Dressing the Part: Fancy Dress, Social Formation, and the Dublin Cinema Balls of the 1920s

Excerpt in Lieu of Abstract:

A November 1923 notice in the British trade paper Kinematograph Weekly announced that the Irish Cinema and Amusements Guild had been granted the use of Dublin's Mansion House for its forthcoming Carnival Bal Masque on 30 November.1 That Friday date—approximately two years after the establishment of the Free State and effectively the annual cinema trade's night out—would be open to anybody associated with the film industry in Ireland. Distribution companies, including Twentieth Century Fox and Metro Goldwyn Mayer, as well as local movie houses offered cash prizes for the best impersonations of cinema stars. The trade paper's celebratory announcement of the coming event made clear that it was to be "a red-letter day" and hoped "that at least one or two prominent film stars" would attend.2 Cursory research suggests that annual "Kinema Balls" were well established across the United Kingdom by the early 1920s in venues such as Glasgow, Sheffield, and Edinburgh, while a now firmly "British" Belfast had its inaugural ball in April 1924, six months after the Dublin Carnival Bal Masque. This article examines the emergence of fancy dress as a form of social identity and play, situating it within the broader context of modernity and new forms of leisure, particularly those associated with cinema. It highlights the relationship between metropolitan life, technology, popular culture, and modernity.

Although a golden age of cinema architecture flourished in Ireland only by the 1930s, dedicated spaces to show films were already [End Page 40] operating in Dublin by 1923, with economic implications for the city's economy. These locales created employment opportunities for ushers, concession workers, security, bartenders, caterers, and projectionists; this growing entertainment industry also generated new jobs in areas such as printing, production, distribution, administration, publicity, and advertising. From the ruins of a city bombarded during the 1916 Rising, at least four new Ciné-Variety theaters were built in Dublin's center during the 1920s for both stage shows and film screenings. Among these were the Theatre Royal and the La Scala on Prince's Street, located just off O'Connell Street, that seated an audience of 1,400 and was constructed on the site of the old Freeman's newspaper building destroyed in the rebellion. Cinemas such as the Corinthian (rebuilt after 1916) were erected on Eden Quay, subsidized by government grants. La Scala opened in 1920 (reopening as the Capitol in 1927), and the adjacent Metropole opened in 1922, each with a café and a ballroom. The Metropole's auditorium seated about two hundred fewer, but offered a grill room; a top-floor restaurant, the Georgian Room; two bars; and a balconied dancehall—in other words, the setting for a full evening of entertainments. With no shortage of cinemas during the 1920s, Dublin extended plenty of opportunities to view films not only in the city center but also in nearby suburban areas. The city was witnessing increasing numbers of residents and visitors associated with cinema as an industry and as a source of employment and trade-association gatherings.3

The Mansion House site of the 1923 ball is significant. Only four years earlier in 1919 the same building had been the location of the first self-declared Irish national parliament, the Dáil, marking the beginning of the War of Independence. Promotion material for the "Bal Masque" in a Dublin evening newspaper announced that "it will be more than a ball in the ordinary sense of the word, it will in fact be a night of gladness such as Ireland has not seen for many years."4 Although the event's promoters failed to fulfill their hope that "some great cinema stars" would attend, they highlighted [End Page 41] the technological modernity of a ball being filmed to provide "a cinematograph record," with a temporary studio planned for dancers' portraits in fancy dress. And more was promised: innovations in the type of dance floor being laid down, "non-stop" music, as well as adherence to the "most approved hygienic principles."5 But the big draw of the night and a...