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CHAPTER 12
Before I began on this rough and very incomplete resume of the general condition of the English film trade in the period from 1 9 10 onwards, and was led on from that to a generalisation on the silent films then and their modern counterpart in 16 mm., I was dealing with Drake's Love Story at the latter part of 19 12. Then the very successful Oliver Twist, directed by Thomas Bentley, was the fore-runner, as I have said, of several other Dickens films, most of which, by the way, had already been produced by other firms and were to be followed again by many others. The next one on our list was the dreadfully difficult story of David Copperfield.
Bentley certainly loved his Dickens and there is no gainsaying the fact that he turned out a great deal of very good work which rebounded considerably to his credit and also to ours. He was a rum chap but I found him very pleasant to work with. He went to Dover among many other places in the making of this film. When he came back he told me that he had found the very house that Dickens had described. I remember the joyful glee with which he recounted how he had managed to secure in the picture, the fascia board upon it saying that it was 'the House immortalised by Dickens as the Home of Miss Betsy Trot wood.' I do not think he ever understood why I received this news with so little enthusiasm.
There came to see me at this time a wonderful little boy with masses of curly hair and a most angelic expression. He was a delightful child with the name of Reggie Sheffield and he was tremendously interested in 'wireless' which had scarcely been heard of then. He had a little 'set' with which he could sometimes pick up morse from some unknown station. With his childish imagination he would picture some great ship in distress, or maybe only making port. He brought with him a slightly older boy, an awkward fellow named Noel Coward whom I disliked immediately. I looked down upon him then: I look up to him now with
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