WOULD-BE “STARS”

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 November 1923, Page 2

WOULD-BE “STARS”

CINEMA “SCHOOL” CASE. At Marylebone the hearing was resumed of a isummons against Eleanor Gertrude Wells, of Hampstead, for carrying on an unlicensed employment agency at 14, Baker street, London, W. It was alleged that fees 'were taken from girls on promises of training and employment as cinema actresses. Mr. Huxtable, defending, said a woman who was a forger and a thief, and who obtained money in all directions by false pretences, approached Mrs. Wells in October, 1922, in connection with a company called Empire Studios and Kinema Photography Limited. She said she was raising the venture to the extent of that amount. There never was such a company, but Mrs. Wells was induced to pay altogether £1670, with the result that she was not destitute.

In February this fraudulent creature suggested to Mrs. Wells that a school for cinema training should be created in connection with the company, and on February 14, Mrs. Wells took the premises in Baker Street on behalf of the company. When she discovered how she had been swindled, she saw the pupils and told them everything. Mr. Chancellor said it was nothing but a swindling agency. Mrs. Wells might have been swindled by the “adventuress in the background,” but she lent her own name in the taking of the premises and the getting of the pupils. He fined her £l5, with £lO costs.