While the output of the Mancunian Film Corporation is not particularly well
known now, the company is notable for establishing, albeit briefly, the only
British feature film studio outside London and the South East. There, the
company's founder, John E. Blakeley, produced low-budget comedies and programme
fillers catering for cinema-goers in the North of England.
From 1908, James Blakeley worked as a film distributor and exhibitor, taking
films round northern mill towns. In 1927, his son, John E. Blakeley, set up Song
Films Ltd to produce short musical subjects, including a series based on operas.
This company evolved into Blakeley Productions in 1928, and in June 1934 became
the Mancunian Film Corporation. John E. Blakeley's idea was to make screen stars
out of popular northern comedians, and his first hit was Boots! Boots! (d. Bert
Tracey, 1934), starring George Formby. Formby subsequently won a contract with
Associated Talking Pictures (later Ealing Studios) and became a national star,
but Blakeley went on to make films with other comics such as Norman Evans, Jimmy
James, Frank Randle and Sandy Powell. Conceived as vehicles for the comedians,
the films were not great critical successes but were hugely popular with local
audiences. Blakeley directed most of them himself, occasionally employing other
directors such as Bert Tracey and Arthur Mertz.
Blakeley had to transport his crew and stars down to London to film at
studios there, and found the travelling and the limits on hire time very
restricting. So, in 1947 he opened the first film studio in Manchester, at a
converted Methodist church in Rusholme. It was very much a family business, with
Blakeley's two sons both working there and other friends joining the team. Made
on very small budgets, the films were briefly profitable, and the studio became
known as 'Jollywood' due to its staple output of comedies.
The scripts for the films were merely skeletons to be fleshed out by the
comedy routines. In fact, they often contained blank pages headed 'Bus', to
indicate that a comic was to fill the gap with some 'business'. While narrative
and production values are not strong points of Mancunian's output, one can't
help but appreciate the sheer sense of fun and anarchy exuded by the films. With
two or three comics in each, the atmosphere on-set must have been a riot, and
the results are an important record of the music hall artists of the period.
The studio was only in operation for six years; in 1953, John E. Blakeley
retired and Rusholme became a BBC television studio. However, John's son Tom
took over the company and carried on the business into the 1960s, producing
second features using directors such as Lance Comfort and Francis Searle, again
filmed at London studios. These later films were mainly crime-themed since the
comedy/variety genre was now largely the domain of television.
More than 60 films were produced by Mancunian in its various incarnations,
and Rusholme remains the only regional studio to make feature films. It is a
common belief that the films were only really popular with local audiences, in
the same way that the films of Middlesbrough comedian Roy Chubby Brown rarely
reach cinemas south of the Midlands today. Since few records exist of what
reception films received at the time, it is difficult to substantiate this, but
some commentators disagree and maintain that the films were successful
nationwide.
Watched now, many of the comedy sequences stand up well, although the films'
low budgets and tight schedules are all too apparent. However, John E. Blakeley
achieved his aim, to record popular music hall acts of the day, and the films
remain valuable documents of what made people laugh in the mid-20th
century.
Jo Botting
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