Learning on ScreenRobert Humfrey
Profile
- Dates
- 1909-1927
- Role
- Cameraman
- Newsreels / Cinemagazines
- War Office Official Topical Budget; PatheGazette
- Search
- Search for all stories where Robert Humfrey is credited
- Notes
- Humfrey’s name was also given as ‘Humphrey,' but he does not seem to have been the ‘R. Humphrey’ of the Topical News Agency who gave a lecture on photography in 1911 [Amateur Photographer, 3/4/1911, p.334]. He was possibly the ‘Humphreys’/'Humphries’ who filmed freelance for the Topical Budget in 1920 and 1921, but that was more probably Jimmy Humphries.
Career
Robert Humfrey entered the film industry in about 1909, and by March 1910 was a cameraman for Charles Urban’s Kineto Company, helping to film the Grand National and to develop the footage on the train back to London. In May 1911 Humfrey used a Kinemacolor camera silenced ‘with a covering of felt and black leather’ to film the unveiling of the Victoria Memorial for Urban. It seems that he later joined the staff of the Topical Budget, and in November 1918 ‘Mr. Humphrey’ of the Topical Film Company was noted as one of the four newsreel cameramen who covered the surrender of the German Fleet, filming from a destroyer with Taylor [qv]. He seems afterwards to have worked freelance for Pathe, as ‘Humfrey’ was one of the camera team that filmed ‘THE GRAND NATIONAL’ for Pathe Gazette No.1384 of March 1927.
Sources
Kinematograph Weekly, 28/11/1918, p.66, ‘Trade and General News’: R. Humfrey ‘Careers in the Films’ (1938), pp.5, 22-7, 91-2.
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