Walter Greenwood

Walter Greenwood (17 December 1903 – 13 September 1974) was an English novelist, best known for the socially influential novel Love on the Dole (1933).

Greenwood was born at 56, Ellor Street, his father's house and hairdresser's shop in "Hanky Park", Pendleton, Salford, Lancashire. His parents belonged to the radical working classes. His father died when he was nine years old, and his mother provided for him by working as a waitress. He left school at 13, even though the normal leaving age was 14. He was able to leave a year early after taking the Board of Education Labour Exam, which was only 'open to fatherless boys' so that they could go to work to help support their family. His first job was as a pawnbroker's clerk. A succession of low paid jobs followed, while he continued to educate himself in Salford Public Library. During periods of unemployment he worked for the local Labour Party and began to write short stories.

Love on the Dole

While unemployed, he wrote his first novel, Love on the Dole, during 1932. It was about the destructive social effects of poverty in his home town. After several rejections, it was published during 1933. It was a critical and commercial success, and a great influence on the British public's opinion of unemployment. It even prompted parliament to investigate, resulting in reforms.

In 1935, Greenwood collaborated with Ronald Gow on a stage adaptation of the novel. The critic of The Times wrote:

being conceived in suffering and written in blood, it profoundly moves its audience in January 1935... it has the supreme virtue in a piece of this kind of saying what it has to say in plain narrative, stripped of oration.

The play had successful runs in both Britain and the United States, which meant that Greenwood would not have to worry about employment again.

A film adaptation was proposed in 1936, but the British Board of Film censors made strong objections to the possibility of a film about industrial unrest which might be socially divisive. In 1940, however, when unemployment could be presented as a thing of the past, a film adaptation was permitted. The film, which toned down some of the novel's social commentary, was directed by John Baxter, and featured Deborah Kerr. It was successful with the critics and at the box office.

Bibliography

Although Greenwood never matched the success of Love on the Dole, he produced a succession of other books:

Fiction

• Love on the Dole (1933). The story of how the people of Hanky Park in Salford are pushed by the Depression from their usual long-term hardship into utter poverty.

• His Worship the Mayor (1934). Explores a wider social panorama of Salford society, featuring both working people and elites, including local politicians.

• Standing Room Only: or a Laugh in Every Line (1936). A comedy about how a working-class author's play makes it big, and how everyone but him makes money out of its success.

• The Cleft Stick (1937). Short stories about Hanky Park mainly written earlier than Love on the Dole, including some of the same characters but also characters who do not appear in the novel. Illustrated by Arthur Wragg

• The Secret Kingdom (1938). Revisits Salford, but this time focusing on a female protagonist, Paula Byron, a committed socialist and autodidact, who after the premature death of her husband, does her best to give her son a better future life.

• Only Mugs Work (1938). A Soho gangster story about two rival gangs - the Gorellis and the less vicious outfit run by the mysterious 'Con Man'.

• Something in the Heart (1944). A wartime sequel to Love on the Dole, which shows how unemployed men from Salford join the RAF in 1939 and contribute to the war effort (expecting a very different and more equal post-war Britain).

• Saturday Night at the Crown (1954). Records the stories of all the employees and customers of a Manchester pub over the course of one day in the nineteen-fifties.

The Treeloe Trilogy:

• Down by the Sea (1952). Introduces us to Randy Jollifer, a Royal Navy veteran, as he settles back into the post-war society of Treeloe in Cornwall.

• Brief the Spring (1954). Randy Jollifer is now happily married and settled, and the focus switches to the traumatised ex-commando Durrant, who finds it difficult to re-adjust to post-war life and lives on the margins.

• What Everybody Wants (1956). Durrant marries and is bought back into society by his wife who converts his ruined cottage/bivouac into a tea-shop for holiday-makers.

Non-Fiction

• How the Other Man Lives (1939). A series of part-documentary, part-interview pieces with representatives of the chief occupations of the nineteen-thirties - some traditional, some new.

• Lancashire (1951). Contribution to the County Books series, in which Greenwood argues for the centrality of Lancashire industry to the British economy and for the uniqueness of working-class culture in the county. It has five chapters of which the first four are short and the fifth (pp. 42-298) contains descriptions of the larger towns and a selection of other places.

• There Was a Time (1967). Greenwood's last book: a memoir of his childhood in Hanky Park up until the success of Love on the Dole in 1933 and his own escape from poverty, with some reflections on the post-war Welfare State.

Theatre His plays include Love on the Dole, The Cure For Love (1945, filmed 1950), Date of West End opening "12 July 1945" Too Clever for Love (1952), Saturday Night at the Crown (1958) and Hanky Park (based on his autobiographical There Was A Time 1968).

Filmography as writer

• 1935 No Limit (original story) George Formby motorcycling film. Directed by Monty Banks.

• 1935 Where’s George? (Greenwood wrote the story on which the script was based) A comedy about Rugby League, starring Sydney Howard

• 1941 Love on the Dole (adaptation of his novel and play, directed by John Baxter)

• 1942 Much Too Shy (screen adaptation from an original story by Ronald Frankau) Starring George Formby; directed by Marcel Varnel.

• 1947 A City Speaks (Documentary about Manchester, directed by Paul Rotha)

• 1949 Eureka Stockade (also known as Massacre Hill (original screenplay, directed by Harry Watt). About Australian miners battling for their rights.

• 1949 The Cure for Love (adapted by Robert Donat and others from Greenwood's original play. Directed by Robert Donat). About a soldier returning from war.

• 1950 Chance of a Lifetime (original screenplay, directed by Bernard Miles). Workers take over a factory.

While living in Polperro, Cornwall during 1938, Greenwood started a production company, Greenpark Productions Ltd. The firm now trades as a movie archive. During the Second World War Greenwood's company, Greenpark Productions Ltd, produced documentary films by for the British government He served with the Royal Army Service Corps.

Personal Life

In the 1930s, Greenwood was engaged to Alice Myles, a Salford girl, and stayed in Salford for a while, where he served as a city councilor, but soon relocated to London. He abandoned his fiancée who sued him successfully for breach of promise. During 1937 he married Pearl Alice Osgood, an American actress and dancer; they divorced in 1944. Greenwood later described them as having been a pair of 'erupting volcanoes'.

He retired to Douglas, Isle of Man, in the 1950s, and died there on 13 September 1974 aged 70. Greenwood's manuscripts and letters are archived in the University of Salford's Walter Greenwood Collection.

References

• Hopkins, Chris, Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole: Novel, Play, Film, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press (2018)
• Kunitz, Stanley J. & Haycraft, Howard (1942) Twentieth Century Authors: a biographical dictionary of modern literature. New York: H. W. Wilson Co.
• Constantine, Stephen (1982) "Love on the Dole and its reception in the 1930s," in Literature and History; 8:2 (1982), 232-49.
• Gaughan, Matthew (2008) "Palatable Socialism or 'The Real Thing'? Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole", in: Literature and History; 17:2 (2008), 47-61.

External links

• Walter Greenwood Collection from the University of Salford site
• Walter Greenwood and 'Love on the Dole' - from the Working Class Movement Library site
• Not Just Love on the Dole - a research blog by Chris Hopkins.
• Walter Greenwood at IMDb