Arthur Melbourne-Cooper - Audrey Wadowska

Audrey Wadowska

Arthur Melbourne-Cooper retired in 1940 and moved to Coton near Cambridge. Here, in 1961, he died. His wife died the next year. They are buried in the cemetery of St Peter's Church, Coton. Though he is almost forgotten today, he lived long enough to give testimony of those very first years of film history and of his own career in a number of interviews of which 15 were recorded on 17 reel-to-reel tapes.
In 1996, the city of St Albans with the British Film Institute, to celebrate 100 years of British films, erected a plaque on a flat building at the corner of Alma Road and London Road, commemorating that Cooper once had on this spot his Alpha Cinematograph Works.
The above information comes from sources, much of which was collected by Cooper's eldest daughter Audrey Wadowska (1909-1982) during a 25-year research about her father's career. The following lists are a selection of the most important sources and references. A complete list of sources, references and literature is published by Tjitte de Vries in Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, A Documentation of Sources, Frankfurt am Main 2004.