Campbeltown Speaks: Small-Town Cinema and the Coming of Sound

The popularity of cinema from its earliest days in small-town settings emphasises the importance local circumstances explaining medium’s success. This article employs surviving business records relating to Picture House Scottish burgh Campbeltown explore aspects cinema-going peculiar that corner rural Argyllshire, including a propensity, hitherto unidentified among audiences, support productions British film industry. Beyond this, has broader significance. As monopoly provider commercial entertainment an enclosed market, it offers telling insights into key point transition for cinema, silent sound film. Placed context national trends, documented by data taxation entertainments, provides compelling evidence advent talkies marked fundamental discontinuity history medium at all levels, national.