In the first few decades of the 20th century, many members of the Sydney elite, like civilized people throughout the world, feared the challenge posed to their old culture by the new, mechanical and American “tinned culture – cinema, gramophone, wireless”. [1]  Against its incursions they staged a reaction in which good taste, anti-commercialism, anti-modernism and anti-Americanism became synonymous. This rejection has been extensively studied in Australia [1] as elsewhere. [3]  But some of the civilized Sydneysiders adopted a more positive approach to commercial popular culture.

Certainly, for this progressive intelligentsia, the romance of Hollywood was tawdry, its glamour cheap and sentimental, its citizenship demotic and vulgar. But it didn’t have to be. The inferiority of moving pictures “[was] not an essential characteristic. It [was] due to the standards and methods of production at Hollywood.” [4] What they sought instead from modern popular culture was something more, something better. These intellectuals craved a romance that was truly heroic, and the ideal they conjured was the Good Life of the classical Greeks: “Freedom, Reason, Beauty, Excellence (Arente), the pursuit of Truth.” [5] For such people, “Cars and smart parties and aiming first and foremost at pleasure don’t make people happy… Happiness is an energy of the soul along the lines of excellence.'” [6]  Such energy had the potential to redeem even the popular arts. By the addition of hard work and hard thinking, popular novels and journalism could be made vehicles for the spread of ideas, “especially ‘on the proper study of mankind'”, and for learning “about life outside [one’s] own narrow experience”. [7] Popular theatre could have “other functions besides serving as a digestive for a good dinner” [8] and, like all dramatic activity, could “assist art, right relation”[sic]. [9] Radio too could develop the dramatic qualities of its announcers’ voices, [10]  and “educate the public and assist general culture.” [11] Even cinema was capable of displaying “qualities of imagination and artistic truth” [12]  and “could be made a very valuable educational agency.” [13]

All these statements of aspiration to redirect modern popular culture came from the pens of two sisters, Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley. The Tildesley sisters were leading members of Sydney’s cultural elite in the 1920s and 1930s, involved in a network of conversation and community that spanned not only upper class Sydney but the globe. Both were active in the realms of education, amateur theatre, and arts journalism, and they belonged to many voluntary organizations concerned with social and cultural matters. In their public and private writings one can trace a critical engagement with modern popular culture and a concern to improve its effects in the public domain and everyday life. Beatrice Tildesley, in particular, was one of very few Australian intellectuals to write seriously on the cinema and can lay claim to being the country’s foremost independent film critic and commentator for a decade from the mid-1920s. In the rest of this essay I will outline the story of Beatrice Tildesley’s quest to civilize moving pictures, pursued through a range of local and international cultural institutions and organizations.

Beatrice Maude Tildesley was born in England in 1886, and died in Sydney in 1977. She was a Girton woman – classical tripos, 1909. During the Great War, she left England to join her older sister Evelyn in Sydney, and taught classics, tennis and fencing at a private girls’ school. In 1923 she “obtained the means of independence” [14] and thereafter pursued the active life of a single, female, Australian intellectual: she went to the theatre, recitals, lectures; she wrote poetry and reviews; she was a member of many political and cultural committees; an art and theatre critic; an amateur actor; and bon vivante. Her social circle was wide, on both sides of the world, embracing women and men of letters, painting, theatre, the professions. Beatrice Tildesley was an educated woman dedicated to culture in the Matthew Arnold sense: “the best that has been thought and known in the world … the study and pursuit of perfection”. [15]

It was her love of theatre which drew Tildesley to what she hoped would be its modern incarnation, moving pictures. She announced with equanimity to the Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry in 1927 that, “Naturally I have paid considerable attention to films as a branch of drama. In 1924-25 I was in Europe and saw almost everything of note in the London theatres, including some films.” [16] There are two revealing terms in this short statement. By the phrase, “of note” she established her status as a civilized woman of good taste, an arbiter of cultural standards. And in her use of the one word, “naturally”, she employed that power of judgment to grant moving pictures a respectable lineage. Over the next decade she sought to encourage the moving picture industry and its audience to live up to the inherent possibilities of that pedigree.

Tildesley’s film credentials were extensive. She was a member of the Good Film League from about 1924 or 25. She gave evidence on its behalf to the 1926-28 Royal Commission on the Moving Picture Industry, and represented it on the New South Wales branch of the League of Nations Union. She was a member of the National Council of Women’s Standing Committee on Cinema and Broadcasting, and in 1930 she became the Australian Correspondent on the Cinema Project for the Women’s Pan-Pacific Conference for whom she prepared a report on “The Cinema in Australia”. She was one of the founders of the Film Society of Australia and remained its Secretary from 1931 until it wound up in 1935. In 1931 she was invited to form the Australian committee of the International Educational Cinematographic Institute, a body established in Rome under the direction of the League of Nations. From 1933 to 1935 she was the inaugural film critic for the Australian Women’s Weekly and The Housewife. In 1934, she was appointed one of three adjudicators for the Commonwealth Government’s second Film Competition. After about 1935, however, her activities fade from the public record.

The first steps in Beatrice Tildesley’s career of civilizing moving pictures were taken in the ranks of the Good Film League. The League was Sydney’s first fully fledged film society and the only organization devoted solely to the reform of commercial popular culture. For some years there had been calls for such a body coming from women’s organizations, and in 1922 a special conference on moving pictures was organized by the National Council of Women of New South Wales. From that meeting the Better Film League was launched, under the leadership of the renowned feminist reformer, Maybanke Anderson. [17]  Within a year of its launch, Sydney’s Better Films had become Good Film.

The interest of the National Council of Women of New South Wales in establishing such an organization had been stimulated by its head office, the International Council of Women. The international resolution was unambiguous. From New York to London through many ports of call to Sydney, the aim was to promote a “movement for encouraging better cinema films and the use of educational films, and also for giving women more influence in the censorship of films”. [18] The aims of the
Good Film League of NSW were explicitly crafted to give effect to that moral and aesthetic agenda.

1) to encourage the presentation, under good conditions, of moving pictures of a high ethical and artistic standard;
2) to secure adequate censorship of all advertisements relating to moving pictures;
3) to extend the use of picture films under healthy conditions as a factor of education in the schools of New South Wales. [19]

At the centre of the League’s concerns was the impressionable child. The first President of the League, Dr Neil McQueen, a psychologist and Principal of the Presbyterian Ladies’ College, enthusiastically endorsed the use of educational films in teaching: “the object of using film is to make the lessons live”. [20] The Progressive ideal of reformed recreation was expressed by another educationalist at an early meeting.

The speaker said as the picture show had come to stay we should encourage the screening of the best films of an instructive, uplifting, artistic, and scientific nature. Cut out the sensual, suggestive, and sensational. Encourage the good, clean comic. Let our children laugh and be happy. [21]

The League sought to restrict the hours for children’s attendance, secure more appropriate programming for matinees and improve the safety of theatres both physically and morally. More generally, it lobbied for the prohibition of sensational and suggestive posters, and for strengthening censorship. [22] In pursuit of this last goal, it argued over many years for the rationalization of censorship and the appointment of a woman to the Censorship Board.

The Good Film League attempted to be scientific in its study of picture exhibition practices: conducting surveys, researching the economics of the industry, and maintaining close liaison with the Censorship Office. At the 1926 Interstate Conference of the National Councils of Women, a number of delegates drew attention to “the undesirableness of the exhibition of violent deaths, stealing, and brutal and demoralising scenes” [23] in moving pictures and sought the Conference’s affirmation of the need for stricter censorship and regulation of the film industry. The Vice-President of the League, Mildred Muscio, a psychologist and also Vice-President of the National Council of Women of NSW and President of the Federal Council, diplomatically defended the reforms that had already been made:

while strongly supporting the condemnation of violence in films, and of indecency in either films or the advertisements for them, she felt that these resolutions had been framed without close knowledge of what had been done in these matters and of the present state of the censorship. [24]

But such uninformed opinions remained loud and persistent. By the mid 1920s, apprehension about the many forms of modern commercial culture had coalesced into opposition to its leading public incarnation: moving pictures. Film historians Richard Maltby and Ruth Vasey have argued that, in Europe, “Hollywood, identified as the key industry of mass culture, was scapegoated in a process of displacement of responsibility for social change.” [25]  The same process can be seen at work in Australia. Not only the League but the Federal Government was alert to widespread and increasing complaint against the film industry. A Senate Select Committee was appointed in 1927, then quickly converted into a Royal Commission “to investigate conditions in the motion-picture industry, to determine whether (as was alleged) an American combine was dominating the Australian film trade, and to recommend Government action, if advisable”.[26] The Commission took evidence across Australia from over 250 witnesses, including six who were authorised to speak for the Good Film League. [27]

The range of objections to the American film industry in Australia was broad, and the various opinions were sometimes expressed in intemperate and moralistic terms, justifying the film industry’s complaint that those who voiced them didn’t go to the pictures, and hadn’t seen the films they protested against. The Royal Commissioners were well aware of this, and asked most of the witnesses from voluntary organizations whether they attended picture shows regularly. But they recognized the Good Film League as having a legitimate voice, and they endorsed its work.

The League in carrying out its objects has performed useful public service, and is generally able to obtain and present the public viewpoint in regard to motion pictures. [28]

The public viewpoint as expressed by the League’s representatives was primarily moral, firmly in favour of strengthening censorship of American films and their advertising. But the League witnesses also invoked their second, aesthetic, objective, albeit negatively. Mildred Muscio’s opposition to Hollywood was couched in these terms:

We have fallen into the habit of accepting machine-made pictures which do not raise the artistic tone of the nation. Any country which took an intelligent interest in the production of pictures could do a great deal to raise them to an artistic level, quite apart from their technical excellences. [29]

Beatrice Tildesley’s testimony also invoked “the larger question of taste and truth” in order to condemn “the average American film drama [that] by its vulgarity and false sentiment degrades the taste of the movie fan”. [30]

Most members of the League believed its dual purposes – to suppress the corrupt and vulgar and to encourage the good and beautiful – were compatible and could be pursued by a dual practice of censorship and encouragement. Beatrice Tildesley certainly believed at one point that censorship could both suppress and encourage. “I wish to advocate strongly that on any Board of Censors there should be one person to consider especially the taste and truth of the film to be shown”. [31]  But ultimately both the League’s aims and its practices were at odds. Like many cultural reform groups before and after, it was hoist with its own petard. While censorship was a blunt and only erratically effective instrument for moral regulation of popular culture, it was totally useless for the encouragement of aesthetic excellence. Stringent censorship had the effect of banalization by affecting the commercial decisions of the American distribution companies and their recommendations to the parent production companies. In the interests of offending no-one and thus securing consistent profits, Hollywood pictures shied away from the controversial and provocative, the experimental and creative. Instead, they relied on what the aesthetes found most odious: sentimentality, conventionality and formulaic blandness. The salacious was excluded, but the softly suggestive was good box office. Insofar as cinema was primarily a commercial entertainment, its moral stance would always decline into sentimentality, and its art would always be compromised by censorship.

By 1930 Beatrice Tildesley was beside herself. She lashed out publicly when Alfred Hitchcock’s British film Blackmail was banned but the American comedy The Cock-Eyed World was passed:

It is obvious that the presence or absence of truth in films is of no importance to the present censorship in dealing with the average slush and vulgarity from Hollywood. On the other hand … any intelligent English film is likely to be banned… Such obliquity of vision on the part of the censor amounts to a squint. [32]

Although her numerous tirades were couched in moralistic tones, it was the failure of art that Beatrice Tildesley most deplored. She wanted to see and to encourage the best in this most modern art form. She applied the same standards even-handedly to both live theatre and moving pictures, believing her values to be universal and timeless. She craved works that represented an “essential truth and beauty”. [33]  It was precisely this aesthetic objective that had drawn her to the League.

But, as was the case with most contemporary reform groups, the League found itself spending much more energy condemning corrupt entertainments than in fostering enlightened ones. As League President Dr. Neil McQueen reported to the 1926 General Meeting:

At the present time the League was unfortunate in having to give so much attention to what was bad in pictures, but when the bad was eliminated, it would be pleased to work along appreciative and constructive lines. [34]

By 1930, such a time was receding ever further into the future and Beatrice Tildesley needed to seek a more appropriate vehicle for her purposes. In fact, she found two. One was a local adaptation of a British experiment to encourage aesthetic appreciation of films apart from but parallel to the commercial imperative. The other involved participating in a series of international strategies to make films into a civilizing force.

In 1931 Beatrice Tildesley with “a small group of enthusiasts” set up the Film Society of Australia. [35] The Society took its inspiration from the English organization founded five years earlier. Its membership was similar, attracting Sydney’s young intelligentsia and smart social set. Its object was also similar: to organize for its members screenings and discussions of “outstandingly good films” [36]  that might otherwise not get commercial release. At a time when many people regarded moving pictures as at best a mentally undemanding amusement, or at worst a pernicious decadence, the Film Society sought to establish the notion of film as a modern art form. But while the adventurous enthusiasm of the London society was based in a modernist cosmopolitanism, in Sydney that aspiration was muted. The Sydney group’s Constitution exposed the solid bedrock of English culture on which it was built.

Recognizing the importance of the moving picture as affecting ideals of taste, speech, and conduct, and as the medium of knowledge; recognizing also that their social and artistic tradition is still in the course of development; and believing that they possess possibilities hitherto undeveloped and qualities that are often misused, the Society aims at encouraging the production and screening of films

a) whose speech and subject matter reflect life that embodies the traditions and ideals, first of British civilization, and next of the other great civilizations of the world, without continually stressing the poorer aspects of any one national life;
b) that reach a high artistic standard both in content and in the method of representation;
c) that avoid, in particular, falsity, crude sentimentality, and vulgarity generally. [37]

The wording of that Constitution resonates with the voice of the Honorary Secretary, Beatrice Tildesley. Yet this was in fact not a personal voice, but the communal voice of the respectable, responsible leaders of Sydney’s cultural and intellectual life.

The British Film Society screened German Expressionist, French Surrealist and Russian Realist films. [38] But the Sydney group was much smaller and so far away from the sources of such films that its actual screenings were considerably more limited than its ambitions. Without the resources to import films it was restricted to the small number of less commercial “unusual” films already held by the local distributors. It organized private screenings, special screenings at independent theatres, and occasional previews at commercial theatres. Its preference was for British and Continental films and educational and ethnographic films, and it also showed members’ amateur movies. But when they had seen all the unusual films held by the exchanges, with no prospect of many more coming in, the Society died. [39] While its membership had reached a peak of “about 300”, Beatrice Tildesley’s later assessment of its value was subdued:

On the whole we felt that our society justified its existence. It enabled our members to see one or two films that were never publicly released and several other worth while films in advance of their public exhibition. [40]

During the heyday of the Society, Beatrice Tildesley received a letter from Dr Luciano de Feo, Director of the International Educational Cinematographic Institute in Rome. [41] He asked whether she would “find a certain number of people who, on account of the cultural and beneficial aims of the work, would be willing to give a little of their time” [42]  to a national committee of the Institute. Such a committee would be expected to engage in a series of activities coordinated internationally by the Institute, including spreading information about educational cinema; studying the place of cinema in the leisure of workers in Australia, and the conditions of workers in the cinema industry; investigating the use of cinema for purposes of social hygiene and physical education; international comparison of film legislation; and developing film catalogues and archives. There is no evidence of any such local group being set up, but Beatrice Tildesley did agree to act as Australian Corespondent with the Institute. [43]  She also sent Dr de Feo a copy of her report on “The Cinema in Australia”.

This report she had written as the Australian Correspondent on the Cinema Project for the Second Women’s Pan-Pacific Conference meeting in Hawaii in 1930. That organization’s interest in cinema came through its concern with “the betterment of home and community life” and consequently with “the undoubted influence of the moving picture on the formation of thought and character, especially with reference to young people and children”.[44] At its 1930 meeting the Pan-Pacific Cinema Project determined to work in “the closest possible cooperation” with the Institute of Cinematography and the Child Welfare Committee, both of which were organs of the League of Nations. Through these interconnecting associations, Beatrice Tildesley also became a correspondent with the Cinematograph and Broadcasting Committee of the International Council of Women, which similarly worked closely with the League of Nations’ committees.

All of these international bodies were explicitly concerned with educational films. The two women’s groups focused specifically on child welfare while the activities of the Cinematographic Institute were viewed by many as a surreptitious attempt to counter the commercial and cultural hegemony of the American film industry in Europe. [45] The story of the global networks they established is a complex one, recently investigated by a number of film historians who have judged them generally ineffective. [46]  They point in particular to the ways in which the multiple strands of the League of Nation’s cinema policy unravelled in the later 1930s, beset by the secret trade diplomacy of the American film industry on the one side and the fascist interests of the Italian State on the other. [47]  But nonetheless, they did establish a discourse around moving pictures which established them as more and other than cheap amusement for the masses.

Even in their early, optimistic, years, none of the organizations provided funds for its correspondents to attend meetings, and Beatrice Tildesley did not become actively involved in the dizzying world of international committee work, although she did write several reports for international circulation. But importantly, through her involvement in these bodies, she wove Australian intellectuals into a dense international network of talk and research around the notion of cinema as an instrument of peace, co-operation and civilization.

Thus far I have attempted to outline the ways that Beatrice Tildesley, as an Australian intellectual, worked at both local and international levels to civilize moving pictures. There is one final dimension to her engagement with moving pictures in these years: cosmopolitan pleasure. Like other respectable Sydney intellectuals she not only criticized pictures, talked about them, read and wrote about them. She also went to them regularly and enjoyed them.

Movie culture increasingly permeated the lives of upper class Sydney from the mid-1910s, seducing intellectuals and reformers as well as socialites. The executive committees of philanthropic bodies might occasionally decry the damage that pictures were causing. But the entertainment and fundraising committees of the same organizations knew the drawing power of the pictures for their activities. In 1925,

All the soda-fountain sheiks in town had a night-out at the Movie Ball for the Children’s Hospital, and although Lady de Chair was unable to be present, daughter Elaine did the Vice-Regal honours, and fox-trotted with the best. The show of posters and movie queens was completely eclipsed by the miniature movie theatre, at which pictures were actually screened. [48]

Stories of stars and their pictures filled the glossy magazines and dominated daily conversations. The passion for Hollywood gossip was poignantly revealed by Kenneth Wilkinson in a lecture to the Film Society in 1932 on “The Cinema Abroad”. Wilkinson was a well-esteemed journalist, about to become music and drama critic for the Sydney Morning Herald. Speaking of his recent overseas trip, he recounted that:

The spell which Hollywood exerts in this country has been keenly impressed on me since my return. As soon as I announce that I have been in Hollywood, the eyes of my hearer light up; a warlike gleam appears in them; and I know that the question is coming: “And who did you see in Hollywood?” … When I say, “I have been to Elstree,” no one gets very excited … When I say I have been to the Ufa studios, no one catechises me fiercely… [49]

By the mid-1920s the columns of the elite lifestyle magazine The Home made clear that amateur acting was as acceptable on film as on stage for the amusement and charitable impulses of young society girls: “Society buds have been having an extra busy time of it, what with their appearance on the pictures, their tableaux and revues, sandwiched in between private parties and an extra frothy dance now and then”. [50]  Seven years later, in 1932, their more intellectual sisters and brothers in the Film Society seemed just as excited to be invited to be extras in a scene for Ken Hall’s The Silence of Dean Maitland, and to be “put well to the front.” [51]  I don’t know whether Beatrice Tildesley appears in the front of the congregation in the church scene in The Silence of Dean Maitland. I rather suspect that she does. But on the picture’s release, she would have found herself unexpectedly caught in the contradiction of the dual purposes of all who sought to civilize the movies: to censor the bad and encourage the good. The Silence of Dean Maitland was censored before export. [52]

Endnotes

[1] E. M. Tildesley, Radio Script, “Are we civilized?” Radio 2UE, 13 January 1938: the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: ML MSS 3361, MLK 1330.
[2] John F. Williams, The Quarantined Culture. Australian Reactions to modernism 1913-1939 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995); Richard Waterhouse, Private Pleasures, Public Leisure. A History of Australian Popular Culture since 1788 (Sydney, Longman, 1995); Diane Collins, Hollywood Down Under. Australians at the Movies 1896 to the Present Day (Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1987); Stuart Macintyre, The succeeding age 1901-1942 , The Oxford History of Australia, Vol. 4 (Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1986); Richard White, Inventing Australia. Images and Identity 1688-1980 (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1981); Richard Broome, Treasure in Earthen Vessels. Protestant Christianity in New South Wales Society 1900-1914 (Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 1980); Ina Bertrand, Film Censorship in Australia (Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 1978); David Walker, Dream and Disillusion. A search for Australian Cultural Identity (Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1976); J. D. Bollen, Protestantism and Social Reform in New South Wales 1890-1910 (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1972); Keith Dunstan, Wowsers (Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1968).
[3] Victoria de Grazia, “Americanism for export”, Wedge 7/8, (Winter/Spring 1985): 74-81; Victoria de Grazia, “Mass culture and sovereignty: the American challenge to European cinemas 1920-1960”, Journal of Modern History 61 (March 1989): 53-87; Kristin Thompson, Exporting Entertainment. America in the World Film Market, 1907-1934 (London, BFI, 1985); Paul R. Gorman, Left Intellectuals and Popular Culture in Twentieth Century America (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1996).
[4] Evidence of Miss Beatrice Maude Tildesley: Report of the royal commission on the moving picture industry in Australia, Canberra: Government Printer, 1928, Minutes of Evidence, Q.23973.
[5] E. M. Tildesley, “The life of modern Sydney in the light of some Greek Ideals”, Talk to Gordon Community Services Club, 2 April 1935: the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: ML MSS 3361, MLK 1330.
[6] E. M. Tildesley, Talk to S.C.E.G.G.S [Sydney Church of England Girls Grammar School], 12 December 1941: the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: ML MSS 3361, MLK 1330.
[7] E. M. Tildesley, Notes for debate, “that the influence of women on modern literature is deplorable”, n.d [c. 1936]: the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: ML MSS 3361, MLK 1330.
[8] Beatrice Tildesley, “Sydney repertory society”, The Forum (26 March 1924): 19.
[9] E. M. Tildesley, Notes for talk on “little theatre movement” to the musical association, 16 April 1941: the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: ML MSS 3361, MLK 1330.
[10] Beatrice Tildesley, Notes for a radio talk, “what constitutes a good radio voice”, n.d. [c.1936]: the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: ML MSS 3361, MLK 1330.
[11] Beatrice Tildesley, “The cinema and broadcasting in Australia”, The Australian Quarterly (14 December 1934): 134.
[12] Beatrice Tildesley, “Films and films”, Sydney Morning Herald (31 December 1931): the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: ML MSS 3361, MLK 1336.
[13] Beatrice Tildesley, “The cinema in Australia. report of the national chairman for Australia of cinema-subject study section. presented to the women’s pan-pacific conference sitting at Honolulu, August 1930”, reprinted in The Australian Quarterly  No.8, (December 1930): 96.
[14] Australian Dictionary of Biography  Vol.12: 230.
[15] Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy  (New York, 1875) quoted in Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow. The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America  (Harvard University Press, 1988): 223.
[16] Evidence of Miss Beatrice Maude Tildesley: Report of the Royal Commission, Minutes, Q.23973.
[17] “Plea for better films”, Everyones  (5 July 1922); H. E. Ross Soden, “The Better Film League”, Everyones  (12 July 1922); Woman’s Voice  (August 1922); cf., Jan Roberts, Maybanke Anderson. Sex, Suffrage & Social Reform , 2nd Edition (Sydney, Ruskin Row, 1997): 187.
[18] Report of the Standing Committee on Education, National Council of Women of New South Wales, Biennial Reports 1921-1922 : 23.
[19] Report of the Standing Committee on Education, National Council of Women of New South Wales, Biennial Reports 1921-1922 : 23.
[20] Evidence of Ewen Neil McQueen: Report of the Royal Commission, Minutes, Q.20071.
[21] “The Good Film League”, Woman’s Voice  (January 1923).
[22] See Good Film Bulletins , Nos.1-4 (1926-1927).
[23] “Film Censorship”, Good Film Bulletin , No. 2 (October 1926).
[24] “Film Censorship”.
[25] Richard Maltby and Ruth Vasey, “‘Temporary American citizens’. cultural anxieties and industrial strategies in the Americanisation of European cinema”, in Higson and Maltby (eds), “Film Europe” and “Film America“: 37.
[26] Department of Commerce, Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, Motion Pictures in Australia and New Zealand, Trade Information Bulletin No.608 (Washington, 1929): 12-13; see also, Ina Bertrand and Diane Collins, Government and Film in Australia (Sydney, Currency Press, 1981): 25-32.
[27] Report of the Good Film League of New South Wales, National Council of Women of New South Wales, Biennial Reports 1926-28: 38. The six members who gave evidence were: Dr. Ewen Neil McQueen (President), Mrs. Florence Mildred Muscio (Vice-President), Rev. Albert Edward West in (Vice-President), Miss Grace Alice Marsden (Honorary Secretary), Mr. T. W. Dawson (member), Miss Beatrice Maude Tildesley (member).
[28] Report of the Royal Commission into the Moving Picture Industry in Australia, in Australia, Parliamentary Papers, General Session, 1926-1928, Vol. 4 (Canberra, Government Printer, 1928): S.119.
[29] Evidence of Mrs. Florence Mildred Muscio: Report of the Royal Commission, Minutes, Q.21703.
[30] Evidence of Miss Beatrice Maude Tildesley: Report of the Royal Commission, Minutes, Q.23973.
[31] Evidence of Miss Beatrice Maude Tildesley: Report of the Royal Commission, Minutes, Q.23973.
[32] “New Board?” Sun (15 September 1930): Film Society of Australia, the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: MLMSS 3361 MLK 1331.
[33] B. T., “Australian drama”, The Forum (17 January, 1923): 21.
[34]  “Report of Last General Meeting”, Good Film Bulletin No.2 (October 1926).
[35] The Film Society of Australia, Annual Report for 1932, Report of the Honorary Secretary: Film Society of Australia, the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: MLMSS 3361 MLK 1331; “New Society Formed”, Sydney Morning Herald (4 August 1931): 7.
[36] Editorial, Film Society of Australia Film Review (June 1933): np.
[37] The Film Society of Australia, Constitution: Film Society of Australia, the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: MLMSS 3361 MLK 1331.
[38]  Janet Moat, “The film society 1925-1939”, Guide to LIS/Special Collections, No.1, British Film Institute [1996].
[39] Letter from Beatrice Tildesley to B.P. Lazarus, 28 July 1938: Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: ML MSS 3361, MLK 1330.
[40]  Letter to B. P. Lazarus.
[41] The Institute was a co-production between the Italian Government of Benito Mussolini and one of the League of Nations’ permanent committees, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation : Richard Maltby, “The Cinema and the League of Nations” in Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America”: 95ff; Jan Kolasa, International Intellectual Cooperation. The League Experience and the Beginnings of UNESCO, Seria A. NR 81, (Wroclaw, Travaux de la Société des Sciences et des Lettres de Wroclaw, 1962): 17-18, 33ff.
[42]  Letter from Dr Luciano de Feo, Director International Educational Cinematographic Institute, League of Nations, to Miss B. Tildesley (20 May 1933): MLK 1331, MLMSS 3361, Film Society of Australia, Mitchell Library.
[43] “Our new film critic”, Australian Women’s Weekly (11 November 1933).
[44] “Seeking data on moving pictures”, Pan-Pacific Union Bulletin, New Series, 112 (June 1929): 16.
[45] Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America”.
[46] Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America”; David W. Ellwood and Rob Kroes (eds), Hollywood in Europe. Experiences of a Cultural Hegemony (Amsterdam, VU University Press, 1994).
[47]  Maltby, “The cinema and the League of Nations”.
[48]  “Sydney S’Amuse”, The Home, 6/4 (August 1924): 46a.
[49] Kenneth Wilkinson, “The cinema abroad”, The Australian Quarterly (14, June 1932): 103-4.’
[50]  “Sydney S’Amuse”, The Home 6/6 ( December 1925): 40.
[51] Special Notice, n.d. [1932]: Film Society of Australia, the Evelyn and Beatrice Tildesley Papers, Mitchell Library: MLMSS 3361 MLK 1331.
[52] Ina Bertrand, Film Censorship in Australia (Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, 1978): 150-51.

Created on: Friday, 30 April 2004 | Last Updated: 30-Apr-04