The First True Hitchcock by Henry K. Miller

Author:Henry K. Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

We were with his ex-wife and her husband, and sitting behind us were Babe Barnato, with June (later Lady Inverclyde). He and his ex-wife were sincerely hearty in their greetings & the presence of the husband and June did not seem to embarrass them at all. During the interval we three men met in the bar and had a jolly manly chat about the jolly, thrilling play and then parted.

I liked Babe’s easy manner. He was keen physically & mentally and seemed unspoiled by his riches.

At the end of 1925, June and Carlyle Blackwell had appeared opposite one another in one of a series of short films starring the jockey Steve Donoghue, produced at Poole Street “by Gainsborough Pictures for C. & M. Productions,” essentially W. &. F. acting as producer. It was June’s first film appearance in five years.

Gainsborough’s access to the Barnato fortune puts a different complexion on Balcon and Woolf’s rugged declarations of independence. “Let’s win our better equipment like any other business, through our own ability,” rather than seek state subsidy, Balcon the 100 percent free trader had written in 1925.37 “The making of British films must, in my opinion, be the subject of individual endeavour,” Woolf had written in March 1926.38 Without the Barnatos’ money, W. & F.’s future was bleak. Its most recent Harold Lloyd picture, College Days, as The Freshman was titled in Britain, premiered at the New Gallery in November 1925 and released in January 1926, was to be its last. Lloyd had signed a new worldwide distribution contract with Paramount, starting with For Heaven’s Sake—which when it opened in September became the first film to run at the Plaza for more than a week.

Within a few months, virtually all major American productions would be in the hands of American-controlled distributors. Warner Brothers, the last significant studio to rent through an independent British firm, had announced in February 1926 that it would distribute its films on its own account—more precisely, through the venerable Vitagraph network, which it had recently acquired—once the Gaumont contract ended that autumn. British distributors were left with the output of Poverty Row, continental imports, and British films—and the first category left C. M. Woolf unimpressed, as he told G. A. Atkinson in August:

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