Horace Shepherd

(1892-1960)

Horace Shepherd was born 10 October 1892, in Richmond, Surrey, the fourth child of Timothy Shepherd and his wife Elizabeth. They were from Newcastle and had come south to make and sell prams, but not long after Horace was born they moved to Balsall Heath, Birmingham, where Timothy set up as a cycle manufacturer.

Horace grew up in Birmingham, so it is likely that his Bachelor of Music degree was from the Birmingham School of Music, now the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire.

Interested in the use of music to accompany films, he worked for the Futurist cinema in Birmingham, then for the newly-opened Futurist in Scarborough. In the autumn of 1921 he was made director of the orchestra at the Palace Cinema, Walsall.

In 1922 the Theatre Royal, Manchester, was converted to a cinema by Spanish businessmen Alfonso and Enrique Carreras (the latter the father of James Carreras, of Hammer Films fame), and Horace Shepherd was made musical director, advertising in the press in August for musicians to complete both the first and relief orchestras for the opening on 4 September. He remained at the Royal for a year and a half, building up a reputation for arranging music for films.

In 1923 he married Bessie Annie Seifert.

Shepherd wanted to see musical arrangements specially written to accompany features, and distributed to cinemas with the films. Most distributors saw this as an unnecessary expense, and many were reluctant even to offer lists of suitable melodies. In an article published in the Weekly Dispatch on 11 September 1927, celebrating Horace's rise to become a leading film score arranger, journalist Arthur C Findon castigated the blinkered attitude of these salesmen:

     These fish-brained folk didn't realise that it was posible to produce a contradictory effect on vision and hearing and thereby half-kill a good film.
     They were so wrapped up in the comercial side of the screen that they forgot all about its artistic aspct.
     What did it matter to them if a scene depicting a neck and neck race between a motor-car and an express train was done to the strains of "Valse Triste," so long as they sold the picture?
     They didn't care twopence!

Horace Takes a Hand.
     But some of the Wardour-street wiseacres knew in their hearts it was all wrong.
     A number of men on the cinema side of the business knew it was all wrong.
     One of them was a young man named Horace Shepherd, who was running a picture theatre in Manchester and who was a Bachelor of Music.
     He determined to wake up Wardour-street.
     Without hesitation he gave up his job and came to London. Much shoe leather did he wear out in his trudgings through the main street of Movieland. But at last Ideal Films gave him the job of writing a special score for one of their productions.
     [....] He was eventually rewarded with work for other companies, getting somewhere near his ambitions when he was commissioned to do the music for "Prince of Adventurers," "Seventh Heaven," "Michael Strogoff," and other super-films.
     He composed, arranged and adapted with the eye and ear of both the musician and the picture-goer.
     Thanks to him we are less liable to hear "The Entry of the Gladiators" when a sea picture is on the screen.
     I am glad to hear that Shepherd is continuing in the path he has chosen and I am glad to pay this tribute to his perseverance and genius.
     Most big pictures which "go out" in future, will be accompanied by Shepherd's music—a fact for which the provincial musical directors should be profoundly grateful.

Shepherd's first engagement in London was as conductor of the London Pavilion orchestra for the run of Daughters of the Desert, an international production from German film company Trianon. The film ran from 15 December 1924 to 10 January 1925. Kinematograph Weekly (8 January 1925) noted:

     Not the least attractive feature of Trianon's season of "Daughters of the Desert" at the Pavilion has been the musical accompaniment, which was arranged by Horace Shepherd, Mus. Bac. The performance was characterised by the very high standard of musicianly ability, which introduced methods entirely new to film presentation. The dramatic points were well emphasised, and the treatment occasionally daring, especially in the flashback scenes, where two tunes indicative of the theme were played at once. Mr Shepherd is an acquisition to the London Trade, and will be long remembered for the reputation he gained as conductor of the Theatre Royal, Manchester, a position which he only recently resigned after two years' association with the Carreras managemnt.

I could not determine for which film Shepherd first provided Ideal with a score. A few films in 1925 seemed to have had scores prepared for them — This House of Vanity (in cinemas in March) and Honour, Charlie's Aunt and The White Rose (in cinemas in April) have "Special Music" mentioned in some local advertising.

Ideal released the new series of Pat Sullivan's Felix cartoons in October 1925 with a fanfare of promotions, and followed it up by commissioning a song:

     Of the making of kinema songs there would appear to be no end, but Ideal, in popularising the "Felix" (Complete) series by these methods have a distinct precedent, and there is little doubt but that this new "Felix" effusion will have no less a measure of success than the pictures themselves.
     The song, "Let's All Follow Felix," has an infectiously catchy tune, and promises to be one of the hits of the season. It is written and composed by Ralph Stanley, Leslie Alleyn and Horace Shepherd, the latter named being the recently appointed musical director of the New Gallery, Regent Street.
     The chorus runs:—
Let's all follow Felix;
We can't do better than that.
When he's up to mischief, he licks
Every other crazy cat.
He's bound to make us hold our sides,
And laugh till we grow fat.
So let's all follow Felix,
The dog-gone crazy cat.

[Kinematograph Weekly, 10 December 1925]

The "distinct precedent" being the song Felix Kept on Walking which Pathé had published in 1923 when they were the UK distributors. It was so successful that they published a second song, Here He is Again, in 1924, but it is only Felix Kept on Walking that has stood the test of time. Ralph Stanley and Leslie Alleyn were an established song-writing team, so Horace Shepherd's involvement was perhaps more to do with the arrangement, but he has equal credit on the sheet music and it indicates he had a working relationship with Ideal. The Ideal series is referred to in the article as "Felix (Complete)" because the previous UK distributor, Pathé, had cut the fortnightly Felix releases into two parts in order to include them in their weekly magazine reel, Eve's Review. Pat Sullivan, producer of the Felix cartoons, was annoyed by this mistreatment of his films and when he had left his previous distributor he ensured that Pathé was denied a further distribution deal.

Horace was appointed musical director at New Gallery Kinema in late November. On 5 May 1926 the BBC broadcast 45 minutes of "Horace Shepherd's New Gallery Orchestra, from the Gallery Kinema."

In response to the rise in popularity of community singing, and the Fleischer "bouncing ball" Ko-Ko Song Car-Tune series imported to the UK by Pathé, Ideal produced their own sing-along series, Singsong, with the emphasis on all-British songs. Horace was employed to write the arrangements and would appear to have worked closely with the animator Norman Cobb in structuring the films. The Fleischers had found it difficult to animate the bouncing ball in time to the song: they solved the problem by filming the ball in live action — a white ball on a long black stick, manipulated by Dave Fleischer in time to the music. This then gave them the timing for the rest of the film. Horace Shepherd, in arranging the music for the Ideal series, would have been capable of charting the timing in terms of film frames.

The series was announced in the trade press on the 10 June 1926, and full page advertising began on the 24 June. The text of the first ad reads:

In August three more titles were announced to complete the declared series of twelve films. These were all popular music-hall numbers — Vesta Tilley's The Midnight Son, Ella Shields' Burlington Bertie and Sir Harry Lauder's Stop Y'r Ticklin' Jock. Although the Singsong cartoons seem to have been a success Ideal did not make any further series.

Other film companies offered him work. He wrote the words, music and ochestral scores for a song for the prologue of Mists of the Past for Kinema Expansions between Saturday evening and the following Tuesday morning, a feat reported in The Bioscope 26 August 1926.

In July 1927, having written the accompanying score for Prince of Adventurers (a version of the French film Casanova released in the UK by the European Motion Picture Company, Universal's UK subsidiary) Shepherd joined European's managing director on a tour of provincial trade shows, using a small orchestra to demonstrate the suitability of his scores to provincial cinemas.

On 10 August 1927 he gave a radio talk on Cinema Music, illustrating his points with a live orchestra, and in September he went on another provincial trade show tour for European, conducting his score for War Hawks, the UK release of Universal's The Lone Eagle (about an American airman in a British air-squadron during WWI).

The idea of scores to accompany features was catching on. In 1928, to celebrate Schubert's centenary, American director James A Fitzpatrick remade the 1925 two-reel film from his Famous Music Masters series as a six-reel feature. Ideal released it in the UK as The Melody Master and hired Horace to write the score. The Yorshire Post film reviewer noted:

     "The Melody Master" was shown to the trade by Ideal in London last week, accompanied by a special orchestra and by several vocalists.
     It is not, to my mind, nearly so successful as its shorter predecessor, but a sincere effort has been made to achieve grace and dignity, and there are some vivid moments. A glimpse of three young Austrian noblemen in a box at a theatre seemed to me to stand out with remarkable force—perhaps because there was a welcome note of realism about it. During most of the film the sentiment is laid on with something more than a trowel. Only a steam shovel, I felt, could have done it quite so thoroughly.
     Mr. Horace Shepherd has provided a very effective musical score drawn entirely from Schubert's music, and at theatres where this can be satisfactorily performed the film will probably be successful enough. But Schubert, I am sure, was not quite so soft and melancholy as he is here made out to be. That wonderful flow of melodic invention, so tireless, fresh, and irrepressible, must have demanded in the man a vitality of which very little sign has reached the screen.
[The Yorkshire Post, 17 July 1928]

But just as Horace Shepherd was achieving his goal of scored musical accompaniment for silent films the cinema world was overturned by the arrival of sound.

Methods of syncronising sound recording and moving pictures had been developed from the earliest days: Edison combined his Kinetoscope film booth with his cylinder phonograph as the Kinetophone in 1895 and a sound-on-film system was exhibited in Paris in 1899, but both these were individual viewer booths, a concept which soon gave way to larger screen projection for multiple viewers, which became popular fairground attractions.

Syncronisation was difficult to maintain, the recording quality tended to be poor and before the development of electric amplification it was not possible to produce sufficient volume to fill a large auditorium. The huge popularity of moving pictures meant that cinema developed as a silent medium, with musical accompaniment, and sound remained an expensive and unnecessary side issue for producers.

Around 1912 American inventor Lee De Forest developed his triode vacuum tube into an amplifier, and in the twenties he developed a sound-on-film system, which he first demonstrated in 1923. However, the quality of his demonstration reels was poor, and film producers saw no value in adopting it.

But in 1926 the Western Electric Company promoted a syncronised gramophone system and Warner Brothers decided to use it to add recorded musical scores to their films. They formed the Vitaphone Corporation and their premiere of Don Juan with a synchronised musical score in August 1926 was a great success. They built the first movie sound studio and planned to release all their 1927 films with synchronised musical scoring. This was to be the case with their Al Jolson vehicle The Jazz Singer, a silent drama with a synchronised musical score, including set pieces featuring Jolson singing. This may have just passed by as another scored picture, but it was Jolson's habit when on stage to engage his audience with a few ad lib remarks before bursting into song, and he did this during the recording of his musical scenes. The spoken words were kept in and it was this sudden burst of live dialogue that grabbed the audience and demonstrated the power of the "talkie".

But initially it was the idea of synchronised musical accompaniment that seemed most advantageous. On 28 October 1928 the Weekly Dispathc carried the following story:

TALKIE STUDIO FOR LONDON.

SOUND PICTURES BY RECORD MAKERS.

     After months of secret preparation, the well-known "His Masters' Voice" company are ready to produce sound pictures at their studios at Hayes, Middlesex.
     A new and special synchronising equipment will be used, and it is understood that the "talkies" will be made in co-operation with the American Vitaphone, with the Western Electric Company's patents.
     Vast recording plans are being made, and the company have appointed Mr. Horace Shepherd, the well known writer of film music, to be their musical adviser.
     The Vitaphone system employs discs, and it is understood that experiments are being made with very large discs, each of which will play for 8 or 9 minutes.

Doubtless Horace could see that music on disc would mean that cinemas would no longer need orchestras. On 21 January 1929 the Kinematograph Weekly carried this item:

Blackpool Lease
     It is understood that Horace Shepherd will take over from Harry Hall the lease for a season of the Winter Gardens, Blackpool. Western Electric apparatus is being installed.

Although this item specifies the Blackpool Winter Gardens, a later report states it was the Stockport Winter Gardens. The lease period was for the summer season. This was an attempt by Horace to diversify, and turn a profit from sound films by showing them, but it did not turn out well.

Sound-on-disc had several disadvantages: synchronisation had to be correct at the start of each record and damage to the record could ruin synchronisation. But with the demand there, sound-on-film was rapidly improved, and became the industry standard.

Sound films presented a positive opportunity for Horace during 1929 when British & Foreign Films asked him to score and record a synchronised musical accomaniment for the silent German film The Latin Quarter. Horace discovered he could write dialogue that seemed to fit the lip movements of the actors, and, investing in the project himself, he persuaded British & Foreign to release the film as a completely dubbed "talkie". On 16 October 1929 The Bioscope reported:

     ...perhaps the most remarkable of all British & Foreign's sound productions will be the 100 per cent "talkie" version of "The Latin Quarter," a story of Bohemian life, with Ivan Petrovitch and Carmen Boni starring. There are some remarkable carnival scenes in this production, which was first made as a silent film by the famous producer Augusto Genina. It has been converted into an all-talking, singing and dancing feature, under the direction of Sidney Morgan, the script and dialogue having been written by Horace Shepherd, who is associated with British & Foreign in the presentation of the picture.

In its review of its various aspects of the film the Kinematograph Weekly (13 February 1930) commented:

     Sound Technique.—Musical background is satisfactory, though Bohemian Paris is depicted with too much noise. Incidental sounds at the station are more life-like. Voices come over clearly.

Horace attempted to promote his discovery. In December several papers carried the story of the "young Englishman, Mr Horace Shepherd, of Richmond, Surrey," and his invention. The Dundee Evening Telegraph (31 December 1929) reported:

     It is impossible to record music at the same time as the recording of sound and camera work is done. Mr Shepherd discovered that the sound of the voice could be put on to the lips afterwards at the same time as the music.
     Having got so far he studied definite consonants in the lip movemens, and found that he could co-ordinate lip movements in any number of languages.
     He first tried his method on "the Latin quarter," in which a Briton, a Frenchman, a German and a Hungarian take part. He succeeded in recording music and dialogue all the way through the picture.
     So impressed were a French company with the results Mr Shepherd obtained by his method that they assigned him to produce the first European multi-lingual talkie in four languages—English, French, German, and Italian—and he is going to Paris to begin operations on "The Beauty Prize" in which Louise Brooks is the star.
     Mr Shepherd was so convinced about the practicability of his invention that he spent practically the whole of his small fortune in trying it out in the Latin quarter.
     "My system briefly described," said Mr Shepherd, "rests its foundation on the fact that there are only about six co-ordinated movements on the lips in all languages.
     "Instead of going into four separate productions for a talkie film you need only take one master picture. The rest of the dialogue in the four languages can be recorded afterwards in the studio on that master picture.
     "A modern production that would ordinarily cost £30,000 to produce in the separate languages can be produced for about £10,000."

The second mention of The Latin Quarter is shown as printed in the article, but should have been in inverted commas as it refers to the film, not the idea that Horace spent his fortune in a district of Paris. "The Beauty Prize" was not a success, and does not appear to have been distributed in Britain. Horace was not going to regain his fortune dubbing multi-lingual films.

Horace and Bessie moved to a house in Golders Green, Northwest London, possibly in an attempt to strengthen their relationship.

Horace was determined to make a profit from sound films, and his next attempt was to make a series of sound cartoons with Singsong animator Norman Cobb. He formed a production company, Horace Shepherd Ltd, registered on 14 June 1930 with himself and his wife as directors, and worked with Cobb on a proposed series of twelve films featuring a comic dog named Bingo. Planning to dub the sound in various languages, Horace arranged for a French version of the series to be released by Victoria Films of Paris, and a German distributor agreed to take the series. He contracted with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's UK distribution company to release the English version.

In November 1930 Horace appeared in court, sued for £400 by United Artists Corporation Ltd, the American studio's UK distribution company, over non-payment of a film hired during his season at the Winter Gardens. The Kinematograph Weekly reported:

     Mr. G. M.Hilbery, K.C., for the plaintiffs, said that there was no question in the defence raised as to the sum claimed, but there was a counter-claim that the contract was obtained by alleged misrepresentation.
     Defendant conducted his own case, and explained that he was unable to afford counsel.
     Giving evidence, defendant said he was a musician and specialised in musical accompaniment. Two years ago talkies arrived, and his profession was wiped away. He tried to turn a personal disaster into some sort of profit, and arranged to rent the Winter Gardens in Southport for four months from April, 1929. On September 9 of that year he booked "White Cargo," but owing to the death of the principal artiste before its completion he was left without any film for one of his most important weeks. Under these circumstances he arranged with Mr. Carr to rent the film "Iron Mask," on his representing that it was a talking film. It was, however, only a synchronised musical film. He countered for loss of profits.
     The plaintiffs' reply to the counterclaim was that the terms of the contract signed by defendant had not been departed from, neither had there been any misrepresentation.
     The jury returned a verdict for United Artists Corporation on the claim and counterclaim. His lordship entered judgement accordingly.

The first Bingo cartoon, seemingly just called Bingo, was registered by MGM on 9 December 1930 under the Cinematograph Film Act, 1927, which required distributors to acquire a certain proportion of British-made films. It does not seem to have been shown to the trade or reviewed, but on 20 January 1931 numbers 2, 3 and 4 in the series were shown in MGM's viewing theatre. The Kinematograph Weekly (22 January 1931) reported:

     BINGO CARTOONS. British (U). Syn. 800 feet each. Release date not fixed. –Three of a new series of British cartoons, "Bingo in Balahula," "Bingo Breaks Loose," and "Bingo the Battling Bruiser," were shown. Although they are strongly reminiscent of American efforts and are rather lacking in polish, they are, nevertheless, quite ingenious and have fairly amusing themes. The music and sound effects synchronise well with the action, and help a little to create the desired effect. Useable Quota shorts.

The term "Quota" refers to the aforementioned Act, which also required exhibitors to show a set quota of British films. The Bioscope, in its Box Office Film Reviews section, gave the cartoons closer scrutiny:

     "BINGO IN BALAHULA" (M.-G.-M.) Bingo Cartoons No 2. Length: 800 feet approx. Release Date: Not fixed. Certificate: U. Drawn by Norman Cobb and produced by Horace Shepherd, who was responsible for the music score, these cartoons follow the adventures of Bingo, the pup. The drawings are crude, and the synchronisation of words and music leave a lot to be desired. In No. 2, the pup has a rough time with African natives, but he wins through by catching the king of beasts on a giant "fly" paper. For juvenile audiences.
     "BINGO BREAKS LOOSE" (M.-G.-M.) Bingo Cartoons No 3. Length: 800 feet approx. Release Date: Not fixed. Certificate: U. Bingo breaks out of prison, makes good in a circus and is finally yanked back again. Mildly amusing.
     "BINGO THE BATTLING BRUISER" (M.-G.-M.) Bingo Cartoons No 4. Length: 800 feet approx. Release Date: Not fixed. Certificate: U. To please his lady love, the pup goes into training for a big fight. After considerable repetition he engages in a farcical bout but takes the knock-out from the girl. Limited appeal.

One further cartoon was filmed, but before the soundtracks could be recorded (English, French and German versions had been made for the first four) the company received a court order to cease trading. On 29 April 1931 The Bioscope reported on the liquidation of Horace Shepherd Ltd:

     The statutory first meetings of the creditors and shareholders of Horace Shepherd, Ltd., 171, Wardour Street, W., were held on April 2nd, at the Board of Trade Offices, Carey Street, W.C., before Mr J. Barwick Thompson, Official Receiver. A compulsory winding-up order was made on March 23rd upon a creditor's petition.
[....] The promoter was Horace Shepherd, who, with Mrs. Bessie Annie Shepherd, acted as directors throughout and subscribed in cash for all the issued capital of £100. They also advanced money from time to time to discharge certain liabilities and are present creditors for £656 and £239 respectively.
     Horace Shepherd states that he was approached by Norman Cobb, a cartoon artist, and was asked to finance the production of animated cartoons. Production was commenced immediately afterwards. In November, 1930, Mr. Cobb was employed to supervise the production of 12 silent cartoons and was to be paid £100 on supplying the first cartoon. He was also to receive a salary of £10 per week and a commission of 25 per cent. of the net profits on all but the first cartoon.
     At the date of the winding-up order five silent negatives only had been completed. Sound negatives in English, French and German had also been produced in connection with the first four cartoons. The cost of each cartoon was estimated at £300, but came out at about £500.
The company suffered from lack of funds, payment in respect of the French exploitations being very difficult to obtain. A sum of £400 was now due from that source.
     A draft statement of affairs shows liabilities £2,111, and assets expected to produce £1,417. The failure of the company is attributed to (1) the artist failing to produce the cartoons at the rate of one per monyh, thus increasing the cost of production; (2) failure of the French distributors to account for the money due; (3) inability of the German distributors to carry out the exploitation in Germany owing to a revision of the German law; (4) withdrawal by English distributors of assistance in advancing money against receipts; and (5) the falling through of an arrangement to finance the company.
     The liquidation was left in the hands of the Official Receiver.

In 1935 toymaker Stefan Bing, head of the British arm of the German Trix company, produced a toy projector under his Bing British brand called the Bingoscope, to show Pathéscope 9.5mm home movies. No connection was made to the cartoon Bingo — the toy was marketed with Pathéscope 9.5mm clips of Mickey Mouse cartoons. But the 1940 Pathéscope 9.5mm catalogue includes a silent version of Bingo Breaks Loose retitled Circus Daze (probably taken from the French 35mm negative, which had been titled Bingo au Cirque) and this may have been included in the filmlets packaged for the Bingoscope.

For Horace and Bessie the loss of the company seems to have been the last straw in a failing relationship, and they separated.

In an article for the Weekly Dispatch (22 March 1931) Horace announced the end of film work for musicians:

     The film companies have slowly amassed complete libraries of music recordings—music for every mood, introductions to suit every kind of film. These they use again and again, and there is no more call for musicians.
Mr. Horace Shepherd, who was the best known musical director for cinemas before the talkies, earning £3,000 a year, says that he is now unable to get any commissions at all. Musicians are no longer wanted.

£3,000 in 1927 equates with around £223,000 in 2022. But Horace was, as was his wont, greatly overstating the situation. His experience in scoring and later dubbing music for films should have told him that pre-recorded music was no substitute for music specifically created to fit the onscreen action.

He was still getting work: he scored and recorded the Music for The Great Gay Road (back in the days when "gay" merely meant "carefree") which previewed on 21 October 1931. Moreover, film makers were turning to musical features: producer/director John Harvel formed Amalgamated Films Association in conjunction with a German company to make films in both German and English, and his first production was The Beggar Student, a version of a Viennese operetta, and Horace was employed to arrange the score and record the music. He also wrote some additional songs for the film, which was reportedly shot in 13 days from late October through the first two weeks of November, and shown to the trade on 16 December 1931.

On 2 November 1932 The company Inspiration Films Ltd was registered, with Nora F Holt-Turner and Phyllis Mary Oakes as directors. They were, respectively, Horace's married sister, principal of a business bureau, and his girlfriend. Inspiration Films was effectively Horace's production company, making several series of short films on cultural subjects, starting with Moments with the Immortals (1933), in which he conducts various classical pieces with "the Finest Band ever assembled for Recording", and covering classical music, poetry, great paintings, architecture and the middle-class ideal of "The British way of life", all of which met with a certain degree of success. He also directed a feature, The Music Maker, under the tongue-in-cheek alias "Hugh Kairs". The Kinematograph Weekly (26 March 1936) wrote:

While at times striking a slightly amateurish note, this picture, which introduces classical music by means of a slight, shows ingenuity of approach and gets out of the usual rut of its type, It has pleasing simplicity and sincerity which should appeal strongly to lovers of good music. The orchestral arrangements by Horace Shepherd are excellent.

The offices of Inspiration Films were at 111a Wardour Street. How the building managed to acquire such a prestigious address I don't know, as the building is actually in Berwick Street, with its entrance in Tyler's Court, a passage that links Berwick Street and Wardour Street. The building extends over the passageway, and the name INSPIRATION FILMS was lettered on the lintel facing up the alley towards Wardour street so it could be seen by anyone approaching. Much faded, the lettering could still be made out in 1988, when the building housed the trace-and-paint company First Services, and subsequently animation companies Burmuda Shorts and Ice Pics. It was finally painted over in the late 1990s.

Inspiration Films's productions were mostly distributed by the London offices of the major US studios — M-G-M, First National, RKO-Radio, Columbia and Warners — who needed to have the required quota of British-made films on their books. Horace was anxious that independent producers like himself should not be overlooked by the Board of Trade, who managed the Quota system under the Act, and when, in June 1937, the Board proposed excluding films costing less than £15,000 from the renters' quota (independent short films tended to be between £10,000 - £15,000) he was a lead figure in the attempt to get an agreed policy formulated by a committee of independent producers, renters and exhibitors to put before the Board. He formed and chaired the British Short Film Makers' Society, which sought to promote and protect the interests of the small, low-budget producer.

In 1939, divorced from Bessie, Horace married Phyllis Mary Oakes. Bessie also remarried a couple of years later.

During World War II the government requisitioned the supply of raw film stock for use by the Forces and other departments such as the Ministry of Information. What they did not use was passed on to the Board of Trade to ration out between distributors, for production of release prints, and production companies, on approval of specific scenarios. In August 1943 Horace wrote to the Board of Trade suggesting that, as renters needed to use all their available stock to make prints of the films that had cost them the most, in order to recoup those costs, a special allocation should be made for short films. The Board of Trade did not agree, and the ensuing correspondence was reviewed by "Onlooker" in The Cinema News and Property Gazette 18 August 1943, giving a little insight into the man:

     WENT through the letters yesterday that Horace Shepherd has been exchanging with the Board of Trade about his proposal that shorts should have a supply of stock allocated to them.

     HORACE, I think, has a perfectly good case, but he damages it by a bull-at-a-gate technique that I feel sure must have this psychological result: that Government officials raise a protective barrier round themselves.

     THEY wouldn't, of course, admit that anything but cold logic influenced their decisions: so I'll put it another way—if I were a Government official this technique would influence me. I shouldn't like to be told that I knew nothing about the industry. What officials can't be expected to know, of course, is that this attitude is simply a protective armour that Horace adopts against what he considers to be the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

     MUST say I liked the passage in the Board of Trade letter which said that subject always to quota requirements the Board wished the available stock to be used for those types of film which the public will find most attractive. The italics are mine.

Horace's lack of tact in the face of "outrageous fortune" had been reported before. The story of his response to being summoned for speeding in September 1928 was considered worth repeating for its British readers by the Singapore Free Press (13 October 1928):

MOTORIST'S "PRIVILEGES."

     During the hearing of a summons at Marylebone Police Court against Horace Shepherd, a bachelor of music, of Sutherland-avenue, Maida Vale, for driving a car at 34 miles an hour in Regent's Park, Mr. Hay Halkett, the Magistrate, read a letter addressed to him by Shepherd.
     "I drive over 20 miles an hour," stated the letter, "to avoid being a nuisance to other drivers. This being the first offence, I understand I am entitled to a warning. I therefore expect you to cancel this summons. My two-seater car is taxed at £24 per annum and my petrol 10s. weekly. I am therefore paying for motoring privileges at an extremely high rate."
     Mr. Hay Halkett, remarking: "I wonder who this person is?" fined him 30s. or 16 day's imprisonment.

£24 in 1928 was the equivalent of £1,200 at the end of 2022. 10 shillings (half a pound) would equal £25, and the fine of 30 shillings, £75.

As well as continuing to produce shorts, Horace composed and recorded the score for Hatter's Castle, the 1942 melodrama starring Robert Newton, and directed low-budget features The Flamingo Affair (1948) and A Ray of Sunshine, a revue compered by commedian Ted Ray.

After the War Horace and Phyllis moved to Bramley Road, Southgate, in a house Horace named "Barr Beacon" after the hill in the West Midlands. He continued producing shorts up to his death in hospital on 10 March 1960.

Filmography (animated films only)

Links to Other Sites

Directors in British and Irish Cinema: A Reference Companion by Robert Murphy Google Books preview of the entry for Horace Shepherd, including bibliography and selected filmography.

YouTube: Bingo Chez Malikoko French version of Bingo in Balahula.

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