Housemaster: The play in photos
Housemaster
was in its day a rip-roaring success in the West End theatre and a mainstay of
local repertory companies for many years.
We met the play before (Here).
It was written by Ian Hay
and first produced at the Apollo Theatre, London, on 12
November 1936 and ran for 662 performances.
It was a mild English comedy and mostly forgettable today except for the
opening scene, where Bimbo Farringdon is stretched across a couple of chairs
while the Housemaster Mr. Donkin administers a pretty authentic-looking
six stokes of the cane.
The scene was considered so interesting a
photograph from it appeared on the front cover of the magazine Play
Pictorial.
Several photographs were taken of that
scene and here are a few of them. I was given them by a reader of this blog who
got them on eBay but the circumstances in which they were taken remain a
mystery. Possibilities are that it might have been during a rehearsal or the
scene was set up especially for a ‘photoshoot’: we will probably never know.
Incidentally, I have seen the cover of Play
Pictorial online many times but have never been able to see the article
inside. I did make a search of newspaper in1936 and found some reviews of the
play, but none referred to the caning scene.
Traditionalschooldiscipline@gmail.com
Wonderful, i have also seen the front page online but never these , btw i sent you a couple of very similar authentic looking photos recently but did not get any reply, just wondering if you received them!
ReplyDeleteOne in a Headmasters study and one of three boys bending over a low wall while the Head caned all three
No sorry, I don't recall seeing them, Please send again ....
DeleteResent today
DeleteThese are fantastic
ReplyDeletethis is very similar to how I got the cane at home growing up.
ReplyDeleteFascinating stuff and not something I've seen before. Presumably the rearrangement of the decor was to for camera angle purposes and do give a different perspective too. It always was a delightful scene.
ReplyDeleteIt's always fascinating to me wondering how and why pics like this were taken. Of course the original book and play are very specific about the positioning of the chairs and book and the kid. And the scene itself has been used for promotional pics, like the one on the front of Play Pictorial. So maybe they had a still photographer there for the day to do promotional pics. And just told him to take one from every angle so that they could pick out the best one to use for promotion?
ReplyDeleteIt's also strange that they would use this scene for promotion so much, when the rest of the play mostly isn't really about school discipline. But I guess it makes sense considering that spanking scenes are so often used for promotional pics.
Some spanking scenes used as promotional pics are even more mysterious. I mentioned on a forum recently about how one of the promotional pics for Cheyenne Wildcat shows a spanking that doesn't even happen in the actual movie itself. And the promotional spanking pic for How Green Was My Valley is obviously taken completely separately from the actual movie filming. With two of the characters stood in totally different positions.