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National Library of Scotland

Biography of 'IRVINE, Malcolm'

Inventor and film producer

Irvine was a qualified pharmacist, a botanist and a welder. During the First World War Irvine devised a method of electric welding and set up the Double Arc Welding Co Ltd for the production of electric welding rods. In 1928 Scottish Film Productions was founded by Irvine, later joined by Stanley L. Russell. The studios were at 26 India Street Glasgow and financed by the welding business. They had facilities for making, processing, developing, printing and editing film.

The aim of Scottish Films was to ‘put Scotland on the screen so that its history, its beauty and its life and industry can be seen in all corners of the world’. Irvine invented the Albion Truphonic Sound System on which the company’s talking pictures were recorded. Irvine owned an island in Loch Lomond, Inchcruin, which he described as the island studio of Scottish Films.

He is perhaps best remembered for his notorious footage - the first film evidence of the Loch Ness monster - which was sold to Pathe in 1934. He died in 1945.

Researcher: Carolyn Young

Films associated with 'COCOZZA, Enrico'

Title Release date Film reference Sound Colour Date film record added Date video added Asc Desc
	DUNDEE [1061] Add to my films The city of Dundee and its industries; jute, jam manufacturing and journalism. [Premiered at a meeting of the British Association in Dundee, September 1939, the screening was abandoned midway owing to the declaration of war].		1939 sound bw
	HIGHLAND HOSPITALITY [0362] Add to my films Promotional film for Allied Hotels. We follow a coach tour round the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland taking in Oban, Iona, Inverness, Aberdeen and Glencoe.		1939 sound bw
	RIVER CLYDE - A SURVEY OF SCOTLAND'S GREATEST RIVER [0377] Add to my films The River Clyde is traced from its source down to the Firth of Clyde, with a review of its industrial life from Glasgow to Dumbarton.	Onsite only	1939 sound bw
	THINGS THAT HAPPEN NO. 1 [0373] Add to my films First in a series of monthly film reviews of Scotland. Film reconstructs a bank robbery, looks at the Borzoi dog, shoe manufacture at Saxone in Kilmarnock, latest hairdressing styles and the "first sighting" of the Loch Ness Monster!		1936 sound bw