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Cecil Hepworth

{{Short description|British film director, producer and screenwriter}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=January 2015}}

{{Use British English|date=January 2015}}

{{Infobox person

| image =File:Cecil M. Hepworth 1915.jpg

| imagesize =

| name = Cecil Hepworth

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{birth date|1874|3|19|df=yes}}

| birth_place = Lambeth,[http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/450004/ Cecil Hepworth] at Screenonline England

| death_date = {{death date and age|1953|2|9|1874|3|19|df=yes}}

| death_place = Greenford, Middlesex, England

| othername =

| occupation = Film director, film producer

| years_active= 1896–1926

}}

Cecil Milton Hepworth (19 March 1874 – 9 February 1953) was a British film director, producer and screenwriter. He was among the founders of the British film industry and continued making films into the 1920s at his Hepworth Studios. In 1923 his company Hepworth Picture Plays went into receivership.

His works include Alice in Wonderland (1903), the first film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's children's book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.{{cite web|title=The First Film Adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (1903)|url=http://www.openculture.com/2016/03/the-earliest-film-adaptation-of-alice-in-wonderland-from-1903.html|website=Open Culture|last=Mills|first=Ted|date= 31 March 2016|accessdate=19 May 2017}}

History

File:Vivaphone ad 1913.jpg

File:Norman Whitten Mad Hatter 1903.jpg as Alice (left) and Norman Whitten (right) as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland (1903), the first film version of the story]]

{{Multiple image|image1=Cecil Hepworth Film Cell Plaque London NW1 9XT.jpg|image2=Cecil Hepworth - 32 Cantelowes Road London NW1 9XT.jpg|width2=113|footer=A commemorative British Film Institute plaque at Cantelowes Road, NW1, where Hepworth lived as a child}}

Hepworth was born in Lambeth, in present-day South London. His father, Thomas Cradock Hepworth, was a famous magic lantern showman and author. Cecil Hepworth became involved in the early stages of British filmmaking, working for both Birt Acres and Charles Urban, and wrote the first British book on the subject in 1897. With his cousin Monty Wicks he set up the production company Hepworth and Co. (also known as "Hepwix" after the word mark in its trade logo), which was later renamed the Hepworth Manufacturing Company (officially: Hepworth Film Manufacturing Company), and then Hepworth Picture Plays. In 1899 they built a small film studio in Walton-on-Thames, Hepworth Studios. The company produced about three films a week, sometimes with Hepworth directing. He was associated with Percy Stow from 1901-1903 who specialized in trick films.{{cite web|url=http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people/id/450076/|publisher=British Film Institute|title=Stow, Percy (1876-1919)|accessdate=29 March 2014}}

His film Rescued by Rover (1905), co-directed with Lewin Fitzhamon and starring a collie in the title role, was a huge financial success. The film is now regarded as an important development in film grammar, with shots being effectively combined to emphasize the action. Hepworth was also one of the first to recognize the potential of film stars, both animal and human, with several recurring characters appearing in his films.

By 1910, Hepworth was also the inventor of Vivaphone, an early sound on disk system for adding sound to motion pictures. The device used phonograph records to record and play back the sound. Hepworth's Vivaphone was distributed in Britain and also in the United States and Canada.{{cite web|url=http://www.john-goodwin.com/hepworth/vivaphone.htm|title=Vivaphone|publisher=John Goodwin|accessdate=20 August 2014|url-status=dead|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20140821033815/http://www.john-goodwin.com/hepworth/vivaphone.htm|archivedate=21 August 2014|df=dmy-all}}{{cite web|url=http://www.silentera.com/info/technology/synchSound/vivaphone.html|title=Hepworth Vivaphone|publisher=silentera.com|accessdate=20 August 2014}}

The company continued making popular films into the 1920s, despite Hepworth's now unchanging and increasingly old-fashioned film style. Boosted by the international success of Alf's Button (1919), the company went public to fund a large studio development. He failed to raise the necessary capital and, also suffering the box office failure of Comin' Thro the Rye (1923), the company went into receivership the next year. All of the original film negatives in Hepworth's possession were melted down by the receiver in order to sell the silver, and his feature films have been considered lost for many decades. However, an original 35mm. print of his 1920 film Helen of Four Gates was located in a film archive in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 2008.[https://www.theguardian.com/film/2010/may/31/helen-of-four-gates-film "Helen of Four Gates to get screening after 80-year hiatus"] The Guardian, 31-05-2010. Retrieved 26-08-2010.

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The Cecil Hepworth Playhouse in Walton-on-Thames is named after him.

Selected filmography

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Notes

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References

  • Came the Dawn, Cecil Hepworth. London: Phoenix House, 1951.
  • Raising the Flag: Constructing a National Cinema in Britain, Andrew Higson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, {{ISBN|0-19-812369-8}}. Chapter on Comin' Thro' The Rye: pp. 26–97.

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External links

{{commons category|Cecil Hepworth}}

  • [http://www.victorian-cinema.net/hepworth Cecil Milton Hepworth] at Victorian-cinema.net
  • {{IMDb name|id=0378408|name=Cecil Hepworth}}

{{Cecil Hepworth}}

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Category:1874 births

Category:1953 deaths

Category:People from Lambeth

Category:English film directors

Category:English film producers

Category:English male screenwriters

Category:British cinema pioneers

Category:20th-century English screenwriters

Category:20th-century English male writers

Category:British silent film directors