From the film archive...

Before Le Mans, Grand Prix and Winning, club nights gave fans racing action on the big screen

Klemantaski Collection/Getty Images

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TAKEN FROM MOTOR SPORT JANUARY 1958

A popular winter motor-racing entertainment is the BRSCC Festival of Speed and Sport, which took place last year on November 22nd. It is astonishing, even startling, proof of the popularity of motor racing that two large London cinemas were filled to capacity for this non-stop two-hour midnight film show, while other cinemas in other parts of the country drew similar crowds. Only in Dublin did enthusiasm lag behind.

The evening chosen by Ken Gregory for the BRSCC Show was that on which the British Racing Mechanics’ Dinner/Dance took place at the Criterion. This had the support of almost every racing mechanic in the land, their ladies, the motor press and such drivers as Roy Salvadori, Duncan Hamilton, Jack Fairman, John Cooper and others. Many went on to the Film Show, which explained the presence in London’s West End of a large number of fast and exciting motor cars!

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