We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
one-time film-colleague shares similar oblivion but we both had a good time while it lasted.
I mentioned just now a meadow which we had recently rented. This was in Halliford on the other side of the river from Walton and was for the purpose of building a large portion of old London for the staging of Barnaby Rudge. This, the latest of Thomas Bentley's efforts in Dickens-land on our account, was his largest and best, for the story, as everyone knows, was in the time of the Gordon riots and involved nor merely a great number of different views of the London of the period, but these must be substantial enough to be both convincing in their reality, and strong enough to withstand the rough treatment which must hang upon scenes of disorder and struggle. Part of the ambitious set-up was a replica of old Newgate prison which in the story is destroyed by fire, that the prisoners may be rescued.
The poor, half-witted boy, Barnaby, around whose adventures the story ranges, was beautifully played by Tom Powers who both looked and acted the part to perfection. He was well supported by the rest of the company which absorbed, for the time being, nearly all our stock of actors including Chrissie White, Violet Hopson, Henry Vibart, L.Howard, MacAndrews, Buss, Royston, Felton and Stewart Rome. Like all the stories of Charles Dickens this is far too complicated to tell clearly in any reasonable length, and it is all to the credit of the producer that he managed to make it understandable within the limits of a film of not undue extent.
Barnaby Rudge has, I am sorry to say, like several other films in the course of this book, got itself somewhat misplaced in chronological order. It should have come before mention of Temple Thurston who only came to Walton towards the end of the war, while 'Barnaby' was filmed near its beginning. It does not matter very much, except that I like to be fairly accurate if I can.
I have quoted a considerable number of films made in that war-time, but for the most part only those which were of my own individual production, because, as I have mentioned before, this is a book about me, not about the film industry, which does not come into it except in so far as I have had to do with it. For instance, I have scarcely mentioned Henry Edwards' work. But he was producing side by side with me all through the war years and for some time afterwards and it would be stupid to suggest that his work was not at least as good as mine both in quantity as well as quality. Other of our producers were working hard and
159