. And you must never take your horse to market until you are sure its in good fettle’. This is surely his unpublished novel about contemporary Manchester which he was working on across the late 60s and 70s and which he referred to as being titled It Takes All Sorts.
There are some six variant draft manuscripts and typescripts of this in the Walter Greenwood Collection at Salford University Archives (see items under WGC/1/28). The Manchester Evening News report is the only place where WG stated his feeling that his novel does not yet quite work and is therefore not ready for publication. I have read (though in a rather rapid sitting or two at Salford Archives) the typescript version described as carbon copy E and dated 1970. There are many corrections and variant pages and additions, and though of novel length (355 pages) the work does not really reach a satisfactory conclusion: the typescript ends without an obvious cadence and then is followed by a further page with an alternative half-page of typed text and half a page of handwritten notes. In short, the typescript itself though substantial does seem to suggest that Greenwood was indeed not convinced that it was a completed work.
The project is reasonably clear though: the novel was to give a portrayal of ordinary Manchester life in the modern city of the nineteen-seventies. For WG new elements since his life in the Two Cities in the nineteen-thirties were allegedly widespread drug-dealing (though the novel does not deal with drug-using) and the exploitation, especially by land-lords of lodgings, of new populations of ‘Asian’ workers, though only one of these, Mr Banerjee, really emerges as anything like an individual character. It has a very large cast of characters, so many that the story is not always easy to follow, but the central character (or anyway the character I find it easiest to follow) seems to be Joe Braggott who begins as a lorry driver and pigeon-fancier, with a champion racing-bird called the Blue Chequer. However, feeling that his wages are falling behind those of his peers, disliking the introduction of tachographs, thinking that his bosses prefer to hire younger drivers, he falls into temptation and starts transporting bundles of drugs (not sure we ever find out of what kind) in his truck. He begins to make substantial money and invests his funds in first a pet shop (which seems odd!) and then a taxi firm and finally a coach firm, doing both football and continental trips. He has in many ways become respectable, a good employer who has an accountant and submits an annual tax return (though clearly with falsified aspects about the source of his original investment funds – money-laundering was no doubt easier to get away with then). He at first lives with Minnie, who has been his land-lady, and finally marries her and refurbishes a house for both outside the conurbation and in the countryside. He never abandons his pigeon loft, though. The Manchester Police force do indeed play a part in the novel (though not that major a part as far as I could see) and several minor characters are arrested for drug-dealing. I kept expecting Joe Braggott to get his come-uppance, but by page 355, the police had not caught up with him. This seems very un-Greenwoodian!.
Some commentary about an emerging new city landscape in the Two Cities is voiced by Minnie:
Mid-twentieth century town-planning had razed great tracts of slumdom, leaving no-man’s lands on whose windy deserts could be seen in completed, preliminary and advanced stages of building the multi-storied flats and the motorways, some elevated, which would make up the face of tomorrow’s city (p. 7).
This might particularly refer to the radical nineteen-sixties remodelling of Salford – see Walter Greenwood Court (15 Storeys, 1964-2001) *. If this is all sounding bleak, there is also at times a sense of new opportunities for some: ‘the night-schools. the techs and the universities [were[ all bursting at the seams’ (alternative chapter 2a, page e).
November 1972 to October 1973. Correspondence between WG and the University of Salford about the purchase of the author’s papers and manuscripts (letters on this topic formerly identified in the Walter Greenwood Collection catalogue as folders WGP/2/32, WGP/2/33, WGP/2/34 and WGP/2/35).
1973. WG’s last interview and only second filmed interview, initiated by the Kersal Flats Co. I have so far not identified the interviewer (see Walter Greenwood: the kersal flats.co.uk Interview (1973) *). He is asked about his boyhood and about changes since then.
11 September 1974. WG dies at his home on the Isle of Man, aged seventy-one.
Walter Greenwood: Not Just Love on the Dole 