Visit To Southend [and other holiday scenes]

Many of the scenes are brief in this family holiday film. Southend views of boats including paddle steamers at Southend, Joan walking on the promenade, the shore filmed from the moving pier railway, and a paddle steamer mooring at the pier, followed by he beach, gardens, boating lake and water chute. Lowestoft beach and the harbour with fishing boats. Views at Gorleston and Great Yarmouth with boats leaving harbour, the Pleasure Beach with scenic railway, Joan at a pier or railway station entrance and with car VX3226. At Walton-on-the-Naze, at their beach hut the Mann family have a meal on the verandah, sit outdoors and walk about together. Joan walks on the beach and plays with a little girl. On the promenade, a large group wave to the camera. Joan sees to her make-up sitting on the beach, and Sidney rolls head over heels and performs a hand stand, then climbs up the cliffs. People bathe in the sea, and girls write in their notebooks with a distant view of the people playing on the beach. Three girls in bathing costumes laugh together, and Joan and Sidney kiss. There is a view of four tiers of beach huts above the promenade which provide the backdrop to the beach scenes that follow. A title copied from Home Movies and Home Talkies magazine showing a man with a cine film announces “The Merry Reel” to introduce some camera tricks filmed on the beach including scenes reversed and slowed down. Joan is filmed at an angle as if climbing a vertical face, then poses on the beach. The girls run across the sands, Sidney is filmed as if jumping onto a perch in his bathing costume and co-respondent shoes. Joan has an ice cream at the kiosk, the girls play leapfrog and dance in a ring, a lady puts with a golf club and plays with a yo-yo, Joan and Sidney dance, Sidney plays with the yo-yo as the girls dance behind him, people play with tennis rackets and beach balls, and a man holds up the chin of a novice swimmer. Joan emerges from Lazidais. The family play with a toddler on the beach. Outside the beach hut a photograph is taken and Joan holds a baby. A golf ball is putted in a circle, and a lady is assisted onto a donkey with the aid of a chair. At the beach hut, the couples tease and kiss. Joan sits on a diving board carrying a paper parasol. Bathers go up and down the steps between the beach huts and the sea. After a sign for sea trips, a paddle steamer laden with passengers passes by, and the destination sign is changed from Clacton to Felixstowe. Another boat is seen unloading, and leaving, and there are shots on board the Clacton Queen. At Felixstowe passengers disembark. The boat arrives back at Walton-on-the-Naze. The final title for The End shows a dog with paper chains and an abandoned snowy Christmas tree.

Intertitles

A Sidney Mann Production A visit to Southend-on-Sea June 30th 1932 Lowestoft Gorleston Yarmouth Our holidays 1932 Fun at Walton Lazidais Baby ways The End A Sidney Mann production

Other Places

Lowestoft, Suffolk Gorleston, Norfolk Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex