The world film encyclopedia (1933)

Round the Studios 303 before had been rough hedges of privet ? They did not. They left the grounds as they were. More, they employed skilled gardeners that their players might have a pleasaunce wherein to walk in the cool of the evening when the day's shooting is done. Many a fine summer evening has been spent on those wide lawns. There has been tennis ; there has been bathing in the foamy water below Teddington Weir ; there have been stump-cricket matches. But it must not be imagined that the Teddington people spend all their time dancing on the green and hanging daisy-chains round each other's necks. They turned out three films in six weeks during the summer of 1932, and these were not the ordinary scratch-cast " quickies " generally associated with such rapid work, but good-quality feature films, including in their casts players of such calibre as John Stuart, Dorothy Bartlam, Dodo Watts and Janice Adair. Henry Edwards, who was for some time in possession of the Teddington studio — he made StrangleJiold there in 1931 — used to plan plans and dream dreams of the development of the old film-centre. The WarnerFirst National interests have brought those dreams reality, for they have made the place into a model studio. They have ample space for production ; they have added a row of comfortable dressing-rooms, a projection-room, cutting and editing-rooms. Thej^ have turned disused rooms in part of the old house into clean, airy offices. The old house itself has forty rooms and in it they have made long galleries of guest-rooms, a lofty dining-hall and finely-tapestried drawing-rooms. At Teddington they introduced the American system of " property baskets." Instead of long searches in crowded prop-rooms, each property-man has onlj^ to make a rapid survey of his own individual basket, kept by the set, to produce any more general kind of " property ", which may suddenly be needed, from a telephone to a needle-and-thread. Those who have watched the restless waiting sometimes caused by endless rummaging in distant property-vaults will appreciate this improvement. A small point of studio technique, but it is in the knowledge and practice of such points that they excel at Teddington. They may have spent £100,000 on new structures and equipment. You may find the latest type of microphone on the set, the latest make of lamp in the electrical store, the most up-to-date form of cutting-apparatus. They may, and undoubtedly do, produce films as original and as technically excellent as any in Great Britain. But for all that, Teddington studio will remain, thanks to the good taste of certain American gentlemen, a pleasantly tree-shaded, flower-decked country seat, with the river laughing at the film-makers as it runs by. Twickenham Twickenham Film Studios, Ltd., Alliance Studios, St. Margaret's, Twickenham. TRAVELLING by train to St. Margaret's, Twickenham, across the river from Richmond, you pass, just outside the station, the end of a red-brick building, with a strange, short factory chimney labelled "studio." That is the Alliance Studio, the home of Twickenham Film Studios, Ltd.