Hamburg-born producer and flamboyant studio head Julius Hagen began
his career in his father's cigar business, and was involved in theatrical
productions before entering the film industry with Ruffells', the rental
firm, and later as UK manager for Universal. In 1919, he co-founded
the distributors W&F Film Service; and in 1923 he became manager
of the British and Colonial Studios. Hagen was an energetic and innovative
producer of bilingual pictures and in 1927 formed the W&P Film Company,
setting up production at the old St. Margaret's Studios; now named Twickenham
Film Studios under the leadership of Hagen, Leslie Hiscott and Henry
Edwards. Hagen was immediately faced with a major problem with the arrival
of "the talkies". In order to equip his new studio with the
expensive RCA equipment required, he used the studio at night and leased
it to others during the day.
In 1928 he founded the Strand Film Company to specialise in 'Quota
Quickies' including the Bernard Vorhaus
directed The Ghost
Camera (1933) and The
Last Journey (1936). Hagen won a contract with Warner Bros in 1929
which proved very successful and allowed Twickenham Film Studios to
develop a reputation for both quality and quantity. Then in 1935 he
created JH Productions to produce more lavish films such as Broken Blossoms
(1936), Spy of Napoleon (1936) and Juggernaut (1936). Nicknamed the
Tsar of Twickenham, in late 1935 he bought Consolidated Studios at Elstree
to fortify his Twickenham resources for making 'quota quickies'. Hagen
also acquires the newly built Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, London.
The announcement that the receivers had been called in was made in January
1937. In 1938, Hagen declared bankruptcy and died two years later, a
broken man, with half-a-million pounds in debts.
