1940s-1950s Scotland's Home Movies

For over 100 years, the people of Scotland have been filming...

themselves.

Oh, my gosh, is that Grandpa?

What does he look like?

My mum, what's my mum's waist look like?

Oh, dear!

Across generations, home movies have recorded the ordinary

as well as the great moments of life.

Wonderful. Wonderful.

From our first steps

to our furthest travels and everything in-between.

It means an awful lot to me

and I feel I've got some gems amongst it.

Today, we take for granted the ability to record our lives

on tiny digital cameras and mobile phones,

but in this series, we look back to the golden age of home movies,

shot on cine film by our parents,

grandparents and great-grandparents.

Unearthed from attics and cupboards across the country,

home movies from the 1920s to the 1980s

tell an alternative, more intimate history of Scotland.

1940s MUSIC

In this episode, we're heading back to the 1940s and '50s.

From the horrors of the Second World War

to the optimism of the Macmillan era,

it was a time of extraordinary contrasts.

Cheaper cameras meant that Scotland's middle classes

were now also able to capture their lives on film.

This is the study.

This is where I do all my filming and editing.

As a hobby, 90-year-old Norman Speirs

has been helping people to reconnect with their past

by transferring their old cine films to DVD.

HE MUMBLES TO HIMSELF

People have found film in the attic,

made by grandparents or uncles

and they say they can't show it any more,

and I've got various projectors of different sizes.

It usually falls to me to try and do something with it.

It does give them pleasure, in being able to see films

that sometimes they haven't seen for 50 years or more.

Mostly it's been family films.

We have had some people who have been very pleased with the work,

because of the memories it evokes from being there.

You get the same sort of shots in different families,

different periods.

1950s, 1970s.

You get the children on the beach, running into the water.

They all want to jump over the waves as they come in,

and they all have fond memories of it.

# It's so important to make someone happy

# Make just one someone happy

# Make just one heart to heart you...

# You sing to

# One smile that cheers you

# One face that lights when it nears you

# One girl you're...

# You're everything to... #

Norman has been working with cine film

for the whole of his adult life.

Well, I've always been interested in photography,

and then, later on, the idea cine crossed my mind.

And then I was married and we were expecting our first baby,

and I thought, "Now this is an opportunity

"to start filming in earnest."

And I managed to get a couple of rolls of eight millimetre

Kodachrome colour film.

No camera, but I got the film anyway.

And...we'd lost the baby.

So the film lay unattended for a number of years in a drawer.

Whilst photographs capture individual moments,

it's these films of family and friends doing things together

that most movingly evoke our memories.

They show us how much our lives have changed

and how much has stayed the same.

A familiar scene in Scotland's home movies still popular today

is the community parade.

This one's held every year in June in Lanark.

Keith Prentice has taken part for as long as he's been able to walk,

always recorded on film by his father.

The Lanimer Parade is one of Scotland's oldest traditions,

dating back to the 12th century.

I'm on that float, Peter Pan, I think,

and I'm Captain Hook at the back and my sister is Tinkerbell.

This footage is from 1939,

just a few short weeks before events in Europe interrupted

this ancient ritual and changed the world forever.

We all know what happened after Hitler invaded Poland,

and how badly Scotland was affected by the long and bloody conflict,

but rare home movie footage from the era shows what day-to-day life

was like in the country's towns and villages

and for the children who lived in them.

I was 12 years old when the war started.

I didn't know what to expect or what it all meant, actually.

That's me.

Me again with my sister.

Film stock, like everything else, was rationed,

but Keith's dad ran a chemist shop that sold film and cameras,

so he was able to make home movies throughout the war.

Everyone, including the children, had a job to do.

Keith, on the far left in these shots,

was a messenger for the local Air Raid Services.

I didn't think it was serious at all, you know, as I look back.

You know, things went on just as normal. We went on holiday...

But, during the Clydeside Blitz, this was the route

that the bombers took and we heard them going over

and I vividly remember that it wasn't a very nice sound.

WHISTLING EXPLOSIONS

This is a back yard concert, it was all the rage during the war,

dong small concerts and having an audience and charging them something

and we gave it to help the war effort.

This is doing, uh...Sleeping Beauty, I think it was,

made up by my sister and friends.

And there's the curtain.

# Goodnight, children

# Everywhere

# Your mummy thinks of you... #

Keith's dad's films are a rare record of life on the home front.

He filmed morale-boosting parades, marches and other community events.

In their own way, these home movies also contributed to the war effort.

During the dark nights of the war,

we would brighten ourselves up with some of these films.

The spirit of togetherness.

The end of the war saw a landslide victory for the Labour Party

on a promise of greater social justice,

a National Health Service and more low-cost council housing.

But the shadow of post-war austerity lingered well into the 1950s.

Around this time, a group of young Edinburgh schoolteachers

came together to form the Norton Park Group.

They wanted to film their pupils at play.

The films they made capture a bygone era

of children playing peevers, peeries and bools

in the back greens and tenement stairways

of the smoke-filled Edinburgh streets.

Isa Gillon was 12 at the time.

When we were in the playground, that would be the start of it,

cos at playtime you always played skipping or peevers

or you would have two balls and stot them off the wall,

but you always sung a wee song when you were doing that.

And even when you were skipping, if it was the bumps, you always

emphasised when you did the double jump

and things like that.

You really got a lot of pleasure out of nothing, really.

And all these songs, you could rattle them off by heart.

We used to sit in the stair if it pouring with rain

and we'd all take a turn singing,

cos you sounded better cos it all echoed.

And I mean, the neighbours never come out and said get away.

They must have felt we sung all right.

# The wind, the wind The wind blows high

# The snow comes falling from the sky... #

Although sound on film had been made possible in the late 1920s,

it wasn't common in home movies until the 1950s.

In the second Norton Park film, the children's songs and rhymes

were added to the soundtrack.

Isa, Cathie, Sandra and Christine

were all featured in The Singing Street.

This is the first time they've been together in over 60 years.

-CHILD ON FILM:

-# In and out the dusty bluebells

# In and out the dusty bluebells In and out the dusty bluebells

# I am your master. #

# Pitter pitter patter on your shoulder

# Pitter pitter patter on your shoulder

# Pitter pitter patter on your shoulder

# I am your master. #

-Oh, there's me!

-There you are!

Very good!

# I am your master

# In and out the dusty bluebells... #

It's hard to believe that it's you, eh?

I know, we were all very graceful.

We were all very skinny!

That's me there in the middle of the ropes with the white shoes on.

I thought that was Margaret Thompson.

-Is that you?

-That's me.

Without much traffic, children could play safely outside unsupervised.

# Ice cake, spice cake all for tea

# And we'll have a wedding at half past three. #

Every time you were out in the street,

there was folk singing, there was people singing.

If you seen a car then, it was very rare.

It was a doctor or an undertaker.

# The wind, the wind The wind blows high,

# The snow comes falling from the sky

# Margaret Thompson says she'll die for the want of the golden city... #

These songs evoke the fun and mischief of long childhood days.

They were learned from their peers and elders,

with the favourite theme being first loves.

# B is his first name His first name, his first name

# B is his first name Ee-aye-oh, sir

# M is his second name His second name... #

If you had a crush on a boy or something and then when you were

playing that game, you would be saying his initials,

rather than say to your pal, "I fancy him."

Jimmy Gillon.

# Show you face, show your face

# Now it's time to show your face Ee-aye-oh, sir. #

I mean, you would need to record it or it would get lost forever.

I don't know about your grandchildren,

but my grandchildren don't know any songs like that.

Don't know any songs like that.

You'll never see that again now.

You'll never see how we all came together and played these games,

and we were so healthy and it's the vitality that gets me.

I never felt one bit deprived.

My daughter says, "Mum, how did you manage?"

-I says, "I managed all right."

-You just had to.

Everybody was the same.

Do you know, we don't know how lucky we are, now, eh?

I think it's nice to look at us, look at everybody then,

cos life was still ahead for us, wasn't it?

We all had that bloom.

-Everything was an adventure.

-Yeah.

# Mr Sandman, bring me a dream

# Make him the cutest that I've ever seen

# Give him two lips like roses and clover

# Then tell him that his lonesome nights are over... #

The 1950s brought a growing sense of optimism to Scotland.

World War II had been a long and difficult conflict.

Peace came as a huge relief and people celebrated

by embarking on new relationships,

and many sought work and adventure overseas.

-Mention the tea.

-Hmm?

Tell them about tea.

Well, I went out to India in 1951.

I joined a tea company there.

Robert's sister was our next-door neighbour,

so that's how I heard about Robert.

We wrote back and forward for four-and-a-half years.

And then he came home

and we got married.

Engaged and married within six weeks.

Six weeks. Yes.

# Again

# This couldn't happen again... #

All went well.

Wonderful. Wonderful.

Somebody said, "Robert's got his arm pinned to his side."

I think he was holding himself up.

I had been at a stag night the night before,

so I wasn't fully compos mentis,

I was very hungover at the time.

This is one I would like you to see.

Here we are, this is what you want.

That's Robert...when he had hair!

Shortly after their marriage,

Robert took Jessie back to India to live and work on a tea plantation.

We had a great time onboard the ship.

You know, there was a group of tea planters and quite a wild crowd

so we had quite a good party on board.

Mostly Scots.

Although the sun was finally beginning to set

on the British Empire, India and the other countries

of the newly defined Commonwealth

were still popular destinations for Scots wanting to work abroad.

Remember, it was just after the end of the war,

people had all travelled abroad we had heard all these stories,

so it was...something you just wanted to do.

OK, it was a great adventure, but at the same time,

and by the same token, it was something that a lot of people

were doing at the time.

Here's a shot here, coming up.

-The one on the left's Jessie.

-HE LAUGHS

Very funny(!)

Here's Jessie on the elephant.

It was all jaggy.

I had a dress on and my legs were sore

and I wanted down and Robert said, "You asked to get up!"

And that's Robert pretending he's going to shoot something.

Well, I had to carry a gun up there

because this was really deep in the jungle,

so we had to have a shotgun with us, just in case.

There was quite a few leopard in that part of the world.

Robert and Jessie stayed in India for seven years.

Their adventures, including the arrival of two children,

are all captured in their home movies.

It's difficult for people to imagine what it was like,

and that was one of the reasons why Robert got a camera,

so when he came home, he could show people here what it was like.

These films bring back a lot of memories.

We reminisce.

Home movie making exploded in the 1950s,

alongside a rapidly growing British economy.

With more money to spend,

a surplus of aeroplanes left over from the war, and the relaxation

of border controls, travelling the world had never been so easy.

In an effort to rebuild their own economies,

Spain and the countries of southern Europe

began to consider the potential for tourism, so they put up hotels,

and the package holiday was born.

Naturally, people wanted to record these new cultural experiences,

so the travelogue became a home movie favourite.

There's a lovely scene taken in Switzerland

where my grandpa and I are having breakfast on a balcony.

A continental breakfast

with hot chocolate and croissants and stuff like that,

and it's a really lovely memory to have.

Nice wee gem from the past, if you like.

In the early 1950s, Jack Loudon's father took up film-making

to record family life, and their travels.

They were always part of my childhood, everywhere we went.

Photographs don't capture that little bit of life.

You just get the extra movement and you see all the little gestures,

little mannerisms, things you'd forgotten about.

It enables you to form a better picture

of what life was like in those days.

-OLD VIDEO:

-There is an old song which says,

"If I knew you were coming, I'd have baked a cake."

But since you are here, this is how we make a cream sponge.

So that's our kitchen at Larchmont in Kilmacolm.

By the late 1950s, television was beginning to have a major impact

on leisure time.

It even started to affect how people filmed each other

in their home movies.

Mum was always very stylish, wasn't she?

She was, actually, yes.

Well, she died when she was 91,

-and she looked about 75.

-Yeah.

And...er, the shiny shoes on, the make-up on, the nails done,

all the jewellery on, absolutely immaculate.

Just looked as though she was sitting having a sleep.

She did that in style as well, didn't she?

-Yeah, did everything in style.

-She did everything in style.

It's nice just seeing her doing everyday things

the way you remember her.

That cheeky chappie was you, wasn't it?

That was me just appearing round the door there, yes.

I seem to have been told to get it in my face just as quickly as I can.

-VIDEO:

-We think our cake is lighter

by the addition of two tablespoonfuls

of nearly boiling water,

although this is not absolutely necessary.

He used to write all the scripts himself, and usually my mum

narrated them, but she'd a very BBC voice. It was of its time,

you know, like the newscasters used to have and I don't think

she was putting it on or anything, it was just, er...it seemed natural

That's just how everybody spoke in those days.

-VIDEO:

-While our sponge is cooking, the clearing

and washing up can be started.

Nice the cines have survived.

I said, as soon as I retire,

one of the things I'd like to do is get them onto DVD.

To preserve them.

To preserve them and pass them on down to the next generation,

for them to see their granny,

and in some cases their great-granny, making a cake.

-Yes.

-I mean, you can't put a price on that.

-That's extraordinary.

You can't put a price on that.

There's young love.

# Earth angel... #

In 1957, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan

told the nation that they'd never had it so good.

The post-war creation of the National Health Service

and welfare state gave a whole generation

a sense of security and prosperity.

The result was a sharp rise in births - a baby boom.

We had three boys and a girl.

There's the eldest son, cowboy Joe.

If ever there was something people wanted to film,

it was their children.

That's Jennifer arriving on the scene now.

That was a great day, when she was born.

When your third boy comes along, "Oh, it's another boy."

Then all of a sudden a girl appears

and, "Oh, that's nice, you've got a girl.

"Oh, that's nice."

As a hobby, Norman Speirs has been helping people to rediscover

their memories by transferring their old cine films to DVD.

Probably one films happy times more than sad times.

And perhaps that's a good thing in a way

because you then remember the best times.

One doesn't really want to start filming funerals.

After losing their first baby,

Norman and his wife Dorothy eventually had a daughter.

Wendy.

All the film of the family, of my daughter,

from the day she was born,

we copied all that onto DVDs,

and it took 26 DVDs to cover it all.

# Come softly, darling

# Come softly, darling

# Come softly, darling

# Come softly, darling

# Come softly, darling

# Come to me, stay

# You're my obsession forever and a day... #

When you're doing the copying onto DVD,

this was a condensed period.

We did a whole thing in two or three months

and we were able to view it,

and what was fascinating was seeing them growing up, in the space

of literally a few months,

and I feel I've got some gems amongst it.

# Always, always

# I've waited so long

# For your kisses and your love... #

I just couldn't see me existing without having...film or video,

as Dorothy would say, to play with.

They mean an awful lot to me.

It's been a fascinating progress...through life.

When I'm gone - and it won't be all that far off now cos Dorothy and I

both celebrated our 90th birthdays this year -

Dorothy's version of what's going to happen is a large skip

will be delivered to the house and it'll all go in the skip.

I'll be horrified, but who else is going to be interested?

Who's going to be interested in seeing it all?

Next time on Scotland's Home Movies, it's the mythical 1960s...

Wow.

I don't remember ever seeing this before.

..and the lurid 1970s.

This is where fashion really doesn't do us any justice whatsoever!

MUSIC: Don't Let It Die by Hurricane Smith