This study focuses on the close relationship between the British film industry and the Edwardian theatre. Why were so many West End legends such as Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Ellen Terry repeatedly tempted to dabble in silent film work? Why were film producers so keen to employ them? Jon Burrows studies their screen performances and considers how successfully they made the transition from one medium to the other, and offers some controversial conclusions about the surprisingly broad social range of filmgoers to whom their films appealed.

This story is the direct result of me sitting in the Athens airport departure lounge waiting for my flight back to the UK, picking bits of bright green expanded polyurethane adhesive out of my hair and dark brown polyester resin from my beard. I think that the realisation that I had glued my feet into my boat shoes and stuck my toes together brought home the absurdity into which my life had descended. My situation was hammered home when the security people asked me to take off my shoes before I walked through the airport scanner. I had to tear great lumps of skin from my insoles to get the...

This book examines why thousands of cinemas opened in Britain in the space of a few years before the start of the First World War. This account also takes a new look at the development of film distribution, the emergence of the feature film and the creation of the British Board of Film Censors.