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14
FEBRUARY 1924
Pictures and Picf\jre$ver
Rorwcmces /Did Studios
THE HEPWORTH STUDIOS
Above : The new submarine engines which
zvill supply light to the New Hepworth
studios when they are completed.
; t is the oldest studio in this country,
1 besides being' the first ever built. And though it has expanded considerably, the outside looks exactly the same as it did some twenty years or so ago. It appears more or less like an ordinary row of houses in an ordinary country town. But inside is a very different story. Behind that row of windows and doors is a very cornpetent organisation, which not only produces films, but develops, prints, and sends them abroad; has always done so, since the days of its commencement, and will continue doing so until it is abandoned for the huge new studios which are as yet incomplete.
Hepworth's has always been a self reliant studio. Even back in 1898 when an enterprising young man in
Beloiii : A scene from " Trclawny of the Wells." one of the first big films Hepworth's made.
Left : Henry Ainley and Alma Taylor in "Iris." Right: Lionelle Hozvard and Alma Taylor in "The Baby on the Barge,"
an early production. vaded Walton-on-Thames in search of a place wherein he might work undisturbed. He was not overburdened with capital, this man who founded this pioneer film studio. But he had previously invented an arc lamp for lantern projection, and with the money this brought him he embarked on the hazardous seas of picture making.
He founded his business in a small house at Walton. Its rent was £30 per annum so its size may be easily guessed. The people who worked there hadn't much elbow room, for downstairs was at once handed over to the mechanical department (dark room, engine room, etc.). and the upstairs rooms were needed for living accommodation. The " studio " was the back garden, and anyone who has ever wandered inside a modern film studio will appreciate the difficulties these earnest young workers had to contend with There were only a few of them, just Cecil Hepworth, his wife and tiny daughter, a relative or two, and a small, very small staff. Now and again " professionals " were hired at about ten shillings a time. But their earliest films consisted mainly of moving objects like trains and were about fifty to one hundred feet longf. And the