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Hepworth Films for you to enjoy - view below
See The Hepworth Film Gallery below!
Links to a several filmographies of work from the Hepworth Studios are also below.
| Hepworth Film and TV credits | View Hepworth movies online on the British Pathé website. Preview items from the entire 3500 hour British Pathe Film Archive which covers news, sport, social history and entertainment from 1896 to 1970. | |
| Hepworth Filmography |
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| The magnificent Internet Movie Database (IMDB) contains a very great deal of information about Hepworth and his films. |
 Most
of the extant films are held by the British Film Institute and cover
the period between 1898 and 1924.The bfi National Film And Television Archive |
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In this pioneering BBC4 documentary, Matthew Sweet takes us on a journey through the first three decades of British cinema, telling the story of one of the most creative, extravagant, pleasurable and yet unknown periods of film history. Of the thousands of films made in Britain before the emergence of sound in 1929, only a fifth survive - most of them preserved in the BFI National Archive. But they were hugely popular in their time: Cecil Hepworth's Rescued by Rover was so popular that the original negative wore out with printing and had to be re-shot, twice - while The Battle of The Somme released in 1916, was watched by an estimated 20 million people. Matthew Sweet visits the actual sites where the very first pioneer filmmakers made their mark, in Leeds, Trafalgar Square and Blackpool. He tracks down former studio premises, in Hove, Muswell Hill and Walton-on-Thames and traces some of the surviving cinemas from the period. Still visible as traces on the buildings of London's film heartland in Soho is the legacy of a vibrant centre of the Cinema business known as Flicker Alley. |
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| LOST HEPWORTH FILMS APPEAL | ||
| Many of Hepworth's
films were lost, but people remain interested in them. Here are a couple of messages from people wanting to trace lost Hepworth films. If you have any information, please contact them,
Contact us if you have your own film to trace and we shall do our best to help. |
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Susan Bendall sbendall@constructuk.com would like to trace more information about a Hepworth film from 1913 called "The Tango", starring Pete & Petita, or any further information about it. "Pete" was my great grandfather, which is why I am desperate to find any information. I do have a photo of Pete & Petita from the Mander and Mitchinson Collection which was from a 1913 Mayfair (a gossip-about-town magazine), which has the photo on it, together with a small article about Pete & Petita. |
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| Kathryn Graham kp.graham@ukonline.co.uk - would be very grateful if you could supply me with any biographical information you may have on the film director Walter West, husband of Alma Taylor. [Webmaster note:According to my research they were not in fact married]. He happens to be my grandfather. My father was called Walter Leonard Stanley, and he was the son of Walter West, though not by Alma Taylor. His mother I understand was a young actress in Walter West's early films, by the name of Madeleine Stanley. She died in, I believe, 1918 during the flu epidemic. My father worked in the film industry himself and apparently was in contact with his father, Walter West as an adult, but my sister and I were never introduced to our grandfather and have only gained information about him since our own father's death. We would very much like to know more about our illustrious grandfather. I hope you can help us. | ||
| Hepworth International | Hepworth films
were popular in many countries outside the UK. Details of a few reported showings are below, if you know of others please let us know. |
| Wellington, New Zealand, 1913 | On 15 December 1913 the Britannia Theatre, Wellington, NZ, opened across the street & a few doors down from Perrett's corner. The first feature to be shown was Adrift on Life's Tide, a British film, starring Alma Taylor, Flora Morris, Harry Royston, and Harry Gilbey. |
Meanwhile there are a few more Hepworth/Hepwix films to view right now and enjoy below!
SPECIAL: Read Hannah Gordon's narrative on "Comin' Through The Rye" (1923).
The "City of the Future" project by the Royal College of Art contains some fascinating snippets of film which may not have been widely shown, including some of Hepworth's personal collection from the turn of the century.
The Hepworth Film Gallery
| Daisy Doodad's Dial (1914) |
For
those who like their humour daft and thoroughly unsophisticated, this
silent short will be a delight. The titular Daisy enters a face-pulling
competition ('dial' - as in watch dial - is neglected slang for a face),
but on the big day she falls victim to toothache. When her husband
returns from the contest triumphant, the distinctly unladylike Daisy
vows revenge in the next competition. But her impromptu rehearsal on a
train causes chaos among her fellow passengers, and things only get
worse after she is arrested for disturbing the peace... Director/lead actress Florence Turner was an early Hollywood star, who briefly operated her own production company in Britain in the mid-1910s. Back in Hollywood in the late-1920s, she appeared alongside Buster Keaton in 'College' (1927), before her star faded. (Mark Duguid) |
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| Ladies on Bicycles (1899) |
Victorian women demonstrate their slalom cycling skills. The precision of the women skilfully negotiating their way around a line of bollards is quite remarkable. Though it's hard not to watch without willing one of them to catch her long white skirt in the bicycle chain. The film was made by Hepworth and Co and might possibly be one of the items listed appealingly in their catalogue as 'Musical Ride by Ladies' or 'Musical Ride by Ladies - Wheeling'. (Robin Baker) |
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| Alice In Wonderland (1903) | The commentary is well worth listening to! | |
| A day in the Hayfields (1904) |
Very
often when people think of England, they conjure up images of an
idealised rural landscape on a hot summer's day; in 'A Day in the
Hayfields', Cecil Hepworth gives us just that. |
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| Baby's Toilet (1905) |
Nothing to do with potties... Baby gets a good wash. In this charming Hepworth actuality film a crisply uniformed, no-nonsense nurse bounces a baby girl on her lap before submerging the unsuspecting infant into a tub of soapy water. The baby is surprisingly content to be so vigorously sponged and rinsed but somewhat less happy when extracted from the suds and deposited onto a set of unwelcoming metal weighing scales. Once back on a familiar lap, however, the baby delights in being dried, powdered and expertly pampered. (Catherine McGahan) For more information about filmmaker Cecil Hepworth see http://www.screenonline.org.uk/people... You can watch almost 1000 other complete films and TV programmes free of charge at the Mediatheque at BFI Southbank - http://www.bfi.org.uk/mediatheque |
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| Hamlet (1913) |
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| Tilly the Tomboy Visits the Poor (1905) |
This comedy is still funny today! Surrey Brass reprieved it in a live performance with new music written by John Hughes. (The sound track on this film is not that music!) Produced by British film pioneer Cecil Hepworth, around 20 of the popular series of 'Tilly' films were made between 1910 and 1915. Surviving episodes are brimming with a sense of anarchic fun as they follow the adventures of naughty schoolgirls Tilly and Sally, played by Chrissie White and Alma Taylor, who went on to become major stars of '20s British cinema. 'Tilly, the Tomboy...' is available to view here in a version re-edited to approximate the original cut (surviving archive materials were out of sequence). The sheer energy and silliness of this mischievous pair is infectious, further proof - if it were needed - of women's contribution to the tradition of slapstick in British comedy. (Simon McCallum) |
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| Rescued by Rover (1905) | Click to View |
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| Boer War (1899) |
Click to View Reel 1 Click to View Reel 2 |
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MORE COMING SOON! |
