Torquay’s Other History: The Great British Sex Comedy
At one time Torquay had seven cinemas.
The Empire Cinedrome in Victoria Rd, Ellacombe, offered ‘cinematograph entertainment’ between 1912-1959. It operated again between 1962-1963 as ‘a cinema showing continental films’. In the mid-60s it was The Empire Ballroom – Torquay’s first disco. Then it successively became The Scotch Club, Tiffs in Town in the early 70s, Tiffs Club in 1978, and then Monroe’s.
The Regal/the ABC ran from 1933 to 1971 at Castle Circus. The resident organist in the 30s was Reginald Porter-Brown on his ‘mighty Compton organ’. The Regal became the ABC, then a bingo hall. The organ was sold and removed in 1972 and the ABC demolished in August 1992, to become the Job Centre.
The Picturedrome, from 1909 to 1935, was in Market St (part of the Market).
The Electric/The Colony (1911-1986) was situated in Union Street/Temperance St.
The Burlington (1919-1953) was in Union St.
The Tudor Cinema ran from 1926 to the mid 1970s, in Fore St, St Marychurch (now Bygones).
The only Torquay cinema still operating is the Odeon in Abbey Rd, which opened in 1933. The Odeon used to be the Theatre Royal which opened in 1863. It’s also where Oscar Wilde watched his plays being rehearsed.
Notably, several of these cinemas closed in the 1970s and 1980s as attendances fell. The studios fought the attractions of home entertainment by investing in blockbuster movies such as Jaws, Star Wars, and the Bond series. Yet there was another hugely successful movie genre that helped cinemas to survive for a few more years but which has largely disappeared from our collective memory. This was the British sex comedy, the product of the UK’s restrictions on pornography and the unintended consequence of government tax breaks.
The Eady Levy, established in 1957, was a tax on box office receipts intended to support the British film industry but, rather than giving birth to a slew of classics, it promoted the emergence of comedy movies with a sexual content. These began with ‘exposs’ of nudism or the sex trade, designed to get around the censors. Later they became romps in the tradition of the seaside postcard and the music hall. They ranged from the Confessions series to the Carry On films and were usually cheap and largely unfunny.
Now shunned, the sex comedy was extremely popular at the time. In 1975, Martin Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ was comfortably out grossed at the UK box office by ‘Adventures of a Taxi Driver’, and in 1977 ‘Come Play With Me’ became Britain’s longest-running and most profitable domestic movie – a record it still retains.
It’s suggested that the first true British sex comedy starred Norman Wisdom in ‘What’s good for the Goose’ (1969), to be followed by the penis-transplant themed ‘Percy’ (1971).
Keeping up with the times, the Carry On series added nudity and sex in ‘Carry on Loving’, ‘Carry on Girls’, ‘Carry on Dick’ ‘Carry on England’, and ‘Carry on Emmannuelle’. Incidentally, there were many unofficial sequels to the soft-core ‘Emmanuelle’ (1974). To avoid copyright problems the spelling of the main character was slightly altered. Note the double ‘N’ in ‘Carry On Emmannuelle’ (1978) which starred Kenneth Williams as the French ambassador to London.
More explicit were the erotic adventures of Timothy Lea in the Confessions series starring Robin Askwith: beginning with ‘Confessions of a Window Cleaner’, then of ‘a Driving Instructor’; ‘Pop Performer’; ‘…from a Holiday Camp’. This was followed by the Adventures series: ‘Adventures of…’ ‘a Taxi Driver’… ‘Private Eye’ & …’Plumbers Mate’.
The Eday Levy was abolished in 1985, effectively killing off the genre. However, these cheap to make but often extremely profitable movies sustained British film production at a time when the studio system was in decline. They also provided breaks for many unknown actors who moved on to better things: including Joanna Lumley and, giving a voiceover, Valerie Singleton. Giving an idea of the level of humour, and the odd British idea of sex as somehow silly, here’s a pre-Loose Women Lynda Bellingham in ‘Confessions of a Driving Instructor’:
