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394 Round the Studios
It is the friendliest studio in Great Britain, It looks like a big red barn and it backs right on to the railway-line. In the early days of talkies — when sound-proofing wasn't what it is to-day — they had to call a halt in shooting every time a train passed — ^be it electric or not. Nowadays, so far has the science of talkie-making progressed, they need stop only for a steam-train.
Yet this quaint studio with its rambling offices, which look for all the world like converted bed-rooms, was responsible for the second greatest output of films from any British studio in 1930.
Julius Hagen, swarthy and jocose, is the ruling genius at Twickenham. He has attracted some of the finest talent among British film-stars to the " lot." Guy Newall, Franklyn Dyall, Margot Grahame, and Mary Newcomb are some of the players whose work at Twickenham has been frequent and notable. Julius Hagen, too, was the first to recognize the potentialities of Elizabeth Allan. He took her straight from the West End stage-play in which she was appearing, and signed her up on a long-term contract.
Everybody is friendly at Twickenham. The telephone-girl passes your call with a pleasant greeting. The directors are pleased to see you. Even the amazing collection of " property " pictures which hangs outside the main floor seem to smile at you from a hundred frames, from the Laughing Cavalier, with his eyes pierced for peepholes in some long-forgotten spydrama to the lady a la Kirchner who was used on the wall of a set in another picture.
There is a tiny projection-theatre leading out of the studio, and next to that, the " still " department. Twickenham Studios are very proud of their still-photography, which is possibly the best in this country.
All the sound-recording at Twickenham is done in a mobile van, which serves a dual purpose, since it can be driven from the studio to any location at a moment's notice.
Walton-on-Thames
NeUlefold Productions, Hurst Grove, Walton-on-Thames, Surrey.
WALTON studio is one of the historic centres of British film-production. Films have been made there continuously ever since 1898. It was in that year that Cecil M. Hepworth, pioneer of the film industry, started making pictures in the back-garden of his Walton-on-Thames house. His plaj^ers were himself, his wife, and his son ; his studio, a tiny lawn ; his developing, printing, and drying laboratories, the kitchen and the scullery sink.
In the early nineteen-hundreds, " Heppy " built his first studio, which was burnt down after a short but energetic career. Another was built on the spot, and it was in this primitive studio, built largely of glass, that the film industry was carried on more assiduously than anywhere else in Great Britain.
Hepworth used to think it a bad week when he had not wTitten, photographed, and sold three or four films. The procedure was simple. He and his players — he began a stock company which included such famous figures as Chrissie White, Alma Taylor, and Stewart Rome in its later years — ■ would gather in the studio at 9 a.m. A story would be written and production started by 11 o'clock. The film would be finished and on its