Cecil M. Hepworth — Came the Dawn — Chapter 16 (1951) 🇬🇧
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Suddenly, after hope so often postponed that it seemed nearly dead, there was a strange uncanny sound in the air — at first a distant wailing as though a million people drew a half-sobbing breath — a sound growing momentarily louder, spreading on every side, becoming a cry, a song, a shout! Then there was no mistaking the throbbing joy as it burst upon us everywhere. It was the end of the War! Release! The end of the pent-up fear and misery of war. Peace. We were Free! I was free to go my ways — no longer trammelled at every turn; free to photograph what and where I liked! Free at last to realise my life’s ambition — free to buy a boat and go sailing!
For I had suddenly realised that if I did not do that at once, it would be too late — sailing is not a job for an old man. And how I did want to get on the water and have room to move! There has been no room on the land for many years — never will be any room on the roads again. I wanted to sail right away from everything and everybody; out of sight of everything except sea and sky. That is what it means to be free.
So every week-end I diligently searched all the ship-yards within reasonable reach and at last I found what I wanted at Cowes, Isle of Wight. She had been laid up for four years, of course, but I couldn’t wait for an expert examination. She had a two-cylinder, two-stroke engine which, as soon as I saw it, I decided to replace. She was a ketch of eleven tons and her name was Bluebird. She seemed sound and fairly complete and my heart went out to her. I bought her right away for £500.
The snug little village of Hamble on the river of that name, leading into Southampton Water, offered a convenient mooring, and then there arose the question of bringing Bluebird across the Solent to what was to be her home town. Kimberley said he would like to come and help (knowing even less about sailing than I did), and then his wife said she would like to come too. She was a kind and happy woman so there was no objection to that, and when she wanted to bring Alma to balance up the party there was, for a similar reason, still no objection.
It was the early afternoon of Boxing Day of 1918 when we went aboard, wonderfully warm, slightly misty and practically no wind. We pushed the boat out of her shed and a man in a dinghy took us in tow to get clear of the very crowded anchorage. We started up the engine, gear out of course, but he was in a blue funk lest we should run him down; then we sailed under our own steam tothe mouth of the river where I decided to up-sail and save petrol. Alma was steering when, with the main-sail up, I let go the topping -lift and dropped the heavy boom on her head. The mainsail was taking practically all the weight but she got a nasty knock. Lucky that it was no worse.
The slight mist hid the opposite shore so I set a course by compass to stand clear to the westward of the Brambles — I still had the famous chart-book. After a while the breeze fell lighter and we started up the engine again, but after a couple of miles it burst its rusty exhaust-box and smothered us with evil-smelling smoke. The ladies began to murmur a little at that but there was no help for it that we could see. Then the little engine, with unexpected tact, came to a sudden stop and settled the matter and a quick glance revealed the secret. The poor little thing, ashamed of the horrid behaviour of her silencer, had snapped her half-time shaft in two and brought her own career to an end.
Luckily the last of the flood-tide was setting us in the right direction and should draw us into Southampton Water and even perhaps into Hamble river, if only there were air enough to give us steerage way. We rounded Calshot, drew slowly into the Water, and spotted the light of the Hamble buoy in the gathering gloom. I knew we had to leave the buoy to port and we still had air enough to steer. But like all these rivers the entrance is marked by booms, poles stuck up in the mud on either side of the fairway. At low tide you can see exactly what they mean and how the river winds, but when the mud is covered I’ll be hanged if you can be so sure. The first boom was a toss-up — and I lost the toss. I took the wrong side of the boom and we ran right up on the still invisible mud. There was no engine to ease us off. We were there for the night! The women refused to believe it, said it was all nonsense and we must do something about it at once. But they had to take it, for it was dark and we were miles from anywhere, with deep mud all round us. Also there was nothing to eat or drink. We all settled down in the cabin and lighted the lamp.
Then Kim and I took a good look at the engine. The half-time shaft, true to its name, had snapped itself neatly in half. It normally controls the timing of the ignition so its failure put a stop to everything. We took it out and saw that if we could file a deep flat on each half we could splice it together. By extraordinary luck (no one would ever believe such a thing in a film) there happened to be a file on board. Never did prisoners work harder at their bars than we did on that shaft. Between two and three in the morning we finished the job and then we could run the engine, but we were high out of the water and it would be four hours or more before it would be light, or we afloat.
‘Came the Dawn.’ Also the water. We steamed slowly and with much smoke and smell up to our mooring and went ashore. And while we looked for what we hoped would prove a ‘breakfast’ shop of which I knew, we joyfully sang our theme song: —
‘We’re four jolly sailor-men, just up from the sea could kill, we four would have dropped stone dead on the oilcloth. Brokenly we explained that we had been marooned all night on an engine-broken yacht. Heads were tossed so high at that that it was a wonder they didn’t come off altogether. Never had vile suspicion so clearly been expressed in silence. Nothing but our ravenous hunger could have kept us suppliant there. At last these virtuous gorgons yielded enough to perceive that, deep in sin as we might be, they need not demand our death by starvation at their door, and reluctantly they served breakfast. The joyful avidity with which we consumed it must have been a shock to these sinless sisters who were waiting to see us choke.
But even sailing must not be allowed to interfere with films. The Christmas holidays were practically over and we all arrived at our homes before lunch time that day. And with the dawning of 1919, with the lifting of the dreadful load of war from our minds and bodies, a load which seemed even heavier in retrospect than it did in reality, we could, breathing freely once more, settle down to full production again. We were still a little crippled by the absence of those men who had been left to us, it is true, longer than we had dared to hope because we were deemed to be doing work of some slight national importance, but we did not know when we could expect them back at work.
However, they began to return fairly early. Tom White was the first — of course, he would be — and he was a very valuable re-recruit. He says it was an accident but I have my own opinion about that. It was in January and he found himself unloaded in the snow with a lot of other fellows, going to some place for further duties. He went up to a sergeant who asked him where he belonged. He gave the sergeant ten shillings and told him. ‘No you don’t,’ the sergeant said, ‘you belong over there.’ So he went over there, and joined a little group, who were almost immediately demobbed! That’s the sort of chap he was. He is general manager of Pinewood Studios now.
The Hepworth Manufacturing Company Ltd. were to be found at 2, Denman Street, Piccadilly, with myself as managing director and Paul Kimberley as general manager, and its greatest artistic strength lay in Chrissie White, Alma Taylor and Henry Edwards.
In a review of the year 1919 my good friend G. A. Atkinson speaks of a general feeling at the beginning of the year that ‘England would never be the same again’ which, of course, turned out to be very much truer than he thought: wars do have that effect upon us. But there was a gradual recovery and a sense of profound thankfulness that the war was ‘really over/ The industry had enormously increased its prestige with the public, parliament and the press. It had played no small part in tranquillising things at home and inspiring national ‘will to victory,’ and that was earnestly acknowledged by the Prime Minister.
In the railway strike of that year all sides discovered the possibilities of mutual aid and it was generally felt that railways were undesirable as a means of film transport from the makers to the theatres, although the total let-downs during the strike were probably under five per cent. In December, 1919, Will Barker [William Barker] announced his retirement from the industry after twenty-two years’ work, and Jack Smith became managing director of Barker Motion Photography.
In February Stewart Rome — who had left us to join the forces — gave out the announcement that he would join the Broadwest stock-company on his demobilisation, and the London Film Company, who had suspended operations because nearly all their staff had been called up, recommenced producing on an elaborate scale. In March Violet Hopson — another of our early players — proposed to head a company of her own for film production. In April, 1919, Hepworth Picture Plays Ltd. was formed, with a capital of £100,000.
Eileen Dennes joined the Hepworth stock-company in April and a very staunch and useful little lady she was from then to the end, and Leslie Henson ‘succumbed to the lure of the screen.’ Block booking was becoming more and more difficult in its effects but serious attempts to solve the problem were beginning to show signs of hopefulness. The agitation for state censorship of films raised its silly head over and over again, but under the skilled generalship of J. Brooke- Wilkinson the clearly efficient censorship imposed by the trade itself was demonstrated to be quite satisfactory and it persisted as it deserved to do, and it still persists.
Hepworth Picture Plays Ltd. made an issue on November 1st of £2,500 debentures, part of a series already registered, and again in December, 1920, of £10,000 similar debentures. It will I think be obvious that underneath the record of these things there must have been the heave and throb of big difficulties; a feeling of premonition of heavy trouble in store for us. There was a pressure in the air which we did not understand and we worked on as best we could in spite of it.
The City of Beautiful Nonsense was by a long way the most popular book of all that Temple Thurston wrote. I had read a great many of his books but this was the first one that I came upon that I did not really like. That is not a condemnation of the work however. It probably was of the reader. But among its very numerous admirers was Henry Edwards who now made an excellent film of it and evidently secured a faithful rendering of its essential quality, for it was rapturously received by the great host of the admirers of the book.
In August, 1919, Stanley Faithfull, just back from the war, was going for a short holiday in Devonshire before coming back to me to take up his work again where he had left it two years before. On the platform of Templecombe Station where he had to change he, by most remarkable chance, met his brother Geoffrey, also back from the war but on his way to camp to await demobilisation. When Stanley had finished his holiday and returned to Walton he organised the growing importance of the ‘still’ picture department, which included enlargements and all sorts of direct photographic work, and made a very good job indeed of this valuable side-line.
It was in that same month that Blanche Macintosh wrote the script for Phillips Oppenheim’s The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss from which Henry Edwards made a very successful series of short films, afterwards combined into one of ‘feature length.’ This was the story which, a little later on, got us into the law court with that peculiar action I dealt with earlier in this book.
The Forest on the Hill was the first post-war film to have the benefit of the full staff again with all its war-worn veterans back in their old places. It was great to have them back and to know that the war had ended all wars and never again would the glorious company of film-makers be interrupted in their important work by the strife of nations: that was what we thought at the time. It was partly that feeling then, I expect, but chiefly the sheer beauty of the story and the lovely country in which it was laid, that made The Forest such a very enjoyable thing to do.
The story was by Eden Phillpotts who invited me to stay at his house at Babbacombe near Torquay, so that he could tell me all about the places in which he had laid his story. For Phillpotts, in this case at all events, had adopted Dickens’ habit of using actual and existing sites among which to weave his story. He showed me the Hanging-Wood which was his Forest-on-the-Hill; the most delightful village of Islington, on the border of Dartmoor, the deserted copper-mine which had such dramatic influence in the tale, and the different aspects of the wonderful moor which has so often figured in his yarns. No wonder the making of the picture in such surroundings and with such an introduction was a delight to me, and I think all my crew were equally happy. And what a crew it was! That good scout, Jimmy Carew, with Alma Taylor, Gerald Ames, Gwynne Herbert, Eileen Dennes (new to us then but a great find), MacAndrews and Lionelle Howard. And glorious weather and the whole of Dartmoor to play about on!
Sheba, the script for which was prepared for me by Blanche Macintosh, was principally noticeable for the fact that it was the first film I produced with Ronald Colman acting in it. His was an unknown name in those days and I, knowing nothing of his ability, cast him for a part of no great importance. There was, consequently, nothing very distinguished in his acting, for the part did not give him much opportunity and I don’t think he had ever been in a film before. All the same I did take sufficient note of him to keep him in mind for another and better part as soon as there was an opportunity. I also noted that he appeared to have some slight awkwardness which prevented him from walking really naturally in the film. It may have been merely temporary or he must have overcome it, for I have not noticed it in any of his films which I have seen since. I must have thought well of him for I remember inviting him to join our company, but he said that he was determined to go to America. I do not suppose he has ever regretted that determination, but I have — often.
Another script from the same writer and at about the same date was Once Aboard the Lugger which was produced by Gerald Ames in collaboration with our clever French colleague, Gaston Quiribet, happily released from the war and back in our company after more than four years. He was in some kind of reserve in the French army and rushed over to France the moment the war was imminent. I had feared, of course, that we might never see him again, and I was mighty glad to welcome him back, as was everyone else in the studio and laboratories. He is now in the Kodak Company in Paris and when I saw him the other day he looked well and very happy.
The last important film of this year, so far as I personally was concerned, was Phillips Oppenheim’s Anna the Adventuress, which was trade shown in the beginning of the following February, that is, 1920. This was a very interesting and attractive story of two girls, identical twins I suppose they were, who were so exactly alike that they could only be told apart by their clothing and their entirely different methods of doing their hair and so on. It happened that in the beginning one of them became rich and opulent while the other remained in the same social scale or even became poorer. The difference in their opportunities which is the natural result of these conditions is the main theme of the film. The difficulty from the producer’s point of view is to show that difference while at the same time preserving the essential identity of their innate appearance.
When that impudent and unmoral minx, that ‘handmaid of the Art’ of cinematography, called ‘the Vivaphone’ for the sake of euphony, came to its inglorious end at the murdering hands of the ice-cream girls who would not put the needle on properly, it had a more worthy re-birth in a sphere of actual utility. For it was, in another shape, used to make sure of the synchronism between the two halves in various forms of the trick of double-photography.
There is one form of double-photography which is so called, although it does not really come within the meaning of the term. In The Pipes of Pan, I told of it as a reflection of figures who appeared to be dancing on the surface of a lake. In another instance, a semi-transparent mirror reflects the image of a ‘ghost’ off-stage, apparently into the midst of the ‘live’ actors in the main scene; but in both these cases the photography is simultaneous and no difficulty of synchronism arises. But real double-photography is that device by which one actor plays two parts in one scene. A shutter is fixed in front of the camera so as to hide one half of the scene while the other half is taken. Then the shutter is changed over to the other half and the actor, probably disguised as a different person altogether, crosses to the other side of the scene and plays the appropriate action to the now non-existent person he has previously portrayed. It is very difficult to time it exactly enough to be at all convincing.
To overcome this difficulty, and to enable an actor in one half of a scene to remember at any given moment exactly what he was doing in the other half at that moment, I hit upon an ingenious idea which worked perfectly. I got hold of an old-fashioned phonograph, not a gramophone, which had a wax cylinder instead of a disc. By speaking into the funnel of the instrument you could make a record which could be ‘played back’ as often as you wished. This phonograph was geared to the camera so that the film was kept in exact correspondence with the wax cylinder. I used this arrangement first in my picture of Anna the Adventuress, which as I said was a story of twin sisters, one very rich and not very good and the other very good and not rich at all. Alma Taylor played both the parts and, as she had to change her appearance entirely when she changed from one to the other, she had plenty of time to forget the details of the work she had already done.
There were several of these double -photography scenes in the film but I need only describe one of them as the procedure was much the same in all. In the one I have in mind the line dividing the two halves was not vertical but ran diagonally from the top left-hand corner to the bottom right. It was, of course, completely invisible in the finished picture. It was a bedroom scene and the rich girl was perched up on the bed, dealing out some of her discarded clothing to her poorer sister seated on the floor beside her. I wanted her to toss these clothes to her sister who would catch them and lay them in a little heap at her feet. Obviously, very accurate timing was essential.
When all that the two girls had to do was understood by one, we started to take the scene. While the camera was running, all my directions shouted to the girl on the bed were recorded by the phonograph, and as soon as the scene was finished she ran away to change. While she was away the camera was carefully turned backwards until the counter registered ‘nought and the actual first inch of the film was in position behind the lens — which, of course, had been covered meanwhile.
The wax record, being close-geared to the camera, was automatically reversed also, and carefully checked to see that the needle was now in the same exact position as at the start; and the dividing shutter in front of the lens was thrown over to the second position. Then Alma came back and took up her place at the foot of the bed. The camera was started up and she heard the phonograph shout back at her the exact instructions I had given her before, something like this: — ‘There are a lot of things here I don’t want — I shall never wear them again. Look at this dress; it is quite out of date now. It’s the very thing for you. Here take it and put it with the others. Catch.’ She had in the previous take thrown the dress on the word ‘Catch.’ Now a ‘stand-in’ girl, sitting on the bed and of course invisible, threw the same dress to her exactly on the word, and she caught it at the right moment. The result was a very clean job of work and the deception was uncannily convincing.
All the other double scenes in the film were done in the same way. Even when it was only a case of the two girls standing up and arguing with each other it was far easier to play the parts when every word was audible; and the finished picture was so much like actual reality that it was difficult to believe that the parts were both played by the same actress. I hope I have managed to make this clear. It is not easy to explain though it was quite easy to do.
This method of double exposure with divided frame is used by many other people, though I haven’t heard of a phonograph being employed with it, but I thought I had ‘invented’ it when I was twelve years old and photographed a school-friend playing cards with himself in a garden. It showed no trace of a line between the two halves. Up till then the same thing had been done without a sliding shutter but with a black background instead, and that, of course, could not show any line for there was none to show. Whether I ‘invented’ it or not, it was a tremendous improvement on the black background method and is always used now when the effect is required. And of course, the already existing ‘sound-track’ is used to maintain synchronism instead of the more clumsy phonograph.
This trick must not be confused with the one used in photographing ‘ghosts’ like that of Hamlet’s father. In that case there was no shutter before the lens: the whole scene was taken twice on the same film, with half the proper exposure each time. That is to say, suppose the estimated correct exposure was F/5.6, the scene would be taken at F/8, wound backwards and then taken again at F/8. The figure walked through one ‘take,’ but the other was of the background and rocks only. So these showed vaguely through the figure and made it appear partially transparent.
Anna the Adventuress was the second film of mine in which Ronald Colman had a part — a bigger one this time, and he made me still more sorry that he was so set upon going to America. In fact the whole cast was a very strong one and included, besides Colman, Alma Taylor, as both Anna and Annabel, James Carew, Gwynne Herbert, Jean Cadell, Christine Rayner and Gerald Ames.
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