News on Screen

Stanley Mumford entered the film industry in 1906, working in the darkrooms of the Williamson Film Company at Hove. In 1908 he joined the studios of the Warwick Trading Company in Ealing, where he worked as a cameraman under Will Barker [qv]. In 1909 Barker split from the Warwick Trading Company to form his own company, Barker Motion Photography Limited, and Mumford transferred to the new company along with the Ealing studios. Mumford acted as cameraman on a number of Barker productions, including ‘Henry VIII’ (1911), and ‘Jane Shore’ (1915) - on which he worked with Leslie Eveleigh and Oscar Bovill [qv]. He also took a number of topical films for Barker, including coverage of the 1913 Derby. In May 1916 Mumford left Barker’s, apparently to serve in the army, but he returned to the film industry at the close of the war in 1918. Mumford did some work for the Edison company, apparently at this date, but by 1920 was working for Progress Films as the resident cameraman at their Shoreham studios. He filmed a large number of their productions, including ‘Two Little Wooden Shoes’ (1920), ‘By Berwen’s Banks’ (1920), ‘Little Dorritt’ (1920), ‘A Man’s Shadow’ (1920), and ‘The Children of Gibeon’ (1920).

In 1923 Mumford joined British Pictorial Productions as a studio cameraman, and after this company launched the Empire News Bulletin in May 1926, he apparently returned to topical work as one of its six staff cameramen based in London. However, at the same time he was being credited as working freelance for the Pathe Gazette, being in the camera teams that filmed ‘THE GRAND NATIONAL, 1927’ for No.1384 in March 1927, and ‘LONDON’S OWN’ for No.1591 in March 1929. Indeed, his only surviving Empire News Bulletin credit is for ‘BEAUTY GIRLS’ in No.401 of March 1930. When in July 1930 the Empire News Bulletin was in turn subsumed within the Universal Talking News it seems that Mumford transferred to the new title. Mumford remained with Universal after the outbreak of war in September 1939, and in January 1941 he and Wilson [qv] covered a battle demonstration with live ammunition, a rota story which appeared as ‘PREPARING FOR INVASION’ in Universal News No.1099. In June 1941 Mumford filmed ‘MR BEVIN OPENS REST HOME FOR BERMONDSEY’S WAR WORKERS’ for Universal News No.1142. In September 1945 Mumford filmed a story on ‘RADAR - The story of the ‘all-seeing eye’' for Universal News No.1587 of October 1945.

Sources

Kine Year Book 1921, p.593: BFI Library, Stanley Mumford Collection, Item 1 ‘Forty Years Behind a Movie Camera’ by S. Mumford: Cine Cameraman, April-May 1940, p.25: BUFVC, British Paramount News files, Issue Number 1034 (27/1/1941), Number 1077 (S.J. Mumford rota dopesheet, 21/6/1941), Number 1522 (Mumford’s rota dopesheet, 20/9/1945): L. Pontecorvo ‘The British Newsreel Companies: Staffing 1910-1945,' in J. Ballantyne (ed) ‘Researcher’s Guide to British Newsreels’ (BUFVC, 1983), p.86.