News on Screen

Harold Jeapes began work as professional jockey in about 1897, at the age of fourteen. In 1899 he joined the film industry, and by 1900 was taking and projecting newsfilm in London. As Harold Jeapes later recalled, he was still working as a jockey at this time, and after a race meeting had often to rush back to London ‘to show newsreels at the Empire, Leicester Square, at night.' In 1902 his brother William Jeapes [qv] launched Jeapes’s Animated Graphic, a programme of newsfilm ‘which was shown at most of the music halls in town,' and which continued for several years. Harold provided newsfilm for Jeapes’s Animated Graphic, and by 1905 he was also directing fiction films for the Graphic Cinematograph Company, which he ran with his brother. In 1907 Harold was still directing fiction films for the Graphic Cinematograph Company, but in 1908 an agreement with Will Barker [qv] resulted in ‘a kind of informal amalgamation’ with the Warwick Trading Company.

Harold seems to have worked for the amalgamated company as a newsfilm cameraman, and in July 1909 he filmed Louis Blériot’s crashed plane after its successful Channel flight. Yet there was apparently a clash of personalities at Warwick, for after only a few months William Jeapes left the firm by agreement, and he did not return until Barker himself left in August 1909, to set up his own company. The ‘informal amalgamation’ was now ended, and, whilst William Jeapes headed the news department at Warwick, Harold opened a London office to re-establish the Graphic Cinematograph Company as an independent concern. Harold continued to run the Graphic Cinematograph Company for some years, although he apparently acted as cameraman for the Warwick Bioscope Chronicle, which his brother launched in July 1910 as a successor to Jeapes’s Animated Graphic.

In June 1911 William Jeapes finally left Warwick, following an argument with the managing director, and in August 1911 he founded the Topical Film Company with Wrench [qv]. In September 1911 William Jeapes launched the Topical Budget, and Harold became its chief cameraman. His earliest accredited footage is ‘KING AT PORTSMOUTH’ in Topical Budget No.76-2 of February 1913. After the outbreak of war in 1914 Harold filmed in England for the Topical Budget, until in April 1917 the War Office Cinematograph Committee arranged for him to be sent to Egypt and Palestine as official kinematographer and stills photographer. Jeapes left for Palestine in May 1917, and in the following month he filmed the arrival of the new commonader of the Egyptian Expeditional Force, General Allenby, in Cairo. Most of the material which Jeapes shot was used for the official newsreel, in stories such as ‘OBSEQUIES OF A SULTAN’ in War Office Official Topical Budget No.325-1 of November 1917.

In December 1917, in conjunction with another official photographer - possibly George Westmoreland - he filmed General Allenby’s entry into Jerusalem, which was released in February 1918 as Pictorial News (Official) No.339-2. Jeapes stayed in Egypt and Palestine until the end of the war, providing stories such as ‘GEN ALLENBY IN CAIRO’ in Pictorial News (Official) No.340-2 of March 1918, ‘ROUT OF THE TURKISH ARMY IN PALESTINE’ in No.370-1 of September 1918, and ‘GENERAL ALLENBY THE VICTORIOUS BRITISH COMMANDER AND STAFF IN THE HOLY CITY’ in No.372-2 of October 1918. His last recorded item was ‘GEN ALLENBY RETURNS TO JERUSALEM’ in Pictorial News No.391-1 of February 1919. Jeapes then returned to London as a cameraman for Topical, and provided footage for ‘GREAT LONDON FIRE’ in Pictorial News No.393-1 of March 1919. In conjunction with Davies [qv], Jeapes covered events at the Versailles peace conference, and on 28 June 1919 he was the only cameraman allowed inside the Hall of Mirrors to film the signing of the peace treaty for ‘INSIDE THE HALL OF MIRRORS’ in No.410-1 of July 1919.

In January 1921 Jeapes went on the Duke of Connaught’s tour of India, filming with the American cameraman Whipple [qv]. The results were shown in the Topical Budget, starting with ‘MARSEILLES - DUKE OF CONNAUGHT’S TOUR’ in No.490-1 of January 1921, and ending with ‘DUKE OF CONNAUGHT’ in No.501-1 of March 1921, and they were also released as the feature-length documentary ‘Across India with the Duke of Connaught’ (1921). Jeapes also covered the Prince of Wales’ tour of India and Japan in 1921 and 1922, but he seems to have left the Topical Film Company by this date, and the Topical Budget carried few stories about the tour. Jeapes made other foreign tours, including further filming in Japan, from which he supplied footage for ‘JAPAN WRECKED BY WORLD’S GREATEST EARTHQUAKE’ in Topical Budget No.628-1 of September 1923. However, by March 1926 he was back in London to join his brother’s new newsreel, the Empire News Bulletin. Jeapes stayed with this newsreel when it became the Universal Talking News in July 1930, and he remained a cameraman with Universal for a few years until retiring to run a pub, The Crooked Billet, in Iver, Buckinghamshire.

Sources

Bioscope, 19/8/1909, p.44, ‘A Go-Ahead Revivified Firm’; 13/6/1912, p.803, ‘Jeapes v. Warwick Trading Company, Limited’: House of Lords Record Office, Beaverbrook Papers, BBK/E/2/4 and BBK/E/2/5: Kine Year Book 1921, p.592, ‘Harold H. Jeapes’: H. C. Jeapes, ‘How News-Films were taken in Pre-War Days,' [Newcastle] Sunday Sun, 17/2/1935, p.16: Cine Technician, April-May 1940, p.25: B. Honri ‘Newsreel Nostalgia,' British Journal of Photography, 1/7/1977, p.549: IWM, Stephen Badsey’s biographical index of British official cameramen, 1914-1918, ‘Harold C. Jeapes’: NFTVA, Luke McKernan’s biographical index of Topical Budget staff.