The history of the British comic ranges from fondly-remembered, short-lived Enfant Terribles like Cor!! to the steam-rolling hardy perennials like The Beano, but there’s only one, long-defunct publication, that can get readers of a certain age extremely misty-eyed with nostalgia and that’s Film Fun.
From its first silent screams, on 17th January 1920, to the limp, Jet Set final gasp on 15th September 1962, Film Fun gleefully burrowed itself way down into the national consciousness. It was a touchstone of popular culture.
In ‘The Economy Drive’, a September 1959 episode of Hancock’s Half Hour, Hancock and Sid return from holiday to a home full of sour milk, stale bread, and out-of-date newspapers -including the Lad ‘imself’s subscription to Film Fun. Glorious intertextuality, for the television favourite ‘Tony Hancock assisted (more or less) by his old china Sid James’, would soon after take Film Fun’s coveted front cover comic strip.
Film Fun was part of everyday life, well Tuesdays for sure: the day when tens of thousands of avid readers would pick up their valued copies and laugh along with their favourite screen comedians.
It was the brainchild of comic publishing genius Frederick George Cordwell who, at Amalgamated Press, had gone from owner Lord Northcliffe’s office boy to respected and innovative editor. As ‘Eddie the Happy Editor’, Cordwell would not only write the lion’s share of the copy but also make cheeky cameos in comic strips and stories.
From 1910, Cordwell had channelled his passion for Music-Hall comedy into the weekly comic Merry and Bright -a publication that continued, concurrently, until 1935 -but this love of slapstick was further fuelled by the silent cinema shorts emulating from Hollywood.