The Stars

This page contains about the Hepworth Stock Company and the stars of Hepworth films. The Hepworth studios hosted some of the earliest film stars.

As this site grows, each star will have their own page.

Alma Taylor was undoubtedly the most prominent of these, and in the early days she often starred alongside Chrissie White.

The magnificent Internet Movie Database (IMDB) contains a very great deal of information about Hepworth and his films.

Cecil Hepworth was the first British film maker to form a "Stock Company" of actors and actresses with contracts, as Edwardian actor- managers like Henry Irvine and Martin Harvey had done. Hepworth is loosely credited with inventing the "star system" before Hollywood did it.

Hepworth was also the first to publish souvenir postcards of his people, starting in February 1912. Samples of the studio publicity material are reproduced on this website. Contact us if you would like to offer some for display.

Hepworth names several members of his Stock Company in his Autobiography, and by studying advertisements and collecting the publicity postcards put out by the studio it has been possible to determine that there were at least 22 different actors and actresses associated with the Stock Company. They sometimes used one or more stage names.

Hepworth asserted he had legal rights to many of these stage names, so protecting his investment in them but preventing them from using that stage name if they worked for another company - which led to a very acrimonious lawsuit against Hepworth in later years - which he lost!

Hepworth refused to publicise his stars' private lives, so it is sometimes difficult to ascertain their real names. For example, Gladys Sylvani Smith was also known as "Mary Pickford" and "Alexie Smith" in the 1940s. Tracing the stage name to the real name will occupy us for a while!

 Other actors and actresses (who may or may not have been in the Stock Company) are below

Acknowledgement

The compiler is indebted to the late Fred Lake, long time resident of Walton On Thames and Hepworth scholar, for his major contributions to the information on this page.