Cecil Hepworth

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Cecil Hepworth
Born(1874-03-19)19 March 1874
Lambeth,[1] England
Died9 February 1953(1953-02-09) (aged 78)
Greenford, Middlesex, England
Occupation(s)Film director, film producer
Years active1896–1926

Cecil Milton Hepworth (19 March 1874 – 9 February 1953) was a British

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.[2]

History

1913 ad for Vivaphone
May Clark as Alice (left) and Norman Whitten (right) as the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland (1903), the first film version of the story
A commemorative British Film Institute plaque at Cantelowes Road, NW1, where Hepworth lived as a child

Hepworth was born in

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.[3]

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.[4][5]

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

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.[6]

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

Selected filmography

Notes

  1. ^ Cecil Hepworth at Screenonline
  2. ^ Mills, Ted (31 March 2016). "The First Film Adaptation of Alice in Wonderland (1903)". Open Culture. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  3. ^ "Stow, Percy (1876-1919)". British Film Institute. Retrieved 29 March 2014.
  4. ^ "Vivaphone". John Goodwin. Archived from the original on 21 August 2014. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
  5. ^ "Hepworth Vivaphone". silentera.com. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
  6. ^ "Helen of Four Gates to get screening after 80-year hiatus" The Guardian, 31-05-2010. Retrieved 26-08-2010.

References

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Cecil Hepworth

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Cecil Hepworth.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Cecil_Hepworth&oldid=1209583330"