Came the dawn : memories of a film pioneer (1951)

played himself out. His various debts crowded around him. I was slow to realise what was happening, or shut my eyes to it when he pleaded for a little more time, and I parted from him in the end his creditor for nearly five hundred pounds. This was a sad blow for a little business like ours, but we weathered the storm and though we shipped a good deal of water we were not wrecked. One more showmanship note. Quite early in my film-life I was commissioned to photograph a young lady taking off all her clothes while she swung and hung on a trapeze. The trapeze was rigged up on the roof of the Alhambra so that I could have plenty of daylight, but it was very disappointing. When she had taken off her last 'shimmy' she was found to have on a perfectly respectable bathing-dress. But that is not what I mean. It was disappointing because in my effort to keep the whole swing of the trapeze in my picture I had taken the camera so far away that the figure was very small indeed and you could hardly see what was going on. Or should I say, what was coming off? I do not think that film ever appeared before the public and even if it had it would not have been questioned, for there was no thought of a censorship then. Indeed, there was little need for one for it was only very occasionally that a film appeared to which objection could reasonably be taken. But later on there came a small but apparently growing quantity of short films which were said to be intended for 'smoking-room5 exhibition. They were only a few at first but, like the small black cloud no bigger than a man's hand, they seemed to some of us to be ominous. 61