Raise a cheer for Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries, passionate visionaries who put on hard hats and entered condemned cinemas prior to demolition in the late 1970s and early 1980s, rescuing fixtures and fittings, and amassing a vast trove of artefacts when no-one else cared, thereby creating what is, in effect, the national collection of cinema history.
‘People would tell us,’ Martin explains, raising a significant eyebrow and recalling how they got tipped off. ‘It could be quite heartbreaking because we saw things that we couldn’t rescue but that should have been. Sometimes they [the cinemas] were pretty much destroyed and we were going into the wrecked shell of a building, but if we got there early enough there would be rooms intact and we rescued whatever we could, projectors sometimes, seats, cinema sofas. Obviously we were interested in papers, documentation of how the theatre operated, what films were shown. And Ronald took photographs. It was extraordinary really.’
Only a fraction of Ronald and Martin’s collection is currently on display at the Cinema Museum in Lambeth that they created together, yet this is enough to present an overwhelming treasure house of objects that speak eloquently of the golden age of cinema, infused with memory and brimming with sentiment, evoking both the joy and romance of these fond palaces of popular entertainment while also bearing testament to their loss.
Yet there is another, unexpected aspect to this story that amplifies the wonder of the place. For the museum is housed in the former Lambeth Workhouse built in an ornate Venetian Gothic style by R. Parris and TW Aldwinckle in 1871, situated in the corner of London that is the heartland of the genesis of Charlie Chaplin, where he was born and grew up, where he first performed and where he drew his cultural influences. And the Lambeth Workhouse itself was the location of a seminal moment in the forging of his emotional psyche, which in turn shaped and coloured the nature of his contribution to the evolution of cinema.
It was here that Hannah brought her seven-year-old son Charlie with his elder half-brother Sydney when they faced destitution in 1896. ‘On that doleful day I didn’t realise what was happening until we actually entered the workhouse gate. Then the forlorn bewilderment of it struck me; for there we were made to separate, Mother going in one direction to the women’s ward and we in another to the children’s ward,’ Charlie recalled in his autobiography in 1964.
Once you know this, it is impossible to approach the museum – passing through this same gate – and be dispassionate, for you are entering a portal to an emotional cinematic universe, where personal grief can be transformed into collective joy. Chaplin carried a certain culture of the penniless, the ragged and the downtrodden from Europe across the Atlantic, translating it with such superlative success into an infinite capacity for hope, humour and resourcefulness, which found its expression in cinema. And the contents of the museum manifest this exuberance in physical form.
Currently, Ronald Grant and Martin Humphries are fighting to assure the future of the Cinema Museum in perpetuity and to do this they need to purchase the building, which has been offered to them for the sum of £1 million. Already an undisclosed donor has offered £500,000 if they can raise £500,000 to match it by 1 December and a fundraising campaign is underway. Ownership would permit a programme of repair and restoration to the Grade II-listed building, accompanied by improvements including the construction of a cinema, an accessible archive and enlarged exhibition spaces with more of the collection on display. So let’s give another standing ovation to Ronald and Martin for their indefatigable spirit, and then put our hands in our pockets and dig deep.
Cinema Museum, 2 Dugard Way, Renfrew Rd, London SE11. Visit cinemamuseum.org.uk
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