News on Screen

Ben Benson was employed as a news cameraman before the outbreak of war in 1914, when he volunteered for service in the army. Benson returned to news filming after the war, when he travelled to Portugal and filmed in Persia, probably for McDowell’s Commercial Films, for whom Benson was certainly working by November 1919. By 1923 Benson was employed on the Topical Budget, where he filmed only irregularly and was apparently some kind of editorial assistant. He was still with Topical Budget in 1926, and Benson is known to have filmed Austen Chamberlain in Downing Street in the same year, possibly for this company. He may have remained with Topical until the closure of the Topical Budget in 1931.

Sources

Kine Year Book 1921, p.590, ‘M.J. Benson’: Cine Technician, April/May 1940, p.25: J. Ballantyne (ed) ‘Researcher’s Guide to British Newsreels: Vol.II’ (1988) (cover photograph), and ‘Researcher’s Guide to British Newsreels: Vol.III’ (1993), p.73, ‘Newsreel Staff’: NFTVA, Luke McKernan’s biographical index of Topical Budget staff.