 Cover first edition, Jonathan Cape, 1933 | |
| Author | Walter Greenwood |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Cape |
Publication date | 1933 |
Love on the Dole is a novel by Walter Greenwood, about working-class poverty in 1930s Northern England. It has been made into both a play and a film.
Walter Greenwood's novel (1933) was written during the early 1930s as a response to the crisis of unemployment, which was being felt locally, nationally, and internationally. It is set in Hanky Park, an industrial slum in Salford, where Greenwood was born and brought up. The novel begins around the time of the General Strike of 1926, but its main action takes place in 1931.
The novel follows the Hardcastle family as they are pulled apart by mass unemployment. The 17-year-old Harry Hardcastle of Mansfield, studying in Lincoln, starts the novel working in a pawn shop, but is attracted to the glamour of working in the engineering factory Marlows Ltd. After seven years working there as an apprentice, he is laid off in the midst of the Great Depression, and is from that point on unable to find work. He becomes romantically involved with a girl on his street, Helen, whom he gets pregnant; this forces them to marry, despite the fact that Harry now not only is unemployed but also has been taken off the dole by the means test. Sally Hardcastle, his older sister, falls in love with a doomed socialist agitator, Larry Meath, and suffers the unwelcome attention of the local illicit bookmaker, Sam Grundy. Sally feels unable to compete with Meath's socialist intellectualism, highlighting not only the economic but also the intellectual poverty of the local working-class community. The novel's climax focuses on an actual march, in which the NUWM marched on Salford Town Hall in October 1931. The march itself was met with violent police resistance; in the book, Larry Meath dies as a result of blows to the head from a policeman's truncheon. After Larry Meath's death, Sally despondently succumbs to the attentions of Sam Grundy, which allows both her father and brother finally to find work.
The novel received much attention from writers, journalists, and politicians, who were all moved by its description of poverty, but, more importantly, by its account of a working-class community attempting to deal with that poverty with dignity and intelligence. Reviewing the American edition of the novel, Iris Barry stated: "Love on the Dole is the real thing." [1] Edith Sitwell, for example, also wrote: "I do not know when I have been so deeply, terribly moved." It was a commercial success, with three impressions that year, and eight more by 1939.
Greenwood said he had "tried to show what life means to a young man living under the shadow of the dole, the tragedy of a lost generation who are denied consummation, in decency, of the natural hopes and desires of youth."
The novel was adapted for the stage by Ronald Gow, and opened at the Manchester Repertory Theatre in 1934, with Wendy Hiller as Sally Hardcastle. The "real" speech and contemporary social themes were new to British audiences. One reviewer said the play had been "conceived and written in blood." [2] It toured Britain with two separate companies, playing up to three performances a day, sometimes in cinemas in towns that had no theatre. A million people had seen it by the end of 1935. Runs in London, New York and Paris followed, making a name for Wendy Hiller, who married Gow in 1937.
But not all reviewers were impressed: writing in the New Statesman , Seán O'Casey said that "there isn't a character in it worth a curse, and there isn't a thought in it worth remembering." [3]
Love on the Dole drew the British public's attention to a social problem in the United Kingdom in a similar way that Look Back in Anger (1956), Cathy Come Home (1966) or Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) would do for future generations (although its style is closer to 1915's Hobson's Choice ). The historian Stephen Constantine attributed the impact of Love on the Dole to the way it moved the mostly middle-class audiences without blaming them [4] – Gow said he "aimed to touch the heart". [2] In 1999, it was one of the National Theatre's 100 Plays of the Century. [5]
In 1967 the play was adapted for Granada Television by John Finch, with a cast including George A. Cooper, Martin Shaw, Malcolm Tierney, and Anne Stallybrass as Sally Hardcastle.
A musical version of the play opened at the Nottingham Playhouse in 1970, written by Terry Hughes and Robert Gray, with music by Alan Fluck, directed and choreographed by Gillian Lynne.
Although the book and play were successful, the British Board of Film Censors (BBFC) would not allow a film to be made during the 1930s: it was a "very sordid story in very sordid surroundings", and in Gow's words "regarded as 'dangerous'". [2] In 1936, the BBFC rejected a proposed film version of Love on the Dole. [6]
It was eventually filmed and released in 1941 by British National Films, with Deborah Kerr as Sally. But by then social conditions were being radically changed by the Second World War.
The film was the first English-made feature film to show British police wielding truncheons against a crowd. [7]
Dame Wendy Margaret Hiller, was an English film and stage actress who enjoyed a varied acting career that spanned nearly 60 years. Writer Joel Hirschorn, in his 1984 compilation Rating the Movie Stars, described her as "a no-nonsense actress who literally took command of the screen whenever she appeared on film". Despite many notable film performances, Hiller chose to remain primarily a stage actress.
Buster is a 1988 British romantic crime comedy-drama based on events from the Great Train Robbery, starring Phil Collins and Julie Walters.
Ronald Gow was an English dramatist, best known for Love on the Dole (1934).
Walter Greenwood was an English novelist, best known for the socially influential novel Love on the Dole (1933).
Clifford George Evans was a Welsh actor.
The social novel, also known as the social problemnovel, is a "work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel". More specific examples of social problems that are addressed in such works include poverty, conditions in factories and mines, the plight of child labor, violence against women, rising criminality, and epidemics because of over-crowding and poor sanitation in cities.
Love on the Dole is a 1941 British drama film starring Deborah Kerr and Clifford Evans. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Walter Greenwood. It was the first English-made feature film to show English police wielding batons against a crowd.
Love on the Dole is a 1933 novel by Walter Greenwood, adapted into a play by Ronald Gow.
Robert Roberts was an English teacher, writer and social historian, who penned evocative accounts of his working-class youth in The Classic Slum (1971) and A Ragged Schooling (1976).
James Vincent Morris is an English playwright associated with social realism.
Only Mugs Work is a 1938 melodromatic crime novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. Greenwood had established his reputation in 1933 with Love on the Dole, set in a district closely modelled on working-class Salford. In this case the setting is shifted to London's Soho, but features a similar blend of realism and drama. It is set amongst the spivs of the capital city. It was one of a number of novels that focused on the activities of the London underworld in the late 1930s including There Ain't No Justice, The House in Greek Street and Night and the City.
Saturday Night at the Crown is a 1959 novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. It was his final novel, inspired by his 1954 play of the same title. The play had premiered in Morecambe in 1954 before running for 234 performances at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End from 1957 to 1958. He dedicated to the novel to Thora Hird who had starred in the play.
Down by the Sea is a 1956 novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. It is the final entry of a trilogy set in the fictional fishing port of Treeloe in Cornwall. Durrall, the principal protagonist of the previous novel marries a woman and is able to prosper by opening his cottage as a tea house for tourists.
So Brief the Spring is a 1952 novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. It is the first in the author's trilogy set in the fictional fishing port of Treeloe in Cornwall. It was developed out of a play which Greenwood had written in 1945. The novel is dedicated to Robert Newton who appeared in the play. It focuses on Randy Jollifer, formerly of the Royal Navy, attempting to settle down to postwar life in his home town. The book and its sequels sold steadily, without enjoying the spectacular popularity of his best-known work Love on the Dole.
What Everybody Wants is a 1954 novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. It is the second of a trilogy set in the fictional fishing port of Treeloe in Cornwall during the postwar years. While the principal character of the first novel Randy Jollifer reappears, there is a shift to focus on the life of Darky Durrant. Durrant is a local poacher of gypsy heritage who, despite a distinguished war record as a commando, lives on the margins of society.
The Secret Kingdom is a 1938 novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. Like his best-known novel Love on the Dole it is set in Salford. It portrays the working-class socialist Byron family, and particularly the eldest daughter Paula who tries to establish an independent identity after finding working a parlour maid. She encounters Bert Treville in nearby Manchester and the two begin a courtship. After his death due to heavy drinking, she brings up her son Lance as a single-mother, throwing her effort into her talented child she is vindicated when he emerges as a talented concert pianist - performing on national radio in the final scene.
His Worship the Mayor is a 1934 novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. It was his second novel, following on from the success of his bestselling debut Love on the Dole the previous year. His new work drew on his experience as a Labour councillor, and focuses on corruption in local government a theme also addressed in Winifred Holtby’s South Riding. The novel features Sam Grundy, the bookmaker who had appeared in Love on the Dole.
Standing Room Only is a 1936 comedy novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. It was his third novel. Like his previous two, including his bestselling debut Love on the Dole, the work is partly set in his native Salford. The novel was somewhat self-reflexive as the protagonist Henry Ormerod strongly resembles Greenwood's own background and experiences. It was not as critically well-received as his two previous novels.
Something in My Heart is a 1944 novel by the British writer Walter Greenwood. It is a loose sequel to his debut and best-known novel Love on the Dole, a 1933 work set in Salford at the height of the Great Depression. This book presented a more optimistic view of a potential postwar future that was absent in the despair in the original novel.