Cecil M. Hepworth — Came the Dawn — Chapter 11 (1951) 🇬🇧
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That short film settled my career from then on I devoted myself entirely to production and stuck to it ever after until the silent pictures were drowned in a sea of sound and the Hepworth Company went down with them. Not that one was the cause of the other: the two things just happened together. But we must not hint at the end yet, for this is only the beginning — the turning point at which the company really began to find itself — began to think about making important and worth-while pictures.
John Bunny, Florence Turner and Larry Trimble belonged to the Vitagraph Company of America — one of the oldest, if not the oldest, film company in the world. We had a tremendous lot of questions to ask one another as may be imagined. I asked John Bunny, among a great many other things, what they did about make-up. He said, ‘Oh. Just fight it, fight and keep on fighting.’ I gathered from this that he and I were very much of a mind about that as we turned out to be on many subjects. My practice was then and afterwards to discourage and indeed refuse all stage make-up of any kind except in heavy character parts. Special film make-up had not been invented then and when it began to appear I wouldn’t have it used either. This was due to a curious belief I held very strongly then, though whether I should be able to do so now in the case of a ‘dark’ studio, with its multitude of arc-lights, I do not know.
I held that facial expression, more important in the silent days than it became when sound was added to the pictures, was not a matter of the eyes at all, and in fact the actual eye, so far from being under the control of the actor, is entirely beyond his power of changing in any respect. I know it is a common belief that the eye can be made to show all sorts of different expressions but I hold that that is not so. Except in the matter of tears the actual eye-ball takes no part in delineating any of the emotions. It just doesn’t change its shade or colour or anything. It is in the tiny interstices in the skin around the eyes that all changes of expression are registered. If this is so, it would seem to be bad practice to fill up those tiny interstices and almost invisible wrinkles with greasepaint. It is robbing the artists of their best means of telling the story.
The ban did not, of course, forbid the accenting of such things as eyebrows or even, a little, the lips. But apart from such minor repairs as nature had forgotten, the rule was: leave yourself as God made you; that’s good enough for me.
About those tears. I occasionally read of certain mechanical or even chemical means of inducing them artificially — which is perhaps why the effect on the screen sometimes looks rather false. In all the years I worked with Alma Taylor I always found that whenever she had to express an emotion which, in real life, might result in tears she always felt it strongly and the tears came without any urging. It may not be generally so on the stage, of course, for there an actress is night after night re-enacting by memory the emotions she felt deeply in some far-away rehearsal. But in filmmaking we strive to record that actual rehearsal when the feeling is very real and the tears come naturally.
This was rather too poignantly illustrated once when I was rehearsing Alec Worcester for the film called, I think, At the Foot of the Scaffold. Worcester was a very good actor though he was rather a strange fellow in some ways. In one of the scenes in this film, in which he was impersonating a man who had evidently got himself into very serious trouble and become accused, falsely we must suppose, of murder, he had to work himself up, or be worked up, into a highly nervous condition at the thought of his impending fate. He did get worked up so very thoroughly that just at the moment we were ready to take the scene he suddenly went off into a violent fit of hysterics. Just for an instant I thought he was still acting, and then I went for him, hammer and tongs. I called him all the names I could think of, and that was plenty, and finished up with cold-water treatment. When he came round he was no further use that day, and I felt very queasy about the way he might behave on the morrow. He was, however, considerably chastened, and although I do not think he put up as good a show as he would have done the first day had he been able to go on, he did not do at all badly.
Alec Worcester was the husband of Violet Hopson, a good actress and a very nice woman, and they had two lovely children.
Of the few people from the actual theatrical world who floated into our company one of the very best was ‘Billy’ Saunders. I think his main experience at the theatre was in the ‘front of the house — in the box-office or some similar capacity — not on the stage. When he came to us he acted occasionally, as did everyone else at some time or another, but his greatest ability was more in the nature of what would today be called Art Director. For he was very clever in arranging and setting scenery, making sure of its suitability in every way and decorating and furnishing it appropriately. He was very fond of little ‘accents’ — a bunch of flowers or similar effective touch right down in the foreground at the corner of the picture. I used to laugh at him and call them ‘Billyisms,’ but I seldom removed them.
Lulworth Cove was visited again in 1912 and several films were made. We all liked that place for it was good for filming and very enjoyable between whiles. Like many of our contemporaries, we had a stock comic individual — in our case he was called Hawkeye and played by Plumb. Hawkeye Swims the Channel was one of his efforts, and he remembers that on arrival he found he had no passport and was turned back by a gendarme. One of our fellows was very nearly drowned at the Durdle Door and was dragged ashore by Alma and first-aided by the rest of the company. In an exciting cliff-chase picture Fitz had a bad giddiness attack and couldn’t get down, until rescued by the coastguards. Plumb stood beneath him as a support. He says he could scarcely avoid this kind office as Fitz began it by standing on his fingers.
One of the first of my important pictures was when I was commissioned by the Gaumont Company to make a film of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson’s production of Hamlet. This was a considerable undertaking for those days. I was given a price to work to — I have forgotten how much it was but I believe I kept within it, which was in itself rather unusual. Hamlet as a play is almost all interiors and these were staged without much difficulty with Hay Plumb as producer, in our studio at Walton, to which the great actor and Lady Forbes-Robertson and all the other actors in the company made such daily excursions as were necessary. But I wanted something more than that and I decided beforehand to build the Castle of Elsinore on the sea coast. I went with a few helpers down to Lulworth Cove and there, among the rugged little hills and rocks overlooking the sea, we found a spot on which it was sufficiently flat to build the castle.
Next we engaged a small gang of those men who build in canvas and plaster such very convincing structures for big exhibitions as those at Earl’s Court and elsewhere; buildings to look exactly like prisons or castles or cathedrals or anything that is wanted. These men took great loads of material down to Lulworth and made no bones about producing a veritable castle, ramparts and all.
In the meantime a rumour went round the village that a ‘Sir’ was coming to live in it with his entourage for several days. We engaged rooms for as many as could be accommodated at the Castle Inn, appropriately named, although ours was the only castle within a mile or two, and the rest were accommodated in various parts of the village. The whole place frothed with excitement and everybody wanted to know when the ‘Sir’ was coming and where the ‘Sir’ would stay and for how long.
The castle, when it was finished, looked as if it had been there for centuries and would stand for as long again. The ‘ghost’ had real rocks to walk upon, which he said hurt his feet badly, though he looked much too transparent to care for anything so concrete as that — when he has portrayed by double-photography. We all had a very pleasant time at Lulworth during those few days and when I went down there again a year or two later I had the greatest difficulty in rinding the site of the ‘Castle’ for not the slightest trace of it remained. All the people were still asking for news of the ‘Sir’ and probably a few of them will remember his visit now, for nothing so grand had ever happened to Lulworth Cove before.
But before the castle was cleared away we used it for some of the scenes in a film of the Princes in the Tower with little Reggie Sheffield (Eric Desmond) as one of the young victims. However, most of the Lulworth pictures were of a more cheerful, not to say hilarious, nature like Tilly and the Coastguards, one of the last of the famous Tilly series, and there was another whose title I have forgotten in which Chrissie White played the part of a mermaid with a long fair wig and a plait, and there was a reversing film with a barrel which rolled a long way and smashed itself to bits over a cliff: then healed itself again and sailed right out to sea.
About this time (we are still in 1913), Sir Charles Wyndham, the famous actor-manager, honoured us with a visit. It was really rather sad, for this fine artist, whom I had seen and admired in so many delightful plays, came to Walton to make a film of his favourite and most successful play, David Garrick. We were only too willing to do all that we could to help him but this great old gentleman had lost nearly all of his memory and could hardly take in any of the things we wanted him to do. He had a lady with him who was most patient and helpful but it was plain that he was past understanding the unusual conditions in which he was required to work.
Miss Mary Moore, who always acted with him and was then, or afterwards became, his wife, asked me point blank what age she would look if she took in the film her usual part with Sir Charles. I was obliged to answer truthfully that, in spite of makeup or any other artful aid, she would just look her age or a very little younger. She immediately threw up the part and picked out a pretty young lady from our own company to play it instead. Her first choice was Claire Hulcup but she afterwards changed her mind and asked if they could have Chrissie White instead as she was even more suitable for the part.
The two Hulcups were clever and adaptable people with plenty of resource and very pleasant to work with, for they slipped into our ways easily and soon became an integral part of our community. Claire assumed the surname of Pridelle, and she and her husband and Hay Plumb were the life and soul of the ‘Vivaphone’ until its end. They played many other parts as well and we were very sorry to lose them when they finally decided to leave us.
Still another actor-knight came to bask in the partly artificial sunshine of our studio about this time in 1913. Sir John Martin Harvey came with his company to make The Cigarette Maker’s Romance, produced by Frank Wilson.
It is very important to realise that the making of a successful film from an existing stage-play is very far from being a mere photographing of the various scenes as they have appeared on the stage. It is true that a few inexperienced companies did attempt to do it in that way but the horrible mess which was the inevitable result soon proved a sufficient deterrent to others who sought to take that easy path. At that time of our Hamlet production for Gaumont I wrote a description which may be quoted now in this connection: —
Words in the play must, of course, be translated into action in the film. It was necessary to interpolate all sorts of scenes, visualising episodes which are merely described in the play. The Queen’s explanation that she has seen Ophelia gathering flowers by the side of a glassy stream is, for instance, quite useless for the purpose of the silent pictorial version; we had to show the incident in actuality. Wherever possible we took the beautiful scenery painted by Hawes Graven for Forbes-Robertson as our model for the special cinematograph scenery which it was necessary to construct, but, where he had used flat cloths, we had to use solids, including huge carved Norman columns 2 ft. 6 ins. in diameter. Then, as you know, we built a complete reconstruction of Elsinore Castle at Lulworth Cove.
Some other very beautiful outdoor scenes were taken at Hartsbourne Manor, the residence of Maxine Elliott, Lady Robertson’s sister. The orchard scene was enacted in a private garden at Halliford-on-Thames, where the conditions we wanted were found — a beautiful old apple-tree, of such a shape and size as would compose well in our picture, overhanging a smooth lawn such as one would expect to find in the grounds of a king’s palace. Ophelia “died” in the stream at Hartsbourne Manor, where, also, she was “buried” — in a dug grave beside a specially built church. The scene showing the Queen watching her gathering flowers was taken by the side of a private lake at Walton-on-Thames, where, of course, all the magnificent interiors were produced in our own studios.’
But although we made several films from stage plays we were by no means convinced that that was the best thing to do. It generally gave the advantage of a well-made plot, which was not at all easy to come by in original film scenarios, but we kept to specially written stories whenever we could get them. Drake’s Love Story was a quite successful instance. The Bioscope of February 27th, 1913, started its description this way: ‘One’s first sensation on seeing this very fine production by the Hepworth Company is a feeling of gratification that the splendid chapter of English history which it represents has been immortalised in pictures not by a foreign firm but by a company essentially and entirely English. For too long we have been forced to endure the ignominy of having our first literary masterpieces and our noblest historical passages flung back in our faces, as it were, by people of another land, and apart from other considerations, we must all be ready appreciatively to recognise the laudable efforts of Messrs. Hepworth to remove this ancient reproach and to establish the art of film manufacture on quite as high and as national a basis in our own as in other countries…’ Hay Plumb took the name part in this film, and very well he looked and acted it, and the always charming Chrissie White played opposite him.
Plumb and Gladys Sylvani were the principals in a considerable number of the films we made around this time, but Chrissie and Alma Taylor were coming very much to the front, and Madge Campbell was doing good work in many ‘Vivaphone’ subjects as well as more serious work in several of the larger films.
It was during this general period — from 1910 onwards — that significant and important changes in the aspect of film affairs in this country were seething up all around us and necessarily impinging on our own situation. The same necessity today suggests that I should give a short account of them although — except so far as I may have been actually influenced by them — they do not really concern this story. Indeed, working more or less out in the country, I was to some extent only vaguely aware of what was going on and did not consciously take any steps to adapt our conditions to those of our contemporaries. This may or may not have been a good thing: it was certainly not an intentionally superior attitude, but I am not at all sure that it did not serve us well.
It seems that foreign countries got tired at last of importing English films and were retaliating by making their own and unloading them upon us — naturally enough. The trouble was that many of them were better than ours, but that, too, was better for all of us in the end. Film production in this country had got into a rut and, with very exceptional bright flashes, seemed content to stay in it. I am uncomfortably conscious that in my case there was a feeling that we were doing very nicely, thanks — principally on account of our foreign trade and particularly because of that anaesthetising American standing order, and had no sufficient urge to push out into wider seas. In one way and another that seems to have been true of all the English trade. So the foreigners got a start of us and when we did begin to wake up and rub our eyes it was all we could do to keep our places in the race — little we could do to recover ground we had lost.
It was, I think, the Americans who first began to encroach upon the chosen field of my company — romantic drama (but it was mixed up with any amount of other things) . The Italian companies specialised in spectacular subjects — which they handled remarkably well, while a kind of midway place was taken by Nordisk, the great Danish company. The French, who had held for so long the field of exciting tricks, were nearly out of sight and the Germans had not yet put in an appearance. This, it seems to me, was where we came to life again, but I am bound to confess the vagueness of my outlook and the very faulty memory which drives me to seek the aid of contemporary accounts.
I am on slightly surer ground in the matter of our own productions, when we led the way, so it is alleged, with Till Death Do Us Part, with Gladys Sylvani and Hay Plumb, and gave it more publicity than usual. These two artists were very well received, both for their considerable good looks and for their restrained and effective work; and this film was followed six months later by Rachel’s Sin, with the same principals in the cast, and a greater strength of dramatic incident and action.
Another very important sign of the times was the increasing use of theatrical actors in films, partly, it must be supposed, because of increasing demand for artists and the scarcity of trained film actors outside the ranks of the regular stock-companies. But their incursion was by no means an unmixed blessing for they were not graciously inclined to a new technique and were over-apt to the opinion that they already knew all that there was to learn. Among things they had to learn was the prime necessity of restraint of gesture: they had to learn not to act. In moving pictures it is most important to be able to keep still and only to move when necessary and then as little as possible.
A couple of actors doing nothing ‘up stage’ — that is, at the back — must do exactly that, for if one of them so much as flicks a handkerchief the attention of the audience will be immediately diverted to him and away from the figure in front where it properly belongs. This ‘direction of attention’ is one of the most important qualifications of a producer who knows his job. He can take and hold the attention just exactly where he wants it to be by the deft manipulation of small, quite unobtrusive movements opposed to stillness. Alternatively, think of the dramatic ‘attention value’ of the only still figure in a ballroom or a moving crowd.
It is, of course, understood that I am speaking only of silent film technique — these things may not necessarily be so important in sound films which have other means of accomplishing the same results. But I have often felt in a modern picture, that the director is sometimes obtaining effects by mere enormity of scenery and properties, which could just as well be attained by better attention to, perhaps knowledge of, such little things as these. Lavish expenditure of money and wasted time is not a wise substitute for care about minor details: it may even wreck the enterprise which a little greater skill would have saved.
But that is only a parenthesis. To go back to where it began; I hope I have not allowed it to be inferred that the developments I have mentioned are a mere epitome of the occurrences of a single year. On the contrary they represent a crescendo of change which began in or around 1911 and continued for a long time — continued in some respects indeed right up to the year of the Great War. And it is interesting to note that while our pictures, for instance, were all the time growing larger and better, were being better acted and produced by better artists, we were also continuing to turn out a number of smaller films of the kind which had already attained great popularity because of their genuine feeling and appeal. In February, 1910, Black Beauty appeared again in a new edition, and at the end of the year in Dumb Comrades, there was another heart-stirring rescue of a little girl by a pony and a dog. In February ‘Rover’ died. Even his name was only an assumed one for theatrical purposes. His real name was Blair in commemoration of his Scottish origin. He was a true friend and a great companion, but my most persistent memory of him is the way every morning in life he jumped up on a washing basket by my dressing-table and waited and longed for a dab on the nose from my shaving brush. Then, with every expression of ineffable happiness, he licked off every trace of soap and waited for more.
During this period, and right up to the end, I used a device which attracted both favourable and unfavourable comment. This was the ‘fade-off’ of every scene at the end and the corresponding ‘fade-on’ at the beginning of the next. This gave the impression of a dissolve between each scene into the one following and created a feeling of smoothness — avoided the harsh unpleasant ‘jerk’ usually associated with change of scene. It was not a dissolve, of course, for that is an actual gradual mixing of one scene into the next, exactly in the manner of the old-time dissolving views.
For the sake of clarity I should point out here the technical meaning of the word ‘scene.’ A scene is a picture taken from one point of view by the camera without stopping. The camera may revolve (panoram) or even travel in a car or truck, but so long as the scene is continuous it is one scene. If it is interrupted by a sub-title or other interpolation, it ends as one scene and continues as another.
It was held by some critics that my ‘dissolves’ wasted time and used up film-stock unnecessarily. On the contrary they very often saved time. For instance, a man walking out of one room and into another. In the usual method he must, for the sake of continuity, be seen rising from his chair, walking across to the door, opening it (change to next scene), coming into the room, perhaps closing door, crossing to the centre where the action is to continue. My double fade covered almost all this; really speeded up the action while seeming to make it smoother, and saved, besides time and footage, the jerky change from one scene to the other. Alternatively in a long smooth sequence, an unexpected jerk may be dramatically important and then it can be used with redoubled effect.
Another favourite device of mine, of which — with the fade — most people left me in sole enjoyment was the ‘vignette.’ I had found by an early experiment that a soft vignetted edge all round the picture was much more aesthetically pleasing than a hard line and the unrelieved black frame. Once, long ago, when Charles Pathé came to see me and I showed him one or two of my very early films, he said in effect — for he had very little English — ‘Why need those small houses be so ugly? There is no reason why, for this film, they should not have been pretty cottages.’ I never forgot that. Always, all my life since, I have striven for beauty, for pictorial meaning and effect in every case where it is obtainable. Much of my success, I am sure, is in the aesthetic pleasure conveyed, but not recognised, by the beauty of the scene and generally mistaken for some unknown other quality in the film. It is like music with modern picture-plays: many people do not hear it at all, but it may add a great deal to their enjoyment, unless it has the opposite effect and does quite the reverse.
About the vignette: it is produced by a carefully adjusted little frame just in front of my lens, which, being so close, is entirely out of focus and merely gives a pleasing soft edge to the picture. But the drawback was that I could no longer use my ‘fade-out’ in the ordinary way, for stopping down the lens naturally brought the little frame progressively into focus and spoilt the effect. For those who are interested, the answer was a photographic ‘wedge’ — a strip of glass, black at one end and clear at the other with infinite gradations between them, and this was arranged to slide from clear to black before the lens by just pulling a string, and so produced the gentle black-out without affecting the appearance of the vignette frame.
Perhaps the greatest menace to the homogeneity of the silent film was the necessity of titles to explain what could not be conveyed pictorially. They should never be used unless it is practically impossible to tell some part of the story without them. They are like what a lie is said to be: an abomination unto the Lord but an ever-ready help in time of trouble. In careless hands the time of trouble happened much too often and it was much easier to slip in a title than do without it at the cost of making the scene again properly.
I know it may be said that the silent film is dead and buried long ago: why worry about it now? But the silent film is resurrected and, in the hands of a thousand enthusiastic amateurs, is going through all the joys and tribulations it suffered with me and my contemporaries before these critics were born. If anything I can say may be of use to the amateurs I am not going to be stopped from saying it. The 16 mm. film may be a most valuable training ground for future 35 mm. experts. It may conceivably even take the place of the larger film in due course. To every 16 mm. camera-man I send my most enthusiastic salutations. Go on and prosper! You are the pioneers in a very valuable enterprise. For the time being you must use titles, but make them as carefully as you possibly can, so that their unworthiness as part of a moving picture may not be too obvious. Never use a title if the meaning can be made clear in film without being long and tedious. Never use a title to state what the scene itself is about to state. Use it where necessary to record what speech would say if sound were at your command, and use it to tell of the lapse of time if that must be told. But don’t, if you can help it, say — ‘Came the Dawn.’ And don’t say ‘End of Part I — Part II will follow immediately.’ Because it never does.
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