- William Hinds
William "Will" Hinds (1887 – 1957), stage name Will Hammer, was one of the founders of
Hammer Film Productions .Jeweller
Hinds was a
jeweller fromLondon who, with his brother Frank, owned and ran Hinds Jewellers. Hinds and his brother had different business priorities, and shortly after theFirst World War they divided the business in two.Both businesses were successful. Frank's part grew into the national jeweller
F. Hinds , which has over 100 branches acrossEngland &Wales and is still owned and managed by the Hinds family.Hinds continued to expand his business until he owned 25 jeweller's shops. He diversified into other types of
retail , including operatingbarber s above some of the jewellery shops.Theatrical career
Hinds became involved in
music hall s and thetheatre . His involvement included owning a number of seaside theatres, for example theWest Cliff Theatre inClacton , and performing onstage as acomedian , although it was said that the latter was not his greatest strength.Fact|date=May 2007He also ran summer concert parties in conjunction with
Jack Payne , the famous bandleader, and led a troupe called Will Hammer's Players, taking his stage name of Hammer fromHammersmith , where he lived.Motion picture career
Success with his theatres led Hinds to diversify into the increasingly popular
motion picture industry.In November 1934, Hinds registered his own film company, Hammer Productions Ltd. [cite book|author=Meikle, Denis|title=A History of Horrors - The Rise and Fall of the House of Hammer|publisher=The Scarecrow Press|year=1996|pages=p. 3] [cite book|author=Hearn, Marcus and Barnes, Alan|title=The Hammer Story|publisher=Titan Books|year=1997|pages=p. 8]
Work began almost immediately on the first Hammer film, "The Public Life of Henry the Ninth" at the MGM/ATP studios, with shooting concluding on
2 January ,1935 . During this period Hinds met Spanish émigré Enrique Carreras, a former cinema owner, and on10 May ,1935 they formed a film distribution company Exclusive Films. [cite book|author=Kinsey, Wayne|title=Hammer Films: The Bray Studios Years|publisher=Reynolds & Hearn Ltd|year=2005|id=ISBN 1-903111-44-7|pages=p. 9]A slump in the British film industry forced Hammer Productions Ltd. into
bankruptcy and the company went into liquidation in 1937. Exclusive, however, survived and continued to distribute films made by other companies. [Hearn and Barnes, "op cit", p. 9]James Carreras (son of Enrique) resurrected the company in 1946 as Hammer Film Productions, the film production arm of Exclusive. [Kinsey. "op cit" p. 11.]Cycling interest leads to death
A lifelong interest of Hinds was
cycling . He owned a number of cycle shops.Hinds met his death while riding his bicycle near his
Leatherhead home in 1957, a year after the centenary of the family jewellery business.Family
Hinds's oldest son William "Bill" Hinds continued to run the jewellery shops for many years. These were sold in the 1960s, but Bill continued as a jeweller. His widow eventually sold his remaining shop in
Worthing ,Sussex to the other half of the family, reuniting the jewellery business. It is now a branch of F. Hinds.His second son, Anthony "Tony" Hinds, rejoined Hammer Film Productions in 1946.
References
External links
*imdb name|id=0358512
* [http://www.hammerfilms.com/ Official Hammer website]
* [http://www.fhinds.co.uk F. Hinds website]
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