Milestone 1943

Film releases during the year

Another milestone during the war years
... and a speech by Winston Churchill

It was the year that Bryn Symmons, Chief Projectionist, (to whom this website is dedicated) joined the staff at the Neath Empire, where he later became the deputy manager.  Previously he was the chief projectionist at the Castle Cinema in Swansea, where, in his younger days, he screened the first film with sound - The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson.

The Castle Cinema (left) survived the German blitz of Swansea during February 1942, thanks to the fire watching of Bryn Symmons who was a special police sergeant at the time.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave orders early in the war that films and entertainment were to be a priority to keep up the moral of the nation.  During his visit to Swansea after the blitz, Winston Churchill pinned the British Service Medal on Bryn Symmons (right) and shook his hand for his service during the blitz. 

Notable films released in 1943

• Above Suspicion, starring Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray
• Action in the North Atlantic
• Air Force
• Angels of the Streets (Les anges du peche), directed by Robert Bresson
• The Ape Man
• Background to Danger, by Raoul Walsh with Peter Lorre
• Bataan
• Bombardier, starring Pat O'Brien, Randolph Scott, and Anne Shirley
• Cabin in the Sky
• Calling Dr. Death the first of the Inner Sanctum Mysteries, starring Lon Chaney, Jr.
• Coney Island, starring Betty Grable
• The Constant Nymph, starring Joan Fontaine
• Le Corbeau (The Raven), directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot, starring Pierre Fresnay
• Corvette K-225
• Crash Dive
• Crazy House
• Cry 'Havoc'
• The Dancing Masters
• Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag), directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer
• The Demi-Paradise
• Destination Tokyo, starring Cary Grant and John Garfield
• Edge of Darkness
• Fires Were Started
• Five Graves to Cairo
• For Whom the Bell Tolls, starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman
• Forever and a Day
• Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney, Jr. and Béla Lugosi
• Der Fuehrer's Face, Donald Duck's Academy Award-winning short
• The Gang's All Here
• Girl Crazy
• Guadalcanal Diary
• A Guy Named Joe
• Hangmen Also Die!, starring Brian Donlevy and Walter Brennan
• Heaven Can Wait, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, starring Gene Tierney and Don Ameche
• Hello, Frisco, Hello, starring Alice Faye
• Hit the Ice, starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello
• Hitler's Children
• Holy Matrimony
• The Human Comedy
• I Walked with a Zombie, starring Frances Dee
• It Ain't Hay, starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello
• It Comes Up Love
• Journey into Fear
• Lassie Come Home
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, starring Roger Livesey andDeborah Kerr
• The Mad Ghoul
• Madame Curie, starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon
• The Man in Grey, the first of the Gainsborough melodramas
• Millions Like Us
• Mission to Moscow
• Mister Big
• The More the Merrier, directed by George Stevens, starring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea
• Mr. Lucky
• Münchhausen
• My Learned Friend, starring Will Hay
• No Time for Love
• The North Star
• Old Acquaintance, starring Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins
• Ossessione (Obsession), directed by Luchino Visconti
• The Outlaw, controversial western directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jane Russell
• The Ox-Bow Incident, directed by William Wellman, starring Henry Fonda
• Phantom of the Opera, starring Claude Rains
• Princess O'Rourke
• Riding High
• Sahara, starring Humphrey Bogart
• Sanshiro Sugata
• The Seventh Victim
• Shadow of a Doubt, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, starring Teresa Wright and Joseph Cotten
• Sherlock Holmes Faces Death
• Sherlock Holmes in Washington
• The Sky's the Limit
• So Proudly We Hail!, starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake
• Son of Dracula
• The Song of Bernadette, starring Jennifer Jones
• Spitfire (originally released as The First of the Few in the U.K.)
• Star Spangled Rhythm
• Stormy Weather
• A Stranger in Town
• Tender Comrade
• Thank Your Lucky Stars
• This is the Army
• This Land Is Mine, starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara
• Thousands Cheer
• Titanic
• Top Man
• Victory Through Air Power
• War of the Wildcats (a.k.a. In Old Oklahoma)
• Watch on the Rhine, starring Paul Lukas and Bette Davis
• We Dive at Dawn
• We've Never Been Licked
• You're a Lucky Fellow, Mr. Smith, screenplay by the playwright Lawrence Riley et al. (film mentioned in article)