Helen Wiggins

Helen Wiggins was a cutter and editor for British films from the 1920s through to the 1970s, working in newsreels, animation films, documentaries, and fiction films. Her silent era work is not as well documented as her sound era output, but it was then that she learned her trade by working in film laboratories, an area for which women’s contributions are little known and few had positions of seniority such that she enjoyed. This profile extends into the sound era in order to give greater context to the work in which she was to excel for over fifty years.

She was born Ellen Matilda Wiggins in Islington, London, on February 22, 1901, the eldest of the three children of Jack and Matilda (née Caveney) Wiggins. She usually went by the name Nellie, although when she formed a company in her own name in the 1940s, she adapted her first name to Helen and was known as that professionally thereafter. Her father was a pioneering member of the film industry, having joined the British Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1897 as a camera operator and darkroom technician. He became chief of photographic staff at the Wrench Film Company, followed by equivalent positions at the Warwick Trading Company and the Topical Film Company (“Jack Wiggins”). His nineteen-year-old daughter followed him into the profession, starting as a “learner” at the film printers Film Laboratories Limited in 1920 (Sullivan 98).

According to census records, by 1921 Helen had joined her father at Topical, producers of the Topical Budget newsreel. Topical Budget was one of the three leading newsreels in Britain at that time, competing with Gaumont Graphic and Pathé Gazette. Her younger brother Sidney also worked at Topical from 1921-24 (“Sidney J. Wiggins”). Although nothing is known specifically about Helen’s time with Topical, we know something of its printing operations. Processing of the newsreel took place at the company’s offices at 76-78 Wardour Street, in London’s film heartland, with up to 200 copies produced twice-weekly for rapid distribution across the country (McKernan, Topical Budget 88). It was a frantic, relentless business. There were around fifteen “editorial” staff members, comprising joiners, negative cutters, and repairers, such positions often being held by women. It is likely, given her later career, that, by this time, Wiggins had graduated to negative cutter. Each newsreel issue ran for some five minutes and usually comprised five stories. Once a film had been delivered to the dark room by one of the newsreel camera operators, it was wound on wooden or pin frames, developed, rinsed, washed, and dried and then titles were added (such was the rate at which a newsreel was put together that the news editor would often have the negative screened, selecting sections and writing titles at that stage). The negative was then rejoined, after which the exposed positive went through the same process. Color tinting would be added by dipping the positive into a bath of dye before drying (McKernan, Topical Budget 98).

The only time Topical’s women workers came to public notice was following a fire in the labs at Wardour Street on October 23, 1924. The nitrate film stock used at this time was highly flammable and laboratory operations were inherently dangerous. The fire originated in a tank of celluloid and led to an explosion that blew out windows and set a car on fire across the street. The stairs caught fire and a number of women had to jump out of first floor windows (McKernan, Topical Budget 138). Newspaper reports give us the names of those injured: Gladys Irene Botty, Maud Mary Sharpen, and Doris Dainty, while Julia Ginsberg subsequently died of her injuries (McKernan, “Topical Budget Name Index”). Wiggins was not named in any such reports, but her father suffered cuts to his hands (“Film Blaze”).

In 1926, Wiggins and her father followed Topical’s founder William Jeapes when he set up a new newsreel, Empire News Bulletin. Her career began to flourish. In 1930, Empire News Bulletin was succeeded by a sound version, Universal Talking News, though the silent reel continued in parallel until January 1933. It was backed by the American studio Universal, with Wiggins promoted to chief film editor (as opposed to the news editor, Cecil Snape, who selected the content) (“Helen Wiggins”). She was negative cutter, working for her father, on the ill-fated National News, a pioneering color newsreel launched in 1937 and almost immediately withdrawn from release owing to technical issues (Ballantyne 38-39). She was also film editor for Point of View, an innovative news magazine made by Spectator Short Films, offering pro and con arguments on issues of the day, which ran for a short while in 1939 (Easen 286).

In 1940, Wiggins left Universal to be appointed chief film editor for Pathé Gazette (from 1946 onward, Pathé News), the UK’s leading newsreel. She worked there throughout the Second World War, when newsreels were at their peak of popularity and social importance. She appears briefly as one of the Pathé staff pretending to be members of the public expressing their views on the coming general election in “Election Prelude” for Pathé News 45/52, on June 28, 1945 (“Helen Wiggins”).

In 1948, she left Pathé to go freelance, forming Helen Wiggins Films Limited, located at 145 Wardour Street. It produced promotional and advertising films and offered editorial services (Noble 352). In particular it took on many government contracts, including the Central Office of Information and the armed forces. She was the editor for most productions and the director of some. She was also editor on a number of British feature films in the 1950s and 1960s, including popular comedies starring Ronald Shiner, such as Worm’s Eye View (1951), Little Big Shot (1952), and Reluctant Heroes (1952), and two early Peter Sellers titles, the short Insomnia is Good for You (1957) and Up the Creek (1958). Wiggins also edited Britain’s first nudist feature, Nudist Paradise (1959).

In 1962, she married Chris Millett, a scriptwriter for National Interest Picture Productions, producers of animated films, commercials, and training films for the armed forces. Wiggins took over production of the company’s training films and other government commissions in 1965. Helen Wiggins Films continued until 1974, when it went into voluntary liquidation (Hale). Wiggins and her husband had moved to Worthing in Sussex in 1967 and she died there on February 12, 1978.

Wiggins worked with distinction in the unglamorous areas of the British film industry. In the resolutely male environment of newsreels, she was a shining exception (Easen 286) and was able to transition smoothly into the sound era unlike many women working above-the-line. Although frustratingly little is known about her pivotal silent film career, a great many of the films on which she worked during this period have survived. Almost all of the Topical Budget newsreels for 1921-1925 are held at the British Film Institute, over 2,500 stories, all of which would have passed through her hands; and a smaller number of Empire News Bulletin stories from 1926-1933 survive at the BFI and Thomson Reuters. Indeed, it could be argued that she has a more extensive filmography and that more of her film work exists than for anyone else on the Women Film Pioneers Project. Moreover, much of it is still in regular use in education, broadcast, and on YouTube. Her work lives on, demonstrating the enduring vitality and value of the silent film.