This film was made by Huddersfield filmmaker Ernest Taylor. The YFA has ten films made by Ernest spanning the ten years from 1945 to 1955, the year before his death in 1956. Ernest may have started making films earlier in 1939, although the war made obtaining film very difficult. The films are mainly of the family and holidays, although he also made training films. Ernest was a member of the Huddersfield Cine Club, of which he was twice Chairman.  Ernest made several holiday films like this one, such as The Dales (c. 1945) – the following year Ernest filmed My Summer Cruise capturing some famous faces of the time, Mary Clare, Gracie Fields, and June Whitfield. He also ventured into a fictional film with Careless Security (1952).

 

Ernest was also a member of Huddersfield Rotary Club, and this, as well as his work in business – with his own tailoring establishment – the Special Constables and the Air Training Corps, brought him contacts he could use in his filmmaking. He was also active in the local operatic societies – the Huddersfield Light Opera Society and the Huddersfield Amateur Opera Society, both performing and organising. In 1954 this resulted in a wonderful film he made of one of the Societies and their productions, Amateur Cavalcade. More information on Ernest and his films can be found in the Context for Careless Security.

 

It is not surprising that Ernest received awards for this film. The film of these seaside resorts is among the best of its kind held by the YFA. The film of Scarborough in particular is worth comparing with that of Having a Wonderful Time (1960), a professional film of Scarborough which also captures it at its best. A similar comparison is also worth doing in relation to Bridlington, which features in an earlier film, Yorkshire Beaches (1945). With more leisure time and living standards rising, the 1950s were the heyday of holidays besides the British seaside, before the advent of cheaper holidays abroad – see the Context for Butlins–Filey (1975).

 

So much has vanished from Scarborough since 1953 that it would be too much to list it all here. Perhaps the most notable and sad loss is the lido, which is seen here at its glorious best, and proof of just what an attraction this was. This is less the case with Bridlington, although the Bridlington Queen, seen here packed out, and which had only started life six years earlier in 1947, left Bridlington in the 1980s to sail down the Tay. On 17th July 1966 (the day after Bobby Charlton got his great goal against Mexico in the World Cup) the Bridlington Queen hit a submerged rock just as it was leaving harbour, sinking on the stern side. However, none of the passengers so much as got their feet wet.  The ‘Bridlington Queen’ went on to spend its last days touring along the Trent at Nottingham before being scrapped at Goole in 1995.

 

One of the more interesting aspects of the film is seeing the famous Peter Brough and his ventriloquists dummy Archie Andrews (at least, so it very much appears). At this time the pair was as well known and popular in Britain as anyone in show business. Perhaps rather oddly, they had a radio programme that had on average of 15 million listeners. This gave a first start to many up and coming performers such as Tony Hancock, Max Bygraves, Harry Secombe, Beryl Reid, and even a young Julie Andrews. Peter Brough started with a dummy before the war, walking in the footsteps of his father, and inspired by the American entertainer Ed Bergen, who had been doing disputations with dummies in US nightclubs since 1936. But Peter Brough’s act got some stick in 1943, whilst performing with Gracie Fields for the troops, and he came up with the much mimicked squeaky voiced Archie Andrews. Later on in the 1950s he had a television show for ITV, scripted by Ronald Chesney and Marty Feldman. A couple of years before we see Archie here he went missing on a train journey to Leeds. A £1,000 reward got him back.  After Peter Brough died in 1999 Archie was bought at auction in 2005 for £34,000.

 

Although ventriloquists, or ‘vents’, are still around, their popularity has sharply declined. They used to turn up as much in horror films as on TV light entertainment shows. Their spookiness has given rise to the condition of automatonophobia: "a persistent, abnormal, and unwarranted fear of ventriloquist's dummies, animatronic creatures or wax statues". One wonders what all the small children watching Archie made of him: as Neil Norman has recalled, “A mannequin invested with the personality of a wisecracking schoolboy, he put the willies up me something awful.”  Jonathan Rée provides a useful overview of the history of ventriloquism, which provokes some fascinating philosophical musings, in his review of Steven Connor’s book, Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (2000), in the London Review of Books (References).

 

This film of Peter Brough and his dummy Archie Andrews shows that there was more to entertain the kids at the seaside than just Punch and Judy shows. In fact it gives an indication of just how close seaside entertainment was to mainstream entertainment on the radio and TV. Ernest Taylor’s film has several surprises like this, and one can’t help feeling that his background in light opera and amateur theatre has influenced both his choice of what to film and the expertise he brings to bear on how he films. This makes Holidays in England much more than just the usual family holiday footage that the title tends to suggest.

 

 

Neil Norman Archie Andrews: The rise and fall of a ventriloquist's dummy, The Independent, 26 November, 2005