‘I felt a sickening pain’: how the ‘first true Hitchcock movie’ almost killed its star

December 1925 was a busy month for June. A fixture of the West End stage since childhood, her surname, Tripp, had been excised by the impresario Charles B Cochran because it “sounds a bit comical for a dancer”. She spent the days rehearsing for a musical, Kid Boots, the evenings starring in another, Mercenary Mary, and then would “rush to the studio at midnight”, to act in a horse-racing short film opposite the fading American film star Carlyle Blackwell. The studio was at Poole Street, Islington, in north London, built five years earlier by Paramount but now rented out, most often to a British company, Gainsborough, run by Michael Balcon.

The short, Riding for a King, starred the celebrated jockey and had its premiere in January 1926, with June in attendance. Two days later, she collapsed during, who offered film work. “No dancing required. You will act beautifully and we shall have fun.”