Joan Morgan

Shoreham Beach played a pioneering role in the development of the film industry.

In 1914 Francis Lyndhurst formed the Sunny South Film Company with comedians Will Evans, George Graves and Arthur Conquest. In their first year they made four films ‘Building A Chicken House’, ‘The Jockey’, ‘Harnessing A Horse’ and ‘The Showman’s Dream’. In 1915, Francis Lyndhurst had a glasshouse studio built on a site close to The Church Of The Good Shepherd.

The Progress Film Company took over the site in 1919 and up to 1922, made a total of seventeen films there. Sidney Morgan, also gave Shoreham its first film star, his daughter Joan Morgan. She was born in Forest Hill, South East London and went to school in Richmond upon Thames.

Joan Morgan was only her teens when she began staring in her father’s films at Shoreham, though she had previously been a child actress. Her stage debut was at London’s Apollo Theatre in ‘A Pierrot’s Christmas’. She continued to juggle theatre and film acting throughout the 1920s.

Joan Morgan’s first film was ‘The Cup Final Mystery’ and was made in 1913. In 1917 Joan Morgan played Ellen Terry’s granddaughter in the film ‘Her Greatest Performance’. She can be seen in ‘A Lowland Cinderella’ (made in 1921) which was shot around Steyning, and is still sometimes shown locally today. It is the only one of her films to exist as a complete, intact copy. She also took the lead in a silent version of ‘Dickens’ ‘Little Dorrit’, and starred in thirty plus movies including: ‘The Children Of Gideon’, ‘Sweet and Twenty’, ‘Two Little Wooden Shoes’, ‘Lady Noggs’ ‘The Scarlet Wooing’, ‘The Lilac Sunbonnet’ and ‘Fires Of Innocence’.

In 1922 Sidney and Joan Morgan made an adaptation of H Rider Haggard’s ‘Swallow’ on location in South Africa, following up with ‘Shadow Of Egypt’ the next year, where Joan thoroughly enjoyed being on location. When her parents split up in 1926, she lived with her mother but was to make two final films with her father, ‘A Window in Piccadilly’ (1928) and ‘Her Reputation’ her first talking picture in 1931.

In the 1920s, silent films were also beginning to be made in Hollywood. Joan Morgan was offered a contract by a studio there but stayed in the UK on her father’s wishes.

‘Not being allowed to go was my one major regret,’ she said later. Sidney Morgan and his production company were unable to compete with the large American studios.

From 1929 Joan Morgan switched to writing novels, plays and film and TV scripts. Her novels were written under both her own name and the pen names Iris North and Joan Wentworth Wood. Her play ‘This Was A Woman’ had a run in the West End before being adapted into a feature film. Joan Morgan’s novel ‘The Hanging Wood’ (1950) was adapted for the ‘A Question Of Guilt’ TV series in 1977.

Joan Morgan’s first feature film as a writer ‘Contraband Love was a 1931 crime thriller. Directed by her father it was shot at Elstree and on location in Cornwall. In 1932 her war film the ‘The Flag Lieutenant’ starred Anna Neagle and was based on a play by William Price Drury. A versatile writer her ten produced films also included comedies and a musical. She died in Henley-onThames in Oxfordshire in 2004

Refs:Wikipedia;Bungalow Town by Neb Worthers; The Guardian