Cecil M. Hepworth — Came the Dawn — Chapter 15 (1951) 🇬🇧
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By the time we were well into the third year of the war, 1916; in spite of the ever increasing difficulties which the war inevitably laid upon us, we did manage to produce bigger and better films than ever before. The Cobweb is a good example, a fine, strong and most interesting story from a play by Leon M. Lion and Naunton Davies. I had, too, as fine a cast as any producer could ask for: Henry Edwards, Alma Taylor, Stewart Rome, Violet Hopson and John MacAndrews with several others. The theme of the play is well suggested in something Edwards has to say: — ‘Better chaos than submersion. There’s life, there’s growth, comes out of chaos. But in this decaying world of yours, you are being strangled. You’re all enmeshed like a swarm of flies in a monstrous cobweb — Civilisation.’
For the title of the film, The Cobweb, Geoff. Faithfull wanted to make an ornamental background, like those which came into fashion much later on. He put a number of twigs in a sort of frame, collected several big spiders from a garden opposite and left them all night. The next morning there were some lovely cobwebs, only needing tiny glistening dew-drops, which were easily provided by the fine spray from a borrowed inhaler, to make a perfect and most attractive title-page for the film. It would be the only title then, of course, for the long sheets of exasperating ‘credits’ were, happily, not invented until very much later.
The time was drawing very near when I should have to lose Geoffrey Faithfull who worked the camera for me. Stanley left a month or two earlier. I do not remember how I managed, but I should have had no difficulty in tackling the camera myself and that is probably what I did.
One of the very best of Pinero’s plays, Trelawney of the Wells, gave me a great deal of trouble and a great deal of pleasure. The trouble was mostly in the getting together of the dresses and scenery and furniture so as to be true to the period of the play, 1836, or thereabout. It was a delightful play and I think we made a good film of it. Alma gave a wonderful impersonation of the humble actress-girl and her strange entry into a pre- Victorian household, with all its prejudices and inhibitions, and she made the most of the dramatic situations which it involved.
The strangeness of her entry into that household was much accentuated, made more dramatic perhaps but certainly even less auspicious by the fact that she and her escort were caught in a tremendous downpour of rain just as they were arriving. The ‘rain,’ of course, was produced artificially as it is in modern studios but, needless to say, we did not originate the mistake which nearly all modern studios perpetuate by setting the rain shower in brilliant sunshine. Perhaps I should not write ‘needless to say’ for that sounds rather rude, but it is a fact that with all our crudities we did not make obvious mistakes of that sort. Rain does sometimes come in sunshine but only very rarely. Thunder does sometimes sound at the same time as its flash, but only when the flash is within a few yards of you. Perhaps these are details which do not matter, but to fastidious people they are annoying and it is much better to be correct when you are attempting to create an illusion of reality. (That’s why I don’t like a full band accompanying a heroine when she wanders out alone into the Siberian Steppes or the wastes of Sahara.)
The people who insist upon brilliant sunshine in spite of pouring rain have this much excuse for their defiance of the verities, that it is exceedingly difficult to make the artificial rain get itself photographed unless there is specular light to show it up. We had the same difficulty in Trelawney. The rain soaked the hero and heroine quite thoroughly and their consequent discomfort was sufficiently obvious, but the rain itself was invisible on the screen. So we resorted to a very drastic remedy. We laid the negative out upon a long bench, gelatine uppermost, and stroked it slantwise with two grades of sandpaper, fine and coarse. It was a truly horrible thing to have to do but it was extraordinarily successful. We had tried simpler things first, though even when milk was added to the water it wouldn’t photograph like rain. But we had been in the film business from the beginning and we remembered that the very early films always showed ‘rain’ after a little while of use and we knew that that was due to surface scratches. There was the clue we had been looking for. It was in 1916 too, that Blanche Macintosh wrote Sowing the Wind from a play and this was produced by me during the year and met with considerable but not very conspicuous success. I am not very clear about it however and my memory keeps crouching back behind a defensive fence composed of the various and many troubles of the time, the difficulties of ‘keeping on, keeping on’ in the face of the ever-diminishing staff and the continuingly increasing demands of the war-racked country. Food was difficult to come by and many things were unobtainable. As far as I can remember this film, with the somehow faintly appropriate title, was the last one of all for which I had the help of my camera-man, Geoff. Faithfull. Anyhow, both he and his brother Stanley were called up in the early autumn of this year and from that there was no further reprieve.
This was a double loss to me, of course, and when in the following month Tom White was also irrevocably called in the same great cause, poor Henry Edwards was left as high and even drier than I. How we managed is nobody’s business, as the saying is, and I doubt whether anybody can recall it now. But it is certain that we did manage, and we kept on turning out films which, by the grace of God, the people liked.
In October my indefatigable script-writer gave me another scenario to be getting on with, this time called The Touch of a Child, which sounds rather sloppy but, as neither she nor I are much given to that sort of thing, it probably ‘turned out,’ like a good pudding, sufficiently solid to stand up by itself.
It was in early October, 1917, that my wife died — the best and truest wife that any man could ever have had. three months of very serious illness, from which at one time there seemed to be some hope that she might be recovering, proved to be too much for her remaining strength. I was left with three small children — the eldest not yet thirteen. After the funeral I could think of nothing better to do with them than to take them down to Lulworth Gove where we had often had such happy times. We got into a little cottage and did what we could to comfort one another. The eldest one, Barbara — she of Rescued by Rover — became at once a good companion and she and her sister have been that to me ever since. The sister, Margaret, aged eleven, had terribly fine golden hair, almost as fine as spider-web it seemed. I remember — I shall never forget — trying to comb it out each evening. It was always hopelessly entangled. The boy was too small to know much about anything.
One day when we four were mooching along a country lane we were overtaken by a big car which, with shrieking brakes, pulled up just in front of us and four excited people streamed out and ran to us. I was not at all pleased to see them. They were Alma and Chrissie and Kimberley and my old friend, Bill Barker [William Barker], who had had that bright idea to Cheer old Hep up.’ In the face of that great kindness I had to give way and be glad. The two girls took the children in hand and the men took charge of me and they all did everything they could to make us forget. At the least they dulled the first sharp edge of grief, and in the end they took us home.
A personality that impinged upon me with considerable force during the first World War was that of Temple Thurston. The Government appeared to have got it into their heads that the end of the war might be brought nearer if a man like Thurston were to write a number of short films with a propaganda flavour. They introduced me to him and we settled down to a close collaboration. He was tremendously keen to find out all that he possibly could of the possibilities and practices of film production and particularly the relationship of author to producer and where the influence of the one ended and the other began. Seeing that he was a very nice fellow and that we got on very well together, I was just as keen to impart my views upon the subject to him and to discuss with him what I thought the function of the producer should be.
He practically lived in my studio nearly all day when I was at work and came home with me in the evening to continue our long talks upon every subject under the sun, but particularly films. He came to live at Walton so as to be on the spot but he had previously had rooms in London in Adelphi Terrace on the Thames Embankment. One evening when I went to see him there I told him how I had admired a view of the Lot’s Road power station in the gloaming, its four tall chimneys dark against the setting sunlight, the brilliant effect of the water and the one dark tug-boat with its black smoke and its bright red port light, its hull churning up the smooth water as it came down the stream towards me.
When I went to see him again he showed me with pride how he had painted this scene in oils from my description. I was horrified to find that he had painted the tug-boat’s port light green instead of red! He said, ‘What does it matter? I think green looks better.’
It somehow came about that I had occasion, at his request, I imagine, to put on paper my ideas about the Author vis-a-vis the Producer, and as those ideas do not seem to have altered since then, and may perhaps be interesting to others, I will quote my letter. This is what I wrote: —
‘It seems to me that there is no real line of demarcation or place where it can be said: here the author’s work ends and here the producer’s begins… I do very deeply sympathise with you in your very keen desire to keep the development of the story in your hands throughout. I think I can quite understand how painful it must be, after having brought a child into the world, to hand it over to a foster parent to be brought up and reared, and however great one’s faith might be in that foster parent, the wrench would be painful and the bringing up could never be perfectly satisfactory to the real creator. But what are you to do if you are not prepared to do the wet-nursing? You must let somebody else do it or let the baby starve.
‘It seems to me that the author has an absolute and undeniable right to put as many stage directions in the scenario as he thinks fit — he may, if he likes, give complete drawings and sketches of the materials to be used for every dress which is worn; in the same way there may be working plans for every scene, and I have heard of authors in America who have selected the exact pitch of every exterior view and written the particulars in the scenario.
‘I hold that everything which is in the scenario must be adhered to by the producer and that he accepts the scenario on these terms. Of course, he can refuse it if he likes, but if he accepts it, he must either produce it as it is given to him or obtain the author’s permission to make alterations. But if the author does not put these particulars in he has not the right, it seems to me, to come along afterwards and demand to see the dresses which have been selected or the people which have been chosen for the parts, or the scenery which has been prepared. It seems to me that he must either do these things himself or leave the other fellow to do them. The author has a perfect right to insist upon certain people playing the various parts; if he does so, the script comes to the producer with that much load upon it, and it is then up to the producer either to accept it or refuse it as it stands. The same with the dresses, the scenery and everything else. Take for instance your script upon which I am working now; the stage directions for the first scene read as follows: “A scene in the street of a Belgian town. It is fruit and flower-market day; the stalls are overflowing; people are lounging about and drinking outside a cafe.” You know what I am doing for that, for you were there when the scene was taken.
‘If you had been willing to do all that I did, so much the better for me, but as you did not, I should not have felt, and I do not think you would either, that you would have had the right to come along and make alterations afterwards.
‘To try and put it more briefly — it seems to me that the author may go just as far as he likes, but where he stops he must let the other fellow carry on without claiming the right to vary. When the author has finished the producer begins. He takes what the author has written, and by the act of accepting it binds himself to adhere faithfully to it except that he may make such minor alterations as do not affect the sequence of the story, the characterisation or the atmosphere.’
I am greatly indebted to Temple Thurston for a considerable broadening of my own ideas and for long, profitable and pleasant conversations. We worked together happily and smoothly for a long time. Possibly we worked a little too closely and too continuously. We may have exhausted our mutual resources: got a little tired of each other. I had not been used to having anyone beside me in the studio when I was working — had always turned out anyone not actually engaged in the scene. Any whispered commentary behind me, any suspicion of what might be a criticism, was enough to put me off my stroke, and although there was no suggestion of anything of that sort from Thurston, his mere presence may have unconsciously irked me a little in the end.
But before we drifted apart we had had the advantage — or perhaps I should say I had had the advantage, for it is unlikely that he gained as much benefit from it as I did — of a great deal of happy and fruitful collaboration. The stories he wrote for the Government war-films were full of inspiration for me as well as being, I suppose, valuable propaganda. His ideas did not always work out as we both hoped they would, but that is perhaps only natural for we were working in an atmosphere which was new to us. At one time he enunciated the interesting theory that tragedy, for instance, might be equally tragic at all sorts of different levels.
A child’s desperate anguish over a broken doll is just as poignant while it lasts as a mother’s grief for a dying child.
So he visualised an incident in overrun Belgium when the Germans strode across it smashing and killing everything in their path. A poor old woman, serene and happy, though there was nothing in her life to live for but her plot of flower garden, radiant just then with a glorious show of hyacinths and spring flowers of all descriptions. This garden by a corner cottage was in the path of a company of soldiers who could just as easily have passed round it. We showed only their heavy feet trampling all those lovely flowers into the dust. It tore at the heart-strings of all the people in the studio who had gardens and allotments of their own, but no one thought it really tragic on the screen.
We had better success however in a much more ambitious subject which required the building up of a corner of a Belgian town in a meadow which we had recently rented for another purpose. This was a very effective set comprising some cottages, two or three small shops and the west-end of one of those large churches which in Belgium seem so completely out of proportion to the little towns or villages which they dominate. It took the best endeavours of our designers and all our carpenters and stagehands to erect and paint it and it must, one way and another, have occupied much of my own time. Yet the story which it enshrined has utterly faded from my mind, while I remember the old lady’s flower garden distinctly. Perhaps there was something in Thurston’s idea of deep suffering in low-level tragedy.
He was a strangely lovable unlovely character: very kind, very clever, very selfish. He had a marvellously good and patient wife — patience in any woman in her position would have been a marvel, for he must have been dreadfully difficult to live with, though he had great charm. He would write all day — when he wasn’t discussing films with me — and then in the evening he liked to collect his family and friends around him and read his morning’s work over to them. This was by no means an ordeal for those who listened, for he read delightfully and well. He had a soft and pleasant voice and as we sat in silence round the fireside, the phrases he had nurtured and loved all day came easily and attractively over to us. I suppose his books are out of fashion now, for that is the fate of modern writers in an age when far too many books are written and the consequently small editions soon are out of print and crowded off the shelves and out of libraries. His one-time film-colleague shares similar oblivion but we both had a good time while it lasted.
I mentioned just now a meadow which we had recently rented. This was in Halliford on the other side of the river from Walton and was for the purpose of building a large portion of old London for the staging of Barnaby Rudge. This, the latest of Thomas Bentley’s efforts in Dickens-land on our account, was his largest and best, for the story, as everyone knows, was in the time of the Gordon riots and involved nor merely a great number of different views of the London of the period, but these must be substantial enough to be both convincing in their reality, and strong enough to withstand the rough treatment which must hang upon scenes of disorder and struggle. Part of the ambitious set-up was a replica of old Newgate prison which in the story is destroyed by fire, that the prisoners may be rescued.
The poor, half-witted boy, Barnaby, around whose adventures the story ranges, was beautifully played by Tom Powers who both looked and acted the part to perfection. He was well supported by the rest of the company which absorbed, for the time being, nearly all our stock of actors including Chrissie White, Violet Hopson, Henry Vibart, L. Howard, MacAndrews, Buss, Royston, Felton and Stewart Rome. Like all the stories of Charles Dickens this is far too complicated to tell clearly in any reasonable length, and it is all to the credit of the producer that he managed to make it understandable within the limits of a film of not undue extent.
Barnaby Rudge has, I am sorry to say, like several other films in the course of this book, got itself somewhat misplaced in chronological order. It should have come before mention of Temple Thurston who only came to Walton towards the end of the war, while ‘Barnaby’ was filmed near its beginning. It does not matter very much, except that I like to be fairly accurate if I can.
I have quoted a considerable number of films made in that war-time, but for the most part only those which were of my own individual production, because, as I have mentioned before, this is a book about me, not about the film industry, which does not come into it except in so far as I have had to do with it. For instance, I have scarcely mentioned Henry Edwards’ work. But he was producing side by side with me all through the war years and for some time afterwards and it would be stupid to suggest that his work was not at least as good as mine both in quantity as well as quality. Other of our producers were working hard and successfully too, although we certainly did for a time lose some of our most important men. The times were undoubtedly difficult and the war’s need of men could not and should not be disputed. But those of us who for age or other infirmity ‘stayed at home’ were glad to feel that what we were doing here was contributing its tiny bit to the spirit and well-being of hard- worked Britain.
But in spite of what I have just said about Henry Edwards — Tedwards, he was always called for short and for affection — I must mention one of his films which was a most valiant effort to do something which, in the doing, proved itself to be almost, but not quite an impossibility. He set out to make a full-length silent film without any titles, either of description or of conversation. One only it had, and that was its name at the beginning: Lily in the Alley. It was very nearly as successful as it deserved to be, and it would have succeeded altogether, I think, if he and we and all other producers had not for many years been telling people, in titles and other devices, exactly what they were to think and understand and believe. This continual doping had so dulled the intellects of the audiences that they never sit up and try to understand. Nothing is left to the imagination; everything is handed to them on a plate, ready cooked and digested so that there is nothing whatever to do but just swallow it whole. It is much the same now, for though sound does sometimes complicate the plot a little, it is more often used to clarify it.
It is a little difficult to say what effect the first World War had upon the British film industry. It certainly brought us many difficulties at the time but I doubt whether it had any real or lasting effect. I have already told of the difficulties caused by the calling up of the youngsters and of the way we met that trouble, but it was not very long before the more experienced people were also required for more serious work than ours. Our clever French technician, Gaston Quiribet, left two days before the war started. Others were called up from time to time and then released again to go on helping us a little longer, though the tribunals were naturally unsympathetic to our appeals for exemption. One irascible colonel said, ‘Picture theatres are an unnecessary luxury and the public will benefit by their closing.’ Both Kimberley and I, ineligible for active service, were in the Volunteers which took up a lot of our time, and practically all our workers drained away in the end. But we managed.
The industry as a whole kept its flag flying. The Hepworth players frequently appeared in Film Tagst snappy little propaganda films which I made for the Government, rather on the lines of the somewhat ineffective Food Flashes which I made for the later war (it doesn’t seem quite safe to say the last war). The long litigation by the Federal Government of America against the Motion Picture Patents Company, the General Film Company and other defendants (Anti-Trust Law) whose beginning in 1909 caused so much trouble at the time, ended in favour of the Government on October 16th, 1915.
In the same year our manager, C. Parfrey, left us and later joined the Kinematograph Trading Company, and Lewin Fitzhamon also drifted away. Yet 1915 was described as the beginning of the Hepworth-Pinero boom. Our Barnaby Rudge was trade shown at the Alhambra by the purchasers, the Kine Trading Company, and ‘three thousand footers’ were described as the rage of England, America and Italy.
One of the first practical suggestions for a trade benevolent fund was mooted but did not bear fruit until later. This is a most important institution because, from its very nature, the film trade is certain to have a large number of ‘left-overs’ who early become too old to earn their living in the manner to which they were accustomed.
Griffith’s very fine Birth of a Nation, which had been so successful at the Scala Theatre, was transferred to the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, but it failed to attract large audiences in its new abode. I paid a courtesy visit to Mr. Griffith at his office there, but although there were chairs about he kept me standing all the time I was there with him. But that wasn’t very long. His Macbeth, put on at His Majesty’s Theatre in June, only remained there a week.
The year 1917 appears to have been a momentous one for the film industry, for almost immediately we come upon the remark that ‘our producers now compare favourably with the Americans,’ which I am afraid is one of those thoughts which are fathered so prolifically by wishes. But the Government of the day began to realise the value of the screen and its popular influence, and Colonel Buchan, of the Department of Information, invited the Trade Council to assist in Government propaganda.
This was turning over a new leaf, for the industry had been very much vilified one way and another. Then the National Council of Public Morals held a commission to take evidence for and against the kinema. After a long period it produced a refutation of the reckless charges that had been hurled against the industry — its complete vindication in fact.
The previous year’s entertainment tax had hit the trade hard indeed but it was now proposed to increase it. That horrid idea was postponed till the autumn but that was the best that could be done with it. The effect of the tax was in many cases to shift the patrons into cheaper seats, so the exhibitor was hit, without benefit to the treasury.
The inception of a trade employment bureau to provide employment for disabled soldiers, who were now beginning to come back in increasing numbers, was due to the initiative of Paul Kimberley. It was a fine idea and a considerable number of officers and men were successfully trained in various branches of the trade and found employment suited to the needs, but the lay press was still ignoring the industry, as though they feared to look at it lest it should turn out to be a rival. W. G. Faulkner’s notes in the Evening News were practically the only exception. He noted, among many other things, that Alma Taylor had won through from tiny parts, boys, tomboy girls, and all sorts of things, to leading player in such important films as Pinero’s Iris for instance, and now had widespread popularity.
Henry Edwards’ first big part was Gabriel Oak in Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd. Larry Trimble had seen him first as the waiter in The Man Who Stayed at Home and secured him. He rejoined the Hepworth Company when Trimble and the Turner Films returned to America. Chrissie White, a contemporary of Alma Taylor and fellow conspirator in the Tilly the Tomboy series of most popular films, was also growing up to big and important things. Victor Montenore, a resident scenario writer for Hepworth films, a fine musician and a delightful personality, a gentle almost ethereal being, most obviously and utterly unsuitable for a soldier in any possible capacity, was ruthlessly called up, nevertheless, and he was dead within a week of going into camp.
I wonder whether I am managing to get over any sense of my great feeling of gratitude to all the fine people who worked with me so loyally and for so long. I do not know how to put it into words for something of the same sort is so often said without any real meaning behind it. I can only hope that some sense of my real indebtedness may seep through my words although they are applied to other things.
D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance, with its extraordinarily advanced technique, was enthusiastically received at Drury Lane Theatre in April, and in March, Hamilton Fyfe, in an article in the Daily Mail, claimed Charlie Chaplin as a national asset. He was in danger of being claimed by America. Mary Pickford, the ‘World’s Sweetheart,’ announced the formation of her own company for the production of films.
The second half of 1917 saw the launching of several fairly important films, both of mine and Edwards’, but I am not going to risk the boredom of giving their names. It was also notable for the rapid growth of the trade unions in the industry. Does that sound like a knell? It had no effect whatever upon me or mine, for our sands were running out already, and so I could write about it without rancour if I wished to do so. But it is no part of the job I have set myself, to pass judgment upon the greed and avarice of people, the reckless extravagance, the utter waste of time and money and the senseless disregard of the difference between essentials and mere ostentation, which have brought a great industry to the very verge of ruin.
In June, 1918, there was the first definite suggestion of the Trade Benevolent Fund, national and covering all sections of the industry and further developed at a Cinematograph Exhibitors’ Association conference in July, when a substantial sum was subscribed for a nucleus. Paul Kimberley joined the Hepworth Company as general manager in August, and Tares and The Refugee, two of our propaganda films written by Temple Thurston, were trade shown by us in September when we entertained the trade press and some friends at luncheon, and, by October, the Trade Benevolent Fund was definitely in existence.
In that month I directed Broken in the Wars and the Right Honourable John Hodge, the Minister of Pensions, appeared in it. In November Gerald Ames joined the company. But in the films of 1918 there were very few of English make and only about half a dozen of them were from the Hepworth studios. Perhaps that is understandable, for this was the last year of the Great War.
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