Cecil M. Hepworth — Came the Dawn — Chapter 07 (1951) 🇬🇧
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But I have allowed my story to gallop far ahead of my facts, and I must take you back nearly three years to the time of Rescued by Rover.
It was shortly after Rescued by Rover — and perhaps because or on account of it, for it brought considerable grist to the mill — that I began to contemplate building an indoor studio for film-making. This was in the summer of 1905. I had nothing to go upon because, so far as I knew then, or indeed, so far as I know now, there was no studio in existence and working at that time. So all the conditions had to be envisaged and the details thrashed out in my own mind. There was no thought at all of a dark studio; what I wanted was one that would let in as much as possible of the daylight while protecting us from rain and wind, but it must not cast any shadows. Ordinary window-glass would let through the maximum of light, but in sunshine there must always be the shadows of the wood or iron bars in which the glass is mounted. So I set about looking for a glass which would diffuse the sunshine and so kill the shadows but without greatly diminishing the amount of the light. After considerable experiment I hit upon Muranese glass which exactly fulfilled these conditions. It gives beautifully smooth flood -lighting but cuts off no more light-value than ordinary glass.
But I realised, of course, that sunshine cannot be relied upon and I wanted to avoid the inconvenience of having to wait upon its vagaries. So I rigged up in our back garden — where all of this sort of thing had perforce to be done — an electric arc-lamp and tested as well as I could what additional help we might expect from this source. The result was our first studio. It was so shaped that the daylight could reach the acting floor from every reasonable point, including the space over the cameras, and, in addition, there was a row of hanging automatic arc-lamps and some more on stands which could be wheeled about into various positions.
It was some very considerable time after this that all the principal American producers abandoned New York and shifted three thousand miles across their continent to Los Angeles so as to have almost continuous sunlight, and then, as soon as they got there, dug themselves into dark studios to keep the sunlight out! I couldn’t make sense of this at first but I came to realise that what they really wanted to avoid was the hourly shifting of the sunlight, constantly altering the values of their pre-arranged scenery. Still, they could have accomplished all that by remaining on the East side, where all actors, technicians and supplies were ready to their hands. Expense is wrought by want of thought as well as want of art.
Our studio was built at first-floor height so as to be that much above the level of surrounding houses, and the space underneath was devoted to three printing and developing machines — same old pattern — drying-rooms, mechanics’ shops and so on. One small room in front between the main dark-room and the road was the perforating room with half a dozen motor-driven Debrie perforators, for it was not until considerably later that the filmstock makers took over the perforating as part of their responsibility.
It is curious to note how little faith is put by builders and folk of that sort in the ideas of people who are young and inexperienced but not necessarily silly. I designed this small building, made the plans and all necessary drawings and submitted them for an estimate to a local builder of good repute. His first response was to say, ‘That roof won’t work; it can’t be built; it will ‘wind’.’ I didn’t agree but in the end I had to make a scale model in cardboard to prove that I was right.
Then again, I had allowed a space of six feet square for a staircase turning three right-angles to the first floor. He made no comment on this but just altered the measurement to six-by-eight feet. But a staircase of this description, whatever its size, must be square at its base. When the building was up he found this out and had to put in an additional inner wall in accord with my measurement, and that two foot of wasted space is there to this day.
When the studio was built and ready for work I put down a sort of railway for the wheeled camera-stand to run on, to make what are now called ‘tracking shots,’ which had not by then been heard of. Also we used a panoramic head so as to follow the actors as they moved about the scene, until we were informed by America — then our biggest customer — that Americans would not stand these movements and we must keep the camera stationary. Think of American films today when the camera is scarcely ever still for two seconds at a time!
I don’t say the Americans learned anything from us for that is not at all likely, but I do say that we learned a very great deal from them, though I for one admit that I learned too slowly. Brought up in the stage tradition it seemed to me for years that in all general views you must photograph your actors as they appear on the stage, full length from head right down to feet, and only in admitted close-ups could you omit unnecessary limbs. But the American films unblushingly cut them off at the knees or even higher when they could show important details more easily that way. It looked all wrong to me at first but I soon gave way and adopted the new technique. The American films which were beginning to come over in quantities about then, showed also far better photographic quality, particularly in definition, indicating much better lenses than we were using. So we had to hunt around for better lenses, which soon brought us to the German opticians and their wonderful Jena glass.
We were still printing the third edition of Rover, for beside fresh demands from new customers, earlier buyers were wearing out their copies and demanding reprints. Also the demand for our short films was increasing in many other countries in various parts of the world, and a large share of our attention was necessarily devoted to the growing demands of the dark-rooms, apart from the need of producing a steady stream of new subjects.
Some of the best of the small films in production at this time — early 1906 — under the aegis of our producer, Lewin Fitzhamon, were expanded into series and so came to have the significance of big ones while retaining the cheapness and saleability of ‘shorts.’
A notable series of this class started with Tilly the Tomboy, in which the name part was played by Unity More. It was an instant success, but for some reason this clever little dancer was not available when we wanted to make another. But we had two other little girls, just as clever and already on the fringe of our stock-company, Chrissie White and Alma Taylor. Which should be chosen to carry on the good work? They were both thoroughly mischievous by nature and equally suitable. Choosing became too invidious. The Gordian knot was cut by taking them both and they kept the series going (and ‘going is a very mild way of putting it) for several years.
Perhaps it should be explained that the great aim and object of these Tilly girls, in their pictures, was to paint the town extremely red, and the joyfully disarming way in which they thoroughly did it was the great charm of these delightful little comedies. Mischief without any sting in it is the one unfailing recipe for child-story pictures. Fitz, who loves children as much as I do, knew just exactly how to bring it out.
When, long ago, a certain bright spirit cried out, ‘Oh that mine enemy would write a book!’ he was obviously inspired by an impious longing to tear that book to pieces. I may paraphrase that cry here with one just as heart-felt, ‘Oh that my friend had kept a diary,’ for I am up against the greatest difficulty, indeed, impossibility, of fixing the dates of a lot of the things I want to write about. Consequently, mine enemy, when he gets down to it, will have much to get his teeth into, and my friends are so much the poorer.
I would like to write about the different makes of film-stock, for instance. Film-stock is the one absolutely essential material of film-making, just as paper is the raw material of making books. Negative stock is the highly sensitive film which is used in cameras — the ‘paper’ that the author writes upon — and the less sensitive positive-stock is that upon which the many copies are printed from the original negative; the ‘paper’ the book is made with.
It is primarily upon the quality of these raw materials that the technical quality of the finished pictures depends, and, since film-stock has been growing steadily better for fifty years, it stands to reason that it could not have been nearly so good in the beginning. The first piece of American negative-stock I bought was extremely thin at one end and four or five times as thick at the other. It was seventy-five feet long. Early Lumière positive-stock frequently suffered from the same fault and had, moreover, the distressing peculiarity of turning deep yellow after a little while. Later on the Pathé negative-stock had greater speed than any other at the time, but was rather too ‘contrasty’ for my taste.
The film-stock makers had their own troubles, no doubt, and one of them was the difficulty of finding a suitable substratum — an undercoat upon the celluloid to make the gelatine emulsion adhere to it properly. One of the first of the film-stock makers to come into contact with me was a nice chap named Haddow, I think. He belonged somewhere up north and his product was marketed with the name of the European Blair Camera Company under the management of Cricks, who afterwards became prominent in the film-picture world as the moving spirit of the firm of Cricks & Martin.
Another was Birt Acres, who, many years earlier, in 1893, had given the show of films at the Royal Wedding at Marlborough House when I helped him with the electric-lamp arrangements. He swam into my orbit again when we opened a second time at Cecil Court and he had long conversations with me about all sorts of things, including his film-stock which, on the whole, was quite good though sometimes unreliable.
There was one dreadful time which I shall not easily forget. I am not sure but I think it must have been in the long, long week when we were printing day and night to meet the great demand for copies of our Queen Victoria Funeral films. Anyhow, I know it was after a whole night of printing, when in the dawn, we went up into the drying-rooms to have a look at our night’s work before we went home to bed. According to our practice at the time all the thousands of feet of film was hung up in crowded festoons from hooks on wires along the ceiling. And we found that for the whole of its length, every foot, every inch, the gelatine with the pictures on it had parted company from the celluloid as it dried, and the two were hanging separately in the festoons — two loops instead of one! The substratum had failed, or perhaps by an accident, been omitted. We slunk down to the dark-room and started all over again.
All the very early film-stock makers in this country, except one, have now faded out of the picture. That one, by sheer effort and by insistence upon quality and fair dealing, has attained and retained the premier position both here and in America. We owe much to Kodak for the very sustenance of our career.
There was another very curious failure which occurred very occasionally in these drying-rooms but I don’t think it had causal connection with the film-stock. The trouble took the form of hundreds of thousands of little faint white spots which appeared all over the film when it was drying. This only happened two or three times, but each time it affected the whole roomful of film at once, and when that was cleared it did not recur in any form until the next time, and then again the whole roomful was spoilt.
I gave a lot of thought to this puzzle and reviewed very carefully the conditions in which it happened. The drying-rooms were heated by ordinary gas-stoves in the fireplaces, with the elementary safety provision of wire fire-guards — a very shocking and blameworthy practice when you are dealing with celluloid, but that had nothing to do with the present puzzle. As I saw it the air was warm and damp, there was moisture everywhere and there was moist gelatine with a small quantity of glycerine in it to keep it pliable. And the symptom never occurred in small doses: either there was no sign of it or the whole shooting match was affected.
Should I have said infected, I wondered? Here were all the optimum conditions for a gelatine culture of micro-organisms — and in the air there are bacteria everywhere. The films were suffering from a disease which attacked them like an epidemic. If this suggested deduction were correct the cure was obvious and easy. Any bactericidal disinfectant which would not harm the film ought to scotch the disease. So I added a trace of formaldehyde to the final bath of very diluted glycerine and water, and the trouble disappeared, never again to return.
While the films were young and still short enough to be easily handled, we introduced the staining of various scenes to enhance the effect as I have already mentioned in the case of the ScottBrown films — blue for night, red for firelight and so on. Then we sometimes added toning, quite a different chemical process which often gave very attractive results, and this sort of work continued until a foreign film-stock maker, Gevaert, I think, began making film with the stain incorporated in the celluloid, which saved us a lot of trouble, but added the difficulty that we had to sort out the film-stock into colours before we started printing.
When I visited Rochester, New York, I tried to persuade George Eastman — a delightful personality, by the way — to let me have film-stock in thousand-foot lengths, instead of my having to join up the short rolls to suit my developing machines. But he said that although he made and coated in that length it was more convenient to cut to the four hundred and two hundred foot lengths that other people wanted and he could not make special arrangements for me.
It was quite early in his career that Stanley Faithfull, despite his manifest inexperience, was sent up to Glasgow and other places in Scotland to sell films — his first long journey ever, and one that brought him a rather unhappy experience. In the train coming back, an old Scotsman, drinking heavily, suddenly missed his money and loudly accused Stanley of having robbed him. The guard was called and eventually the train was stopped at a subsequent station to take a detective on board. Then it was that the old man, sobered a little, found the missing money in his waistcoat pocket. His abject and slobbery repentance was more difficult to bear than his false accusations. So the Scotch Express was stopped to vindicate Stan’s honour.
I am in fact a most law-abiding person, and do not willingly break the smallest rules. But I hate the law and loathe actions at law. I would do almost anything rather than embark upon one. It was in the law-courts that I first met Will Barker [William Barker]. Whether it was the atmosphere of the place I do not know but I took an instant dislike to him. It cannot have been instinctive because I found out that I was utterly wrong. In fact, he became a very good companion and latterly one of my dearest friends. He came to my rescue once and took shares — which I now believe he guessed were worthless, though / didn’t know it — in a little company I had started and was trying to keep alive. We were competitors almost from the beginning, friends from when we found each other out, volunteers together in the war of 14-18, and competitors again when we had finished with films. He may have been a rough diamond but he is diamond all right, through and through.
The law case I am alluding to was one brought by, or against, Charles Urban concerning his exclusive use of the word ‘Bioscope’ to describe a film projector he was marketing. I think he would have succeeded if he had not been, ill-advisedly, calling his machine the ‘Urban-Bioscope.’ It was held that he had been, in effect, declaring that there were other Bioscopes and he could not now turn round and claim that his was the only one.
One law case proverbially leads to another so I may be excused, perhaps, for jumping ahead to one in which my own company was involved. Phillips Oppenheim had written, among many others, a novel called The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss, from which Henry Edwards produced a film for us. In the book and film, there was described a rascally theatrical agent of the name of Montague. Certainly there was no thought of pointing to any existing individual. But there was one individual of that name who chose to think that the cap was intended to fit him and he took action against us for libel or slander or defamation — I forget how it was worded. The great Marshall Hall was briefed for the plaintiff and he paid us the compliment of publicly declaring his very high opinion of the Hepworth films.
His junior, in outlining the cause of complaint, listed the many wickednesses of the mythical Mr. Montague and among the other evils he said, — he even seduced his typewriter. Phillips Oppenheim was sitting next to me in the court and I heard him mutter in a loud stage whisper, ‘Typist, my dear fellow. Typist. You can’t seduce a typewriter.’
Luckily, not only for us but for all other film-makers, the case was lost. If it had succeeded we should all have been at the mercy of anyone, honest or otherwise, who chose to consider himself defamed by some description in a film.
Here is another film case which, unluckily for us, we lost, but whether it was fortunate or unfortunate for the film trade as a whole is a moot point. If we had succeeded it would certainly have had immense and far-reaching effects throughout the whole industry.
We were employing, for the most part, completely unknown artists in our films and of necessity publicising their appearance and skill. When the time came when we wanted to advertise them, both on the screen and in the press, by posters and by ‘stills,’ I foresaw that what was beginning to happen to other firms would certainly happen to us. An actor had the value which was due to his own good work. He also had a fortuitous value, not contributed by him, and due to the money spent in advertising him. That accumulated value he was free — unless, and only for so long as, he was under contract — to sell to any rival firm for as much as he could get. His new firm would, of necessity, add to that increased value and the process would go on, higher and higher, until the producers were impoverished and the actors near millionaires. That, indeed, has largely come to pass and it is one of the reasons why the film production industry is nearly always in difficulties.
My panacea was probably not a good one. I suggested that unknown actors should receive a nom-de-guerre, a pseudonym, which should be our property and under which we would advertise him without risking the loss of all we spent on him if he should migrate to a rival firm. The suggestion was submitted to the unknown actors who seemed to consider it fair, and also for counsel’s opinion, which also was that it was fair and could be upheld. Consequently John McMahon became John MacAndrews, Kaynes became Jack Raymond, Wernham Ryott became Stewart Rome and so on. When he came back from the war Ryott went straight to Broadwest and we took action against him and lost.
I do not wish to quarrel with the verdict although it was suggested that I was trying to do the actor out of his living. That, of course, was a gross exaggeration. What I was trying to do was to prevent the actor, unintentionally and perhaps against his will, being used as a pawn in a game which might lead to the destruction of the industry which was providing that living. My suggested method may have been quite wrong but I am convinced that if the something that I was striving for could have been brought about by another and perhaps more equitable method, the industry would today be far more healthy than it is and the actors collectively much better off. For see what happens now. Mr. A is an actor: Mr. B is, say, an electrician. Both do some particularly good work and hope, as we all should, that they will get better pay because of it. Mr. A is in the limelight, or rather the electric light thrown upon him, literally by Mr. B, and he catches the eye of the public — Mr. B does not. A gets his rise, but a rival firm comes along and offers him double. That is doubled again when another firm steals him, and in a very little while he is getting a thousand pounds a week — Mr. B is still getting ten. Then someone says B is quite right, he ought to have at least twenty, yes, and all his colleagues’ wages should be doubled too; never mind what they would be getting in another trade — they are in the film industry. It does not take much prescience to see what is happening; has indeed, happened already. Wages and salaries have risen so greatly, so far in excess of the natural rise due to money depreciation, that it has become an uneconomic proposition to produce picture-plays. America is in like case, but the market there is four times as large as ours and they may be able to win through.
It seems that here there must be something in the nature of a complete revolution to put the industry on its feet. It would be better to have all wages and the like reduced to half than have them cut out altogether but that, I expect, would be politically impossible. Perhaps the whole system must collapse to the ground, and then there may be a chance to begin all over again on sounder lines. I am certain that, given the right conditions, good films — as good as any we have had — could be produced at a fraction of their present cost.
It is not only the amount of the wages but the very large number of people drawing them that is throttling the production business. Here is a list of the technicians engaged in one unit of a modern studio. The names are omitted: —
Producer, associate producer, production supervisor, studio manager, unit production manager, director, second director, first assistant director, second assistant director, third assistant director, continuity, assistant continuity, lighting camera-man, camera operator, camera focus, camera loader, clappers, art director, assistant art director, set dresser, sound supervisor, sound mixer, sound camera, boom operator, assistant boom operator, editor, assistant editor, make-up supervisor, assistant make-up, hairdressing supervisor, hairdressing assistant, wardrobe supervisor, wardrobe master, wardrobe assistant, wardrobe mistress, wardrobe assistant mistress, chief electrician, floor electrician, property master, floor props, assistant floor props, construction manager, stand-by carpenter, stand-by stage hand, stand-by rigger, stand-by painter, stand-by plasterer, stand-by rigger (grips)!
‘So all fleas have lesser fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em. We mustn’t, however, blame the fleas; they are the products of a system which they have done nothing to create. Consider the case of a thoroughly competent camera-man — used to the job from his boyhood. Suppose he is engaged by a modern studio and is told he will have for assistants, a camera loader, a camera unloader, a camera operator and a man to focus the camera for him. You could not expect him to say, ‘Oh, rubbish! I can do all those things myself and then have time on my hands.’
Go into any studio you like, anywhere, and you will find twenty to thirty people standing about in the set, apparently doing nothing; and you will more often find, to your sorrow, that the studio is empty — lifeless and cold.
But this consideration of latter-day studio conditions is very far ahead of my proper chronological position, from which I was lured by taking three law cases together although they were really several years apart. The last one led me naturally to consider how modern conditions might have been modified if that case had ended differently. I dislike law cases intensely and I thank my generally cheerful guardian angel that there are no more to be recounted. Now I must get back to the time when Stanley Faithfull had only recently joined the staff.
I tried very hard to run the business on decent and human lines and never has any man been more loyally and faithfully served than I was. Everybody in the place was expected to be ready and willing to do any mortal thing and there was never a thought of overtime and never a trace of disinclination to take on a job which, in these days, similar workers would think ‘beneath them.’ Only in the studio would there sometimes be a feeling that a lady who had played ‘lead’ in one film ought not to have to ‘walk on’ as a servant-maid with a single line in the next. But the motto in the studio was ‘Walk on — or Walk off,’ and it came to be understood that people who were too good to play small parts as well as bigger ones were altogether too good for us. Before Geoffrey Faithfull became chief camera-man he was asked to ‘stand in’ for Dolly Lupone who was frightened to throw herself down in front of a swiftly approaching horse and trap. He did it with such abandon that he cut himself pretty badly on the stone road.
Sometimes when we were not busy and the weather was fine and warm there would be a sudden unexpected half-holiday so that we could all go swimming together or do what else seemed preferable. In the winter on the few days when the ice was bearing, a half-holiday, not expected or asked for, was doubly welcome. Holidays, planned beforehand, wet or fine, and doled out almost as part of one’s wages hold nothing like the same happiness and welcome.
Of course boys being — as by tradition they are supposed to be — boys, got up to a good many larks which only came to my knowledge in much later years, though sometimes I knew more than I was supposed to know, but kept my own counsel. A recurring feature was a trick played upon every new boy when he first arrived. He was told to hold out the front of his trousers as far as he could. Then with his head bent backwards a penny was balanced on his nose and if he could tip it into the trouser-front he could keep it. But in the meantime another boy tipped a jugful of cold water into that receptacle — which must have been very uncomfortable.
Stanley and Geoffrey Faithfull, already mentioned, were too wise for these amusements, or perhaps too wary to be caught. If I have mentioned them a little before their proper time it is probably because they have always been such staunch friends to me that they are constantly in my thoughts.
Stanley joined in the early spring of 1906 and Geoffrey just a year later, each at six shillings a week. They have solemnly assured me lately that they both thought that was excellent pay for learners and that all the rest of the staff considered themselves very well paid too. I do hope they were right but it seems rather dreadful to look back at now. I am perfectly certain, however, that all the people in the employment of the firm were really contented and happy. We were none of us financially well off — for my own drawings were small too — but I think there is no doubt whatever that we were all really happily engaged in work which we loved.
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