SHEBA 1919
Starring: Alma Taylor, Gerald Ames, James Carew, Lionelle Howard, Eileen Dennes, Mary Dibley, Diana Carey, Eric Barker, Jacky Craine and Ronald Colman. Produced and directed by Cecil Hepworth.
Synopsis: Story of a young man whose first wife is presumed dead. He starts a new life for himself and his baby son. He falls in love and marries the woman who helps him recover from his wounds. Only to find that his first wife is still alive. His second wife sacrifices her happiness so that he might be free. The story ends with the rightful lovers together.
Cecil Hepworth was a pioneer in early British cinema, being a film director, producer and screenwriter. He was among the founders of the British film industry and continued making films into the 1920s at his Walton-on-Thames Studio. Hepworth was also the inventor of the ‘Vivaphone’ which was an early recording system for adding sound to motion pictures. The company produced sometimes three films a week, in total nearly 2000 different titles from 1898 to 1924.
There is very little information regarding this film in existence, it is thought to have been destroyed along with most of the films and negatives in the Hepworth company archives in 1924. The only additional information we have is that the film was distributed by Butcher’s Film Service and was released in cinemas across the UK in October 1919. The duration was measured not in time but in length, this title was1,669 meters of film. Researched from IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0009605/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1 BFI: http://explore.bfi.org.uk/4ce2b6b5a6bd7
These stills have been professionally scanned at very high resolution with digital restoration. They have been captured using a colour scanning process rather than stardard black and white. This gives the images a warm hugh, similar to sepia colour and more accurately preserves tones, colours and fine details.
All were photographed by Stanley Faithfull who was head of the stills department at Hepworth Picture Play. Stanley carfully stored the fragile glass negatives in the original plate boxes, each wrapped in acid free, high purity paper which has preserved the images for 100 years.
These are now available to purchase as large format prints using the link below.
http://www.vintagenegatives.com/hepworth-sheba
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