Cecil M. Hepworth — Came the Dawn — Chapter 17 (1951) 🇬🇧
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Perhaps the most completely successful picture I ever made was Alf’s Button in 1921, from a very delightfully fantastic story by W. A. Darlington, of the Daily Telegraph. I cannot resist quoting the foreword which he wrote and signed for us to put at the beginning of our trade show ‘synopsis’:
‘During the making of this film-version of Alf’s Button it has been brought home to me most forcibly how much an author can owe to his producer. To write “slaves in marvellous oriental draperies” cost me little effort, no special knowledge, and a minute quantity of ink. For Mr. Hepworth to attain the same effect in his own medium of expression cost him endless trouble and careful research — to say nothing of a sordid detail such as expense. Many times while the work was in progress did Mr. Hepworth refer in tones half-humorous, half-tragic, to my over exuberant imagination; but I can only say that my warmest thanks are due to him for the result of his labours. He has accomplished the almost impossible feat of making a humorist laugh at his own characters. If any of my readers enjoyed my book as I enjoyed my first sight of Mr. Hepworth’s film, I am more than satisfied.’
Blanche Macintosh as scenario writer was perfectly true to the story and I, as producer, was perfectly true to both. ‘True’ may seem a curious word to use about a not merely improbable but completely impossible story, but it is the word I want to use, for I am sure that the only way to deal successfully with an impossible conception in story, play or film is to be absolutely true and loyal to it from beginning to end.
You may invent the maddest idea of which your brain is capable but if you state it clearly at the beginning and go on to develop it on sane and logical lines, keeping true to the one impossibility and letting every situation grow naturally out of it, just as if it were a sane and sound premise, you will find that it will be accepted and enjoyed without question in spite of its primary absurdity. But if you introduce an alien fantasy which is not consistent with the original theme, you are lost.
Alf’s Button starts with the statement that Aladdin’s Lamp had not been lost or destroyed but been forgotten in rubbish heaps since the days of the Arabian Nights, until the British Government bought up a quantity of waste brass and copper to make up into buttons for soldiers’ tunics. Alf’s Button was one of these and the bit of metal of which it was made still had the power of summoning the attendant genie when it was rubbed. Grant that one absurdity and anything that happens in consequence cannot be disputed.
Give the name part to Leslie Henson and make John MacAndrews play the part of his foil, Bill, and the story comes to life at once as an intensely comic picture. For when once Alf has got over his terror of the genie, who appears for orders whenever the button is rubbed, the instructions he gives, translated in the literal but oriental mind of the Slave of the Lamp, produce extraordinarily funny situations. The titles of this silent film are a large part of the fun, for the soldier’s language has to be represented for the most part in lines and dashes which the audience translate into words according to their several tastes and fancies.
When it occurs to these two lonely souls that ‘Eustace,’ as they have christened the genie, might be persuaded to produce a muchneeded bath for them, that simple request turns a tumble-down barn interior into an Arabian palace, complete with gorgeous maidens and half a dozen black slaves, who bring in a wonderful glass-sided bath-tub with masses of mirrors and taps and set it down in the middle of the splendid hall. Alf says: ‘That’s the worst of Eustace, he’s so extravagant.’
The two Tommies, in their modesty, drive out all the humans and arrange that Bill shall bathe first while Alf stays outside to keep guard. But there, after a minute or two, he sees an officer approaching and hurriedly summons the genie to clear everything away, pronto. So inside we see Bill luxuriating in a bath, with all the oriental splendour which dissolves around him and leaves him sitting naked on the floor of the tumble-down barn.
After the war, when Alma Taylor, as Alf’s wife, blushingly admits that the one thing she really wants is a baby, the genie hears and vanishes. In the sequel, with which the picture ends, Alf is awaiting the happy event and the nurse brings in one, two, three babies to place in his arms. He says: That’s just like Eustace: he always is so ‘olesale.’
This indication of the soldiers’ language^by one or two dashes was the way the swear-words were suggested in Darlington’s book, and I believe it was a truly artistic device and far more effective than the words themselves would have been, while offending nobody. Each reader filled in every hiatus according to his own imagination and attained to the full the satisfaction which grows from the use of really strong swear-words.
I once knew a little boy who, after he had been thwarted in some childish desire, strode in high dudgeon to the end of the garden where there was a small shrubbery in which he could hide. His parents followed him stealthily and heard him spitting out all the ‘swear-words’ he knew — ‘Bother, beastly, cat, blow, brutal, bottom? after which he felt better.
The same little chap for his next birthday wanted a bicycle, with that terrible longing which perhaps only children know. Someone advised him to pray for it and then it might come. He did. They determined his prayers should be answered, but with a precaution dictated by their fear of danger. On the great day he crept eagerly down the garden path and suddenly stopped dead. Then he fell upon his knees and with clasped hands cried out from the bottom of his poor little heart: ‘Oh. God. Don’t you know the difference between a bicycle and a tricycle?’
The ‘trade show’ of Alf’s Button was a very great success. Perhaps I had better explain a little what is meant by a trade show, although its meaning is fairly well expressed in its name; for it is a private showing of a new film, given exclusively to the trade, to provide a foreknowledge of it and to promote its sale. A big and important theatre was usually hired for the purpose and the picture presented with full orchestra and any other artful aid which might be considered appropriate, such as a highly finished and illustrated synopsis eulogising the film, or perhaps merely describing it without exaggeration. Personally, I was rather pernickerty about the music and generally managed to secure Louis Levy to arrange it for me and to select and conduct the orchestra. He was very skilful. His music was apt, pleasant, never obtrusive — a great contrast to much of that which so often spoils modern pictures.
The marked success in this case led up to an important change in my business arrangements. I had seen a great deal of Paul Kimberley during our mutual service in the National Motor Volunteers — afterwards R.A.S.C., M.T. (V) — both as fellow privates and later when we received our commissions together, and we had sailed together many times. I had met him first when he was in the service of my old friend, Frank Brockliss. Now he was an important film renter in Wardour Street, and, under the title of the Imperial Film Co. Ltd., had the best organised renting concern in the country. He had been suggesting for some time that we should join business forces. This would enable me to rent out my films direct through his connection instead of selling outright as was my previous practice. The advantage of having a subject like Alf’s Button to give the scheme a flying start was too good to be missed. So we ‘bought it in’ ourselves, so to speak, and gravely disappointed some hopeful would-be purchasers. So then in 1921 the whole building at No. 2, Denman Street, Piccadilly, was taken over and the new joint scheme inaugurated with Paul Kimberley as director-manager.
In December, 1920, we held a very successful trade show of Mrs. Erricker's Reputation, a six-reel film which I produced in the summer from the novel by Thomas Cobb. I had a very excellent script for this novel which had already been made into a play under the title of Mrs. Pomeroy’s Reputation. The story was a very charming one of exactly the type which appealed to me most — the type for which we had earned a considerable repute, and it was beautifully played by Alma with excellent support from Jimmy Carew [James Carew], Gwynne Herbert, Eileen Dennes and Gerald Ames. As our studios were only about a hundred yards from the Thames it seems a little surprising that this was, I believe, the only picture we made with the upper Thames as its principal background. It afforded us quite a lot of delightful scenery and a considerable part of the film was set in a beautiful house-boat in which we were made very welcome and allowed to do whatever we liked. Alma Taylor was very happily suited in the part of Mrs. Erricker, the very difficult role of a sincere and genuine young widow assuming the character of a flighty and careless society woman, saving a silly married friend from disgrace by taking upon herself the other’s misdeeds. This is the part which was taken by Violet Vanbrugh in the stage version written by H. A. Vachell in collaboration with the author of the novel.
Quite early in the following year we come to a story of an entirely different character, but it had a little flavour of Alf’s Button about it in its use of a slightly similar magic device. The Tinted Venus was a novel by F. Anstey, whose production as a film was in my hands, but I have forgotten all the details of the story although it presented at least one very interesting problem. However, I have the stills before me as I write and I think I can gather enough of the argument for my purpose. Imagine a rather common young man engaged to a girl whom he takes for an afternoon to some pleasure gardens — the original could have been Rosherville or Vauxhall. He sees a life-size statue of Venus in classical Grecian drapery and pays more attention to it than his fiancée approves. A silly tiff develops into a real quarrel and the girl tears off her token ring and returns it to her swain. That young man, in a spirit of bravado and to show how little he cares, slips the ring on to the finger of the statue which thereupon miraculously begins to come to life and assume the ordinary hues of flesh and blood. The numerous embarrassments and adventures which naturally ensue when ‘she’ follows the hero of her release back to his home can be imagined and need not be described.
In order to portray the story properly the first thing to do was to find a lady of statuesque appearance to play the name part. This done, I had to procure a statue so exactly like her that the change from marble to reality would look sufficiently convincing. I took the lady to a sculptor who said he could and would make me a statue in the exact likeness of the original. He did. And the result was thoroughly disappointing. When the lady was whitened to look like marble she and the statue were the spitten image of each other, but when she stood aside the other didn’t even look like a statue — it looked all wrong. This was very puzzling.
Then I remembered from my early art training that, while the human head has a length of about one seventh of the total length of the whole figure from top to toe, there is a tradition in art that the head should always be drawn only one eighth of the total height, and in statuary it is often even reduced to one ninth. Consequently we are so used to seeing in pictures, and particularly in sculpture, people with small heads that when we are confronted with figures in natural proportions they look wrong. That is why full-length photographic portraits often look stocky and out of shape. Evidently that is what had happened here. So I was faced with the choice between an unnatural-looking statue coming to life, or alternatively a natural-looking one whose head swells visibly to greater size under the influence of the spell. I chose the former on the double ground that I could not help myself and that people easily swallow anomalies in films, especially when there’s magic about.
The part of the young man whose foolishness with the ring had led to all the trouble was played by George Dewhurst who had joined the company some considerable time earlier. His girl friend, who certainly had a very great deal to put up with, did it very gracefully and well in the person of Eileen Dennes, and Alma Taylor and Gwynne Herbert and others of the company gave loyal support.
And now a word or two of advice from an Old Man to a very Young One: pearls of great price for practically nothing. First, remember always that if you do a thing, anything, and put your whole brain and mind and soul into doing it, then, when it is accomplished, it will be something worthy, something of which you may be, and should be, proud. Whether it is a film you are making or a kitchen table or only a packing-case, if you make it with all the best that is in you, it will be in its way a work of art. I don’t say it will be good art — it may be thoroughly bad, but it will be a separate and different thing, different in some tiny detail from anything anyone else has done. It will in some sort be expressive of yourself — and self-expression is the beginning of all art.
Let us suppose it is a film you propose to make. First of all make up your mind and swear black and blue that you will not at any stage of the proceedings be content with anything but the very best that is within your power or reach — and that does not mean the most expensive. You start with an idea, naturally. Make quite certain that it is a good idea and until you are certain about that don’t go any further in the matter. Then put it down on paper. See it in your mind’s eye as so many separate scenes and write each one out as you see it. This is the most important part of the whole thing. In any case it is an exceedingly valuable exercise.
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