In Northcliffe Jail: Iris Barry, film journalist

ABSTRACT

A reinvestigation of Iris Barry’s work for the Daily Mail in the period 1925–30. Barry is celebrated as a critic and curator. As a founder of the Film Society in London in the 1920s and first curator of film at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in the 1930s she is a heroine of minority film culture. This article argues that her role in mass film culture has been overlooked. While it has been acknowledged that Barry wrote for the Daily Mail, one of Britain’s most popular newspapers, this article demonstrates that the number of articles she wrote for the paper has been underestimated by a factor of ten. Beyond the case of Barry, this article argues that elite institutions like the Film Society have been given undue credit for the phenomenon of ‘taking film seriously.’

KEYWORDS:

• Iris Barry
• Daily Mail
• film criticism
• film culture
• Film Society
• Museum of Modern Art

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Haidee Wasson: ‘Writing the Cinema into Daily Life: Iris Barry and the Emergence of British Film Criticism in the 1920s,’ in Andrew Higson (ed.) Young and Innocent? The Cinema in Britain, 1896–1930 (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002), pp. 321–337; Haidee Wasson, ‘The Woman Film Critic: Newspapers, Cinema and Iris Barry,’ Film History, vol. 18, no. 2, 2006, pp. 154–162.

2. Leslie Kathleen Hankins, ‘Iris Barry, Writer and Cinéaste, Forming Film Culture in London 1924–26: the Adelphi, the Spectator, the Film Society, and the British Vogue,’ Modernism/Modernity, vol. 11, 2004, p. 489.

3. Email to author from Daily Mail Library, 21 March 2019.

4. Museum of Modern Art, Department of Film archive, File 07–05: Blue Herakles Notebook.

5. C. R., ‘Man with a “Camera Eye,”’ Daily Mail, 27 March 1919, p. 4; C. R., ‘The Film Sense,’ Daily Mail, 3 April 1919, p. 4.

6. Arthur Weigall, ‘Mark Twain Film,’ Daily Mail, 31 May 1921, p. 7.

7. Arthur Weigall, ‘The Influence of the Kinema on National Life,’ Nineteenth Century and After, April 1921, p. 668.

8. Ibid., p. 667.

9. Arthur Weigall, ‘Where is the Censor?,’ Daily Mail, 27 October 1920, p. 6.

10. Ivor Montagu, ‘Birmingham Sparrow: In memoriam, Iris Barry, 1896–1969,’ Sight and Sound, April 1970, p. 106.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., p. 107.

13. Blue Herakles Notebook, op. cit.

14. Iris Barry, ‘American Prestige and British Films,’ Spectator, 11 July 1925, p. 51.

15. Blue Herakles Notebook, op. cit.

16. Ibid.

17. Anon., ‘American Film Kings,’ Evening News, 18 August 1915, p. 6.

18. Anon., ‘Hands Off, Lord Northcliffe!,’ Cinema News and Property Gazette, 10 February 1916, pp. 2–3.

19. Iris Barry, ‘American Prestige and British Films,’ p. 52.

20. Ibid.

21. Museum of Modern Art, Department of Film archive, File 05–14: Fragment beginning ‘Women have been kind.’

22. R. De Cordova, ‘Thumbnail Interview with the Great,’ Sphere, 11 December 1926, p. 498.

23. Iris Barry, ‘Creating a British Film Tradition,’ Daily Mail, 21 October 1925, p. 8; Iris Barry, New Blood for British Films,’ Daily Mail, 17 December 1925, p. 8.

24. Anon., ‘More British Films,’ Daily Mail, 29 October 1925, p. 8.

25. Iris Barry, ‘What We Owe to the Cinema,’ Daily Mail, 18 May 1926, p. 6.

26. BFI Special Collections, Ivor Montagu archive, Item 311: Card from Iris Barry to Ivor Montagu, 25 January 1927.

27. C. A. Lejeune, rev. Let’s Go to the Pictures, Manchester Guardian, 20 January 1927, p. 7.

28. Iris Barry, ‘Life of a Film,’ Daily Mail, 10 February 1926, p. 8.

29. BFI Special Collections, Ivor Montagu archive, Item 311: Letter from Iris Barry to Ivor Montagu, n.d.

30. Iris Barry, ‘The Painted but Pretty Flappers of Hollywood,’ Daily Mail, 18 October 1927, p. 10.

31. Iris Barry, ‘Film Stars Who Are Fighting For Survival,’ Daily Mail, 24 October 1927, p. 10.

32. Haidee Wasson, Museum Movies: The Museum of Modern Art and the Birth of Art Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 2; p. 18.

33. The Film Critic, ‘Brightness Bought for Sixpence,’ Daily Mail, 11 April 1928, p. 2.

34. The Film Critic, ‘Sensationalism in New Films,’ Daily Mail, 23 August 1928, p. 17.

35. The Film Critic, ‘Films Spoiled By Bad Titles,’ Daily Mail, 13 September 1928, p. 17.

36. The Film Critic, ‘Actors’ Lisp in Talk Film,’ Daily Mail, 28 September 1928, p. 14.

37. The Film Critic, ‘First Talking Film From Mr Colman,’ Daily Mail, 9 May 1929, p. 21.

38. The Film Critic, ‘Talk-Films Have Come to Stay,’ Daily Mail, 3 June 1929, p. 16.

39. Museum of Modern Art, Department of Film archive, File 03–04: Fragment beginning ‘but one war agency.’

40. The Film Critic, ‘To-Day’s Blunt Truth,’ Daily Mail, 6 February 1930, p. 9.

41. Fragment beginning ‘but one war agency,’ op. cit.

42. BFI Special Collections, Ivor Montagu archive, Item 311: Letter from Iris Barry to Ivor Montagu, 17 February 1930.

43. Anon., ‘Speaking Personally,’ Bioscope, 22 August 1928, p. 36.

44. Anon., ‘Speaking Personally,’ Bioscope, 5 September 1928, p. 37.

45. Letter from Iris Barry to Ivor Montagu, 17 February 1930, op. cit.

46. Jeannie Wharton, ‘Stars Who Have Sailed Away,’ Woman’s Journal, March 1930, p. 60.

47. New York Times, 2 February 1930, Section 2, p. 22.

48. Museum of Modern Art, Department of Film archive, File 02–03: Manuscript beginning ‘At first the movies were scientific.’

49. Ibid.

50. Fragment beginning ‘but one war agency,’ op. cit.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henry K. Miller

Henry K. Miller is the author of The First True Hitchcock, published by University of California Press in 2022, editor of The Essential Raymond Durgnat, and co-editor of DWOSKINO: the gaze of Stephen Dwoskin.