Cecil M. Hepworth — Came the Dawn — Chapter 18 (1951) 🇬🇧
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Long, long ago, I was moved to study the work of Freud — I didn’t get very far with it — but I learned that one’s memory was largely conditioned by one’s will. That if I forgot to post a letter it was because it was one that I disliked writing. Now, that seemed to me to be mere poppycock, for I always forgot to post all my letters whether I had liked writing them or not. Even my early love-letters were found in my overcoat pocket days afterwards.
But while it is evident that I have remembered quite a lot of things about my past film-life, I am hanged if I can remember anything at all about the end of it — the part which I certainly disliked intensely. It is a sad story of seemingly unreasonable failure bearing down with cruel insistence upon the very peak of my greatest success. It must have had its beginnings during that time of apparent triumph — somewhere there must have been a wrong turning taken blithely in the happy sunshine, and I have been searching through the published records of the times to see if I can trace it. The pages of the trade papers, notably the Kinematograph Weekly and its Year Book have been laid open for me and I have been raking among the ashes of past times to see whether I can find an occasional piece of bone to give me a clue to the mystery.
The first thing I found which seemed to have any bearing upon the matter was the record of the purchase in or about July, 1919, of the Oatlands Park Estate at Weybridge which was near enough to our place at Walton to be very convenient for all sorts of exterior work. This was at the time when James Carew joined our stock-company and Anson Dyer — ‘Dicky’ Dyer, another good friend — signed a contract with us as Cartoonist. It was the time when two leading Swedish picture-producing companies amalgamated to enter the foreign market. In short it was the time of considerable European prosperity, the boom after the Great War.
The estate had recently come into the market. It had fine gardens, access to a lake, plenty of trees and a large house, and though it was fairly expensive I had no qualms about it then for it seemed exactly what we wanted. It proved so indeed when it furnished so many of the luxury scenes for my Alf’s Button — the most successful film I ever made. It seemed wise to buy it while we had the chance, and, anyway, it was real estate and should fetch its price at any time if we wanted to dispose of it.
But circumstances alter cases. To show how the atmosphere of the ‘boom’ impressed itself unconsciously upon people in the trade at that time, here is a little story which I believe to be perfectly true though I must not mention names. A young man of limited experience applied for a job with a big concern which had just entered the film production business. His application appeared to be going successfully and when he was asked how much salary he wanted he drew a bow at a venture and said, ‘three hundred pounds.’ He meant per annum. But they thought he meant monthly, and they gave him a contract for £3,690 a year, indefinitely!
In the following year, 1920, the number of British films issued appears to have been decreasing, ours as well as others. But in our case, and probably in other cases as well, it was the number of titles, not the total length of films or their quality which was going down: the long films were getting longer and the ‘shorts’ were tending to disappear. Among the films of the year which may perhaps be remembered still there were Welsh-Pierson’s [George Pearson | Thomas Welsh] very fine production (English) Nothing Else Matters, Griffith’s Broken Blossoms (American), the film of the year, and Miracle Man, perhaps the best all-round picture. Our Alf’s Button and The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss come into the following year.
We were producing regularly and continuously and with quite fair success, though to give a list of the names now that the pictures are all forgotten would be meaningless and merely boring. The whole trade was flourishing and we had our share in that.
We formed our own distributing organisation in America and secured office accommodation in Glasgow. Then comes a sinister note though it did not appear so at the time: a mortgage on land and properties at Weybridge to secure all moneys due or to become due to Barclays Bank Ltd. That was on January 7th, 1920.
Nevertheless it seems to me now to be portentous enough but that may be because I know what it all led to; I do not remember that it struck any terror to our hearts at the time. It was, I supposed, all in the course of ordinary business. For very big ideas were taking shape in our affairs. Our films were growing ever bigger and more ambitious. Our two studios were neither enough in number nor size to cater for the quantity of our contemplated output, or for its size and importance. My ideas were taking form and growing. I wanted six bigger studios — two of them much bigger — all in a row so as to share as conveniently as possible the economy and accommodation of dressing rooms, carpenters’ shops, scene docks, canteens, engineers’ premises, crowd rooms and all the dozens of rooms which usually grow up afterwards around the studios. These were all to be on the ground floor with the studios above, served by a roadway running around the lot. All of this was carefully thought out and duly arranged and all the architect’s drawings were made. Then we acquired the land and actually got as far as pegging out the positions of all the outer walls.
Then there was the question of the electricity supply, for, although I still clung to my archaic idea of using daylight as far as ever possible, the auxiliary arc-lighting would call for a very large amount of power. I approached the electricity suppliers and they quoted £20,000 for the necessary cable. (They afterwards said that that was only a preliminary suggestion, when they found that I was putting in diesels and generators for the needed supply.)
Diesels were frightfully expensive and not easy to obtain then, for all engineering was only beginning to recover after the wastages of war, but I heard of a couple of big engines with their attached generators out of a captured German submarine. I went and inspected them and I bought them. That, I see now, was almost certainly a false step. I realised that it would take a very long time to take them to pieces, transport them and get them re-erected on the site. So that involved me in the immediate building of a suitable engine-house.
It was built close to the projected studio building. Afterwards, when everything was cleared away, that engine-house became the auditorium of a theatre and had a stage built on at its rear. It is now known as The Playhouse, Walton-on-Thames, and it has been, and still is, the scene of many an amateur opera and play. It was taken over for this purpose by my very old friend, George Carvill, and opened by Ellen Terry, then a very old lady. Underneath its floor are still the huge compressed-air cylinders for starting the diesel engines and the fuel-oil tanks for feeding them.
Close at hand is another building, now an important garage, which was put up at the same time as a scene-painting dock and construction shop. It is in two stories and had at the time it was first finished a six-inch slot running through the first floor for the whole width of the building so that backcloths, pinned on to the huge slung-frame, could be raised or lowered in the slot to suit the comfort and convenience of the painter who stood on the floor in front of it. This was also built in advance so as to serve the pressing needs of the existing studios. In the meantime the diesel engines and the generators were brought down from Liverpool and the engineers started erecting them with the aid of a travelling gantry under the roof of the new engine-house, and while they were at it — it took over a year — I ordered the switchboard for the distribution of power to the studios, and in due course that was also erected. This switchboard alone cost £3,250. That will give some idea of the size of the installation.
Now comes another step. And another and another. There are particulars of an issue of £40,000 debentures, authorised August 7th, 1920 — present issue £5,000 — charged on the company’s undertaking and property present and future, including uncalled capital: the issue on September 30th, 1920, of £5,000 debentures, part of a series already registered. Another £3,000 on October 14th. Another, same date, £2,500, and another twelve days later of a further £2,500. If I wasn’t getting cold feet by that time I must have had a remarkably fine circulation.
Yet what could I do? I feel sure now that the whole electrical undertaking was a mistake. There must surely have been some way of buying the juice instead of spending all that upon making it. But that is easy wisdom after it is too late. Besides, we were making good money with good films all this time: Anna the Adventuress, publishing date, February 3rd, Alf’s Button, May 4th, Amazing Quest, July 31st, and half a dozen other big films, as well as the usual number of smaller ones. There must have been several compensating things to disguise the dread of trouble to come, and even now I think, with full consciousness of the niggers in the woodpile which I have already mentioned, we might have won through if the national post-war boom had continued.
The boom was followed by a slump and a serious one. The trade had a sharp lesson and pulled itself together. We didn’t.
I suppose we couldn’t with all those liabilities hanging round our necks. We carried on as long as carrying on was possible.
Now I must go back a bit for in unconscious hurry to get through with things which taste but sadly in my mouth I have passed over several matters of contemporary interest. While my troubles were gathering momentum, serious efforts were made by important interests to abolish the evils of block-booking and advance releases. At a special meeting of all three associations a joint committee was formed and a better plan was drawn up but does not appear to have had very much effect upon the trade which gradually righted itself. It was at this meeting that poor Friese-Greene [Claude Friese-Greene] died so tragically in the middle of making a passionate appeal for unity in the trade.
Friese-Greene is sometimes described as the inventor of cinematography. I never met him but evidently he was a man of great personal charm and of vivid ideas which were not always practicable. He was a most successful portrait photographer but abandoned that for other things. He took out seventy-six patents on a most extraordinary variety of subjects. If enthusiasm could of itself provide a fortune he would surely have died a rich man.
The greatest film of this year (1920) was Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid which richly deserved even the great popularity it received. The Swedish Biograph films were making a continuous appeal; subjects with high ideals and no truckling to the lower tastes or mere silliness of the audiences. And Victor Seastrom of Sweden was a fine director. It was a great pity that he was lured away to America. That also happened to a great German director. In both cases their genius languished in a foreign atmosphere or perhaps undue and unsympathetic handling, and their work soon began to wane and never regained its early beauty and vitality. Transplanting was not a success and Europe lost what America failed to gain.
Taste was on the whole improving though, I think. Though old-fashioned showmen continued to pander to the worst public, better ideas won through in the end, and British films were said to be ‘infinitely higher than those of last year.’ Sunday opening for the theatres was mooted and partly gained. The British Board of Film Censors was severely attacked by the lay press but survived, helped a good deal by the L.C.C. licence being made conditional upon films having the Board’s certificate. Some British films found a hearty welcome on the American continent, among them The Amazing Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss and Alf’s Button. The last had two or three repeat runs in several large Canadian cities.
It was in May of the following year (1921) that the Hepworth Company won the action for libel which was brought against it by the agent whose name was the same as that of an unpleasant character in a Phillips Oppenheim story which was filmed by us. I spoke of this much earlier in the book when I was dealing with a couple of other lawsuits, but without giving many details. The action was heard in King’s Bench Division on May 10th before the Lord Chief Justice and a mixed special jury. Counsel for the plaintiff was Sir Edward Marshall Hall and for the defence, Mr. Douglas Hogg. It was brought by Bernard Montague (Mr. Marks in private life). The evidence of the producer, Henry Edwards, who was out of England at the time, had been taken on oath and was read. The great weakness of the case appeared to be that no one was brought forward who could testify that the villain in the picture was believed to represent the plaintiff. The jury, without leaving the box, returned a verdict for the defendants, and judgment with costs was given accordingly.
In the autumn of the same year, Charlie Chaplin visited this country and had, of course, a tremendous reception. He travelled back to New York on the Berengaria, and Alma Taylor and I with a director of the company, Mr. W. A. Reid, and his secretary were travellers in that same ship. We saw a great deal of Chaplin on that voyage and he proved a most delightful fellow-traveller. He was, and still is, a great artist, certainly one of the greatest the film industry has discovered. We met him again by invitation at his house at Beverley Hills, Los Angeles, and visited his studios and had many most interesting talks with him on production and allied subjects.
Now I come to a part of the story which is bristling with difficulties, for although we had many good films in the making or made, we had very expensive schemes in hand and it began to be evident that it would be more than we could do to finance them. It had always been the intention to float a public company to provide the capital for our ventures but the after-war boom had collapsed, and all the financial people who understand these things said we should have to wait until the money market was favourable.
We waited, but the various things we had started upon would not wait. They could not be held up and all the time they were using up money. It became apparent that either we must abandon all the enterprises we had set in motion — and that meant almost certain bankruptcy — or we must chance our arm and go to the public as originally intended. The scene-painting house was ready for use, the engine-house had all its machinery installed and nearly ready to run. All the drawings and designs for the new studios were prepared and the land secured and marked out, but we could not place the contract. Still we were advised to wait. The money market was not favourable. The times were not propitious. Yet, almost perforce, we launched a public company with a capital of a quarter of a million in £ shares (150,000 preference and 100,000 ordinary). This was Hepworth Picture Plays (1922) Ltd. It was almost still-born for it was very badly undersubscribed. I had been warned that this might be so and that the high reputation of the firm might not be proof against the unlucky choice of a date when the money market was depressed. But I felt that it must be risked, and I alone am to blame for the unhappy result.
Almost at once we were in difficulties. The studio scheme had to be abandoned and the land released for the construction of a bypass road. (I had previously secured a promise that this would be diverted enough to pass round the studios if built.) There were several more debenture issues — they seem to be piling upon one another most alarmingly. I suppose I really understood the matter and all its implications at the time, but looking back now over what records I can find I confess I am horribly muddled. The final blow seems to be implicit in an issue of £35,500 debentures charged on the company’s undertaking and property including uncalled capital. What does not appear is the rate of interest, which I remember all too well was ten per cent!
As may be imagined the time soon came when we were unable to meet the monthly drain of that punishing percentage. Directly I announced that fact a receiver was put in charge of the business and I was no longer of any account in it.
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