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.
so great an occasion. All the same, the effect on the whole was that of an acknowledged and successful move.
Of the foreign films it was noticeable that Harold Lloyd produced great comedies which were tremendously popular, and the coming of cartoons with Felix the Cat started the most popular series in the country. Louis Lumiere, who had first shown films to the public at Lyons on March 22, 1895, was hailed as the inventor of cinematography. I do not know that he ever himself laid claim to that title but it is evident that it should be a very distributed one, for numbers of people have had a hand in the birth of that invention. There was no progress in the fight against the entertainment tax, but several British films found sales in America, including most of the Hepworth pictures. In August, 1923, the Hepworth Company announced an agreement whereby its pictures would be handled by Ideal Films Ltd.
At the inaugural luncheon of the B.N.F.L. at the Hotel Victoria with Col. A. C. Bromhead, C.B.E., in the chair, I was very thrilled to meet the Prince of Wales. He evidently was, or appeared to be, very interested in British films. He was a most natural and genuinely kindly gentleman, courteous and friendly, with unaffected dignity. I formed that impression then, greatly intensified later on when circumstances put him at the dictation of hostile interests and he was compelled to lay down his crown. It seemed to me, and it seems to me still, that we lost then the best King we had ever had since Alfred.
Among others present at the luncheon were several very important people, including the Earl of Abercrombie who had often expressed great interest in Hepworth films. The meeting was a great success and it led to the taking of the Scala Theatre for the first London British Film Week.
As may be imagined I was most anxious to put up a good showing and as we had had long notice that this film week would in the end be forthcoming, I had, in my intention, set aside the still scarcely begun ComirC Thro" the Rye. I felt in my bones that it was going to be a good picture and indeed I believed it would turn out to be the best I had ever made. And then, I suppose, largely because of the very many other difficult and disturbing things which were going on around me, I had at that time no other picture of my own make which had not already been shown or was in any way competent to take its place on such an important occasion.
189