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282 FADE-OUT OF BRITISH FILMS
of a film and the day of its general release.
In 1923 producers started a British National Film League. The Prince of Wales (now Duke of Windsor) spoke at an inaugural luncheon to good effect, although he seemed to be under the impression that the film industry in Britain was quite a new thing. He practised what he preached when he asked film-goers to support British films, prevailing upon the King and Queen to attend many of the best efforts of the British studios.
But there was one thing lacking with the " British Film Week " which the National Film League launched. Exhibitors were implored to book a British picture that week. With the best will in the world they tried to comply, but there just were not sufficient British pictures, so the dust was blown off the film cans in the vaults and out came the outmoded successes of a previous decade. The public learned very quickly that the wisest thing to do during " British Film Week " was to stay away from the cinemas.
Within a year of the launching of the League the end was in sight. The Ideal Studios at Elstree, home of many of the pictures in which West End stage stars appeared, closed its doors. British and Colonial at Walthamstow ceased to function. Broadwest and Hepworth cut their schedules. London Film Company quietly faded out. Stoll and Samuelson put up the shutters. Cricks and Martin, Clarendon and several more pioneer outfits had already gone to the great beyond.
By 1924 every British film studio was shut.
The public did not care. And why, indeed, should it ? From America it was getting, and would get, pictures of the calibre of Earthbound, The Miracle Man, Foolish Wives, Way Down East, He Who Gets Slapped, Broken Blossoms, Seventh Heaven, Smilin' Thru, Over the Hill, and The Sheik.
Behind the scenes, however, two or three stalwarts interested in British pictures had already decided to put up a fight. They were film director George Ridgwell, who had made some two hundred pictures, Captain Rex Davis, a popular screen hero, and Victor McLaglen. They began campaigning in 1923 for protection for British films when their cause was all but lost.
They went lobbying M.P.s in the House of Commons, wrote letters to the Press and held open-air meetings by the Irving Statue in London's Charing Cross Road. Lunch hour crowds would hear the bellow of Victor McLaglen's voice extolling the necessity for reopening Britain's studios. George Ridgwell, who had directed