The daughter of Screen International’s founding publisher has written a book about her cinema owner grandfather
The life and legacy of UK cinema mogul Sam King (1890-1973) is being told in a book written by his granddaughter Jenny King. With an introduction from Chariots Of Fire producer David Puttnam, Cinema King recounts King’s life, from his childhood as the son of a cobbler in London’s East End — his Jewish family having fled pogroms in Polish Russia — to his early career as a teacher and his founding, together with business partner (and eventual brother-in-law) Alf Shipman, of the Shipman & King cinema chain, which had more than 40 sites at its peak.
While King had his own place at the heart of the UK film establishment, his son Peter King also went on to work in senior positions at Paramount and EMI before founding Screen International in 1975; he served as the magazine’s publisher until 1989.
“I am particularly interested, as a psychologist, in what motivated [my grandfather],” says Jenny King, an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. “It was the same as what motivated a lot of Jewish immigrants like [theatre impresario] Bernard Delfont, for example. They came to this country as outsiders and they had to find a [professional] route where there were no barriers to entry, which is why so many did go into showbusiness.”
King decided to write the book shortly after the death of her father, Peter, in 2018. “I started to think, as one does at times like that, about my heritage, background and the influence of my father and grandparents,” she recalls. Around the same time, she had attended a lecture on the influence of British Jewish entrepreneurs on the UK film industry and there was no mention of King or Shipman — something she felt was a glaring omission.
During her childhood, King was told that her grandfather and Shipman had started their successful cinema chain in the back of a pub. Sam was an accomplished violinist who would play in the orchestra pits of London’s cinemas; Alf was an entrepreneur who was buying up cinemas that were struggling financially in the aftermath of the First World War. In 1919, the friends met for a drink in The Crown Hotel, Hailsham, near England’s south coast, and, spotting the barn in the back, rented a projector and started putting on screenings. Business grew quickly, and in 1920 they registered the Shipman & King company, with Sam giving up teaching to devote himself to the cinema business.
King recalls there were always private cinemas in the family homes, often near-replicas of the Shipman & King theatres with their lavish art deco interiors. “I just grew up in this cinema family and it was part of my DNA, in a way,” she says.
Centenary celebration
As part of her research, King returned to her father’s old East End haunts and visited cinemas from the Shipman & King chain — which was sold to the Grade Organisation in 1965 and then absorbed by EMI — that are still in operation. One, The Hailsham Pavilion, has just celebrated its centenary and, says King, remains “virtually unchanged”. There were around 200 people in the auditorium for a National Theatre Live screening on the day she attended.
Another, The Everyman in Esher, is now a multiplex but when King visited the projection room she was astounded to find two old rubber mats with ‘S & K’ stencilled on them. “No-one had even noticed they were there,” she says of these artefacts, one of which she was allowed to take home. “It’s strange to get so excited about a rubber floor mat.”
King’s book will be launched at a special jazz night at The Hailsham Pavilion on April 29 (hailshampavilion.co.uk/events/hops-jazz-night). She will give a talk on Shipman & King and unveil a blue plaque the day before.
Cinema King is available from thegreatbritishbookshop.co.uk
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