Cecil M. Hepworth — Came the Dawn — Chapter 09 (1951) 🇬🇧
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Several years before the gift of tongues descended upon the silent screen and robbed it of its one golden virtue, a curious little chirruping was heard from the pictures and was hailed by super optimists as the beginning of talking films. In a sense it was. But it was a very long way from real sound films as we knew them afterwards, for Sir Ambrose Fleming had not yet invented his thermionic valve without which no amplification and therefore no satisfactory volume of sound was possible.
The chirruping emanated from an old-style gramophone with a horn, placed upon the stage beside the picture and, by one or other ingenious contrivance, keeping some kind of synchronism with the picture on the screen. I want to describe one way by which this synchronism was attempted, for all of them had the basic idea in common.
Will Barker’s [William Barker] method, the ‘Cinephone,’ was one of the simplest and I believe he did very well out of it. Having selected a suitable gramophone record he played it through several times to the actor or actors who were to take part in the picture. When they were letter-perfect, could sing the song in strict accord with the record and fit appropriate action to the words, he placed the gramophone in the corner of the scene where it would be photographed as part of the picture. Then he mounted a kind of clock face upon the instrument with a hand geared to the spindle so that it would turn slowly as the record played. The scene was photographed and the index-hand with it.
When the picture was exhibited, a similar gramophone with a similar clock-face was placed on the stage beside the screen. The record was started at the same moment as the picture and all the operator in the box had to do was to keep the dial in the picture on the screen exactly in step with the dial on the stage. If he succeeded exactly the film would be in synchronism with the sound, but it wasn’t easy. The trouble was that the whole of the ‘kitchen arrangements ,’ so to speak, was right before the eyes of the audience. If the synchronism went wrong they could see why. They probably got more fun watching the race between the two little clocks than they did out of the picture, but at least they were amused either way.
I originated a method which I thought was better. It was a private electrical connection between the machine and the man in the box. A simple commutator, laid on the gramophone when the record was in place, sent electrical signals through a wire to a synchroniser in the operating box. The synchroniser had a little lamp behind a slot, which was normally covered by a movable hand just wide enough to hide the light. That hand had two little windows of gelatine attached to it, green on one side and red on the other. The signals from the distant gramophone tended to pull the hand to one side and thus show a green light. A similar commutator on the projector tended to pull the indicator hand in the other direction. As long as the picture was in exact synchronism with the gramophone the needle covered the slot and no light showed but the moment the two machines got out of step, even by an eighth of a second, a red or a green flash warned the operator and he varied his speed at once to bring them into step again.
All methods of this kind, however, were at the mercy of the man in charge of the gramophone, for if he did not start the needle on the record at the right point all hope of synchronism was lost. In some cinemas a programme boy was given the job — and a lot of things went wrong!
These of course were not ‘talking pictures’ in the proper meaning of the words. They were an interesting little side-line — perhaps an ingenious attempt to peep into the future and see whether picture and sound were likely ever to get married. It was a little flirtation which might or might not lead on to more serious things.
We called our instrument the ‘Vivaphone’ because we had to call it something. It was installed in a considerable number of small halls — the gramophone’s gentle bleating was too faint for anything larger — and we supplied them with a steady stream of films, two a week for several years. You wouldn’t have liked them even if they had been good. For the ‘talkies,’ properly so called (if anything can be ‘properly’ called by such an outrageous name), must be simultaneously photographed — generally on two films, the ‘track’ and the ‘mute,’ and the marriage is consummated when they are combined in the prints which go to the cinemas. The metaphor must now be dropped or questions of morality might arise when half a dozen tracks are united with one mute, which is quite usual practice.
The ‘Vivaphone’ was sold or leased in complete sets consisting of synchroniser, gramophone attachment, projector handle, coil of wire and a four- volt battery. Anyone could rig the arrangement up, or call upon us to show him how. One of our men once took a set to a customer by train; it was in a bag by itself and he put it on the luggage rack. Suddenly it caught fire spontaneously, sent out dense clouds of evil-smelling smoke and had to be pitched out of the window — luckily in open country. The railway company recovered it and, naturally, asked us what it meant. I went to see them — and it — but couldn’t suggest any explanation. We were all nonplussed. Then I went back and did some furious thinking. The bag had contained only the four-volt battery, some wire and a tin box with the film in it — the customer already had the other parts. At last I tried putting a film-box on the top of the battery, the metal touching both the terminals. Almost at once the mystery was explained: the metal short-circuited the current and became red hot.
Nobody had thought of this possibility beforehand, but evidently what had happened was that in placing the bag on the rack, or in the jolting of the train, the tin box had got into position on the top of the battery, and then further jolting had caused it to make contact and fire the celluloid.
Although the ‘Vivaphone’ had only a short life of three or four years, it had its moments of glory. One of these was when that important politician, Bonar Law, made a gramophone record specially for us, but with an eye, of course, to the value of propaganda. He had to make a journey to The Gramophone Company and deliver his speech into a long funnel — there was no electrical recording then — and then come out to our studio and re-deliver it word by word in step with his own record on the gramophone attached to our camera. This is now called ‘post-synchronisation’ and it isn’t at all an easy thing to do. Truth to tell he was not very good at it. But it was good enough to pass with people who were not too critical and I have little doubt that it served its purpose.
F. E. Smith, who afterwards became Lord Birkenhead, made a much better job of the same sort of thing. His speech was much better to begin with, and he seemed as if he were quite at home with the big funnel; and then, when he had to come to the studio to repeat the whole performance before the camera, while the gramophone threw his speech back at him, and he was expected to put in all the lip movements and expressions in exact time to every word, he never turned a hair. His performance was really excellent and I hope it did some good.
Several other Cabinet Ministers came in turn to a room in St. James’ Square, which I fitted up as a studio, and appeared before my film camera and afterwards arrangements were made by which we were to have photographed, although not in synchronism, an actual Cabinet meeting in full session. We rigged up our apparatus in the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street with a large number of Westminster arc-lamps, for which the power was supplied to us from somewhere in the basement, and when all was ready we had nothing to do but stand about and wait for Lloyd George and his ministers to troop in and begin their show. Instead, there came a short message that the whole idea was off, and we packed up and went home again.
We were not told the reason and were left to guess whether it was a sudden attack of stage fright or what it was. It was a sad disappointment to us for a film like that would have been something of a triumph at that time. However, our grief was assuaged by the authorities setting aside for us a room in St. James’ Square where many of the members of the Cabinet came and sat for me to be filmed. The ‘Vivaphone’ had nothing to do with this. An unaccustomed silence was settled upon all these important personages, and I wondered if they, so different in appearance, had anything else in common besides their rank as ministers of the crown. I found it, to my delight. They all had a keen sense of humour, that rarest and best of the human senses, binding them together and linking them to the country.
That is my memory, after thirty-four years, of a very curious incident, but the incident is really much more curious than that. I had completely forgotten that at the time I had been asked to set out a full description of it for the Kinematograph Year Book, but as it was published under my portrait and over my facsimile signature I am bound to admit its authenticity.
Here it is: —
The Secret History of the Cabinet Film
by Cecil M. Hepworth
You ask me to write you a brief article for the new edition of the Kinematograph Year Book, giving the real inner history of the Cabinet Film about which there was so much talk last summer. Without betraying any confidence, I think I may say that the first thing that happened was an application from a lady, well known in social circles, for aid from the kinematograph industry for a charity in which she was very much interested. Her suggestion filtered through to a gentleman, who, though not connected with the trade, has been interested in several kinematograph ventures on the sporting side. This gentleman took the idea to Mr. W. G. Barker as a typical representative of the industry in this country, with a view to learning what the exhibitors of kinematograph pictures would be likely to do. He, with characteristic vehemence, said they could do nothing, and gave as his reasons that exhibitors were at the moment in a state of being very hard hit by the war and the conditions contingent upon it, such as the Amusement Tax and the Daylight Saving Bill, and so on.
The gentleman of sporting proclivities was by no means inclined to take No for an answer, and Mr. Barker at length suggested that he had better apply to Mr. A. E. Newbould, the Chairman of the Exhibitors’ Association, who was the best man in England to speak authoritatively for the exhibitors. Mr. Newbould’s answer was very much the same as Mr. Barker’s, but with this proviso, that if any scheme could be evolved which would enable the exhibitors to get some sort of boom which might help in a small measure to counteract the depressing influences already mentioned, they would certainly be willing to do everything in their power to help the charity in question. It was not a case of giving them a quid pro quo for their assistance, for the kinematograph exhibitors have shown, over and over again, their willingness and anxiety to help every worthy cause to which they could be of any possible assistance. But here they were faced with a situation which simply did not permit them to think of helping any charity on such a gigantic scale as was suggested in this instance. Give them some means by which they could make a little money, and that money could certainly be at the disposal of the charity. Thus Mr. Newbould.
The British sportsman, nothing daunted, asked Mr. Newbould, with sparkling eyes, what he would suggest.
That gentleman thought awhile and then said, ‘Well, get us permission to take a photo of the Cabinet assembling in the historic Cabinet Room, and we will probably get you all you want.’
Thus he spake, thinking that the dauntless one would be crushed for ever by such a problem. Not so, however. Within a week or two, the telephone rang, and the report came through: ‘It’s all fixed up. You can photo the Cabinet whenever you like.’
Mr. Newbould now had to go ahead. He had asked for the moon and got it. He had no excuse for drawing back. Not that he wanted to do so, for his own enthusiasm was aroused, and when Mr. Newbould is enthusiastic things get done. Much of his keenness percolated through to the exhibitors, and arrangements were soon on foot for making this charity not only the biggest thing in charities which the kinematograph trade had ever touched, but incidentally, one of the biggest booms for the trade itself. A gala performance was to be held in a big representative kinematograph theatre in London, and there is very little doubt but that the King himself would have been present, and thereby set a seal upon the British kinematograph industry, the influence of which would have been permanent and far-reaching. At this gala performance the opportunity would have been taken of proving to immense numbers of British people who still need a proof that English films are being made today which are equal to anything the rest of the world can show. Only British-made pictures would have appeared upon that programme and in the very nature of things they would thereby have invited comparison with the very best of the rest of the world’s productions.
Meanwhile, Mr. W. G. Barker was calling a meeting of British manufacturers and producers, to discuss the best means of carrying out the work involved, and a committee of three, consisting of Messrs. W. G. Barker, G. L. Tucker and myself, was appointed to make all the necessary arrangements, and take the Cabinet Film. It was at this first meeting of this committee that I let drop a bomb, which kept the said committee quiet for a considerable number of minutes. All the time these negotiations had been going forward, I had been nursing a guilty secret which I could no longer keep to myself. It was this. For many months I had been quietly taking a series of what we technically call ‘close-ups’ of these very Cabinet ministers, whom it was now proposed to photograph en masse. I had, in fact, already got this Cabinet picture in detail, and in far better detail at that, than could possibly have been obtained in the conditions that would be involved in the Cabinet Room itself.
Nearly all of these ministers, as well as a number of other distinguished people, had sat specially for me in a studio I had fitted up in one of the Government offices, and naturally, working in conditions of my own choosing, I had obtained good results. This series of Kinematograph Interviews was an old idea of mine, started as far back as five years ago, when such people as the Right Hon. F. E. Smith and the Right Hon. A. Bonar Law came down to the studios at Walton to be ‘kine-interviewed’ on the subject of Tariff Reform. I had similar interviews about this time last year, but I found that the numerous engagements of these important people made it too difficult to get them out into the country for photographing, and so I postponed further pictures until last winter, when a Government office was placed at my disposal, and specially fitted up as a studio.
There is little more to be said on this point. The committee were in a quandary. My pictures were ready, and if I put them out, the success of their Cabinet film was in jeopardy. On the other hand, they did not feel prepared to ask me to abandon the fruits of many months of work, and let them get their film out first, and so queer mine. The sporting gentleman came forward with a sporting offer of a £1,000 if I would stand aside, and let the charity film come out first, which offer I naturally refused with as much politeness as I could muster. The better suggestion was that I should merge my film in with the other, and make one thoroughly good and complete picture for the benefit of the charity, and incidentally for the trade as a whole. This appeared to me to be the only course, and I gladly adopted it, and I was asked to undertake the whole of the arrangements, and take the Cabinet film myself, so that, as far as possible, there might be one supremely good film for the good of the cause, instead of two incomplete ones.
Then came that unfortunate and ill-advised premature publicity. Somebody got hold of the knowledge that the members of the Cabinet were to be filmed. Somebody else, with a sense of humour more strongly developed than discretion, saw only the funny side of it, and how easily it could be ridiculed. That sense of humour ran riot through the newspapers, and the British public laughed. Cabinet Ministers do not like laughter. Perhaps it takes a strong man to be ridiculed. However that might be, the project was suddenly abandoned and a great opportunity lost — killed by ridicule.
It is often urged against Englishmen that their great failing is lack of imagination, and my experience over this abandoned Cabinet film leads me regretfully to the fear that there is something in this. I recall how the newspapers, which admittedly reflect public sentiment, only a few short years ago were laughing at the possibility of flying machines; and then a little later were weeping tears of sorrow over the risks which men ran in going up in these gimcrack affairs for the amusement of spectators and the getting in of gate-money. And now these same flying machines are winning the war! There was the same outcry against motorcars, well within my own memory, and I can hear the echo of the indignation which was expressed at the mere thought of a Cabinet Minister imperilling his dignity by riding in one of these ‘stink machines’ as they then called them. I believe there was the same outcry against railway trains when they were first invented, and I can imagine the horror with which the equivalent of a Cabinet Minister in Caxton’s day would have regarded the idea of his well-rounded speeches and noble thoughts being recorded upon artificial papyrus in a greasy ink.
How the people of a few years hence will laugh at a dignity which was afraid of being sullied by contact with the kinematograph, the greatest and most powerful vehicle for the conveyance of thought which the world has ever produced!
The ‘Vivaphone’ petered out in the end as it was bound to do, for the novelty wore off, and the frequent failures because the boy was careless about putting the gramophone needle in the proper place on the record brought all these devices into ill-repute after the lack of synchronism ceased to be amusing.
But before I leave the subject I must record one incident which was rather significant. At the first little picture-hall in Walton which I described some time back, an early ‘Vivaphone’ picture was introduced. It was received with such intense enthusiasm that an encore was vociferously demanded and could not be refused, although it meant delay while the film was rewound and the gramophone reset. Then the people refused to allow the programme to be resumed until they had had a second encore and even a third. So much for this little foretaste of ‘talking pictures.’
Although I invented the ‘Vivaphone’ I never really liked it. I had said all along that it was easy to do and not worth doing, for at the best it could only be a sort of disreputable ghost of what ‘talking pictures’ would certainly become in due course. But I was overruled by the business interests, in the shape of Manager Parfrey, who had his finger on the pulse of things more closely than I had, and I am bound to admit that from that point of view he was undoubtedly right. For out of it we made a lot of money which was available for worthier purposes.
Incidentally, the principle of the ‘Vivaphone,’ after the thing itself was dead, was used very greatly to improve the technical quality of an important device in the making of one type of picture which we came upon later. This I will deal with in its proper place, for I am still trying to be true to my promise of chronological sequence.
And in that order, I must apologise for having been a little premature in according to the news-reel people all responsibility for every future picture of news interest. For almost immediately we came to one which was of so much national importance that we were bound to serve it with all the skill and devotion at our command. If this was to be our swan-song so far as news was concerned it was a really worthy effort. It is safe to say that for beauty of photography and vital interest it remained unbeaten for many years. It was The Funeral of King Edward VII on May 20th, 1910. I took my camera, with Stanley Faithfull to help me, to Windsor Station to photograph the arrival of the funeral train with all that marvellous assembly of English and foreign mourners — all the very numerous crowned heads of Europe. It was a very remarkable sight and the film, taken in perfect weather, does full justice to it. I am glad indeed that I have a copy of it in my possession still. There were very many more crowned heads in Europe then than there are today or, I suppose, ever will be again. And most of the people there then must be dead by now. The Prince of Wales, a young slip of a lad, walks just behind the German Emperor, and the kings of nearly all the countries on our side of the world are there in full state. Geoffrey Faithfull had another camera in London where the procession passed near Marlborough House and secured an equally valuable picture. Between us, and with the help of unusually fine weather, we set a standard for the news-reel people which must have taken them a long time to surpass.
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