More Info →Sleepless Nights- Cinema Advertising Slide

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Description: This 1932/1933 British musical comedy featured a hapless journalist, a millionaire and a lie about being married which quickly gets out of hand. Musical farces like this were popular in the early 1930s as they made full use of the recently invented sound cinema systems (popularly known as 'talkies').

And cinemas needed every advantage they could get! The Great Depression cut household incomes to the bone, and regular cinema visits needed to be justified. Enter the 'double feature'- two films played back-to-back with a single admission price. One of the films in this double billing was a 'B-movie' made with lesser talent and a small budget and served as the warm-up act to the better-known main feature.

In New Zealand, cinemas had to show a minimum percentage of British films- a rule found in many places in the Empire. This led to the 'Quota Quickie' - a low budget, poorly made British film produced in the knowledge it would be needed to fill the quota. In Britain some of these films had such a bad reputation that they played to empty cinemas while the cleaners prepared for the next film. Viewer beware!

This slide advertised 'Sleepless Nights' on the cinema screen and still has the hand-written notes showing the next screening time. It wasn't a 'Quota Quickie' with ads in the papers calling it a 'Fast and Furious Fun Frolic' and recommending that 'if you are human.... you'll love it!' But not if you were a young human- although there were no legal restrictions the Censor recommended it for adults.