Cinesound Studios in the 1930s and ‘40s — Striving for a Home-Grown Australian Cinema in the Early Sound Era

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Cinema, Heritage & Conservation, Leisure activities, Local history, Memorabilia, Performing arts, Popular Culture, Travel

Cinesound is a name that resonates brightly in the history of Australia’s film industry – it harks back to a time when the indigenous industry still had a place of some significance in the pecking order of world cinema. The establishment of Cinesound Studios (in 1931) to make talking motion pictures, evolved out of a group of movie exhibiting companies (including Australasian Films and Union Theatres) which had coalesced into Greater Union Theatres in the Twenties.

In 1925 Australasian Films purchased a roller skating rink at 65 Ebley Street, Bondi Junction, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. Australasian converted part of the premises into a film studio but maintained the skating rink as an ongoing commercial concern to help finance the studios’ film production (by day a film studio, by night a skating rink) [‘Cinesound: From roller rink to sound stage’, (Waverley Library), www.waverley.nsw.gov.au].

# 1 Studios Bondi Junction ⬇

Greater Union (henceforth GUT) was involved in all forms of the movie business – production, distribution and exhibition. The Bondi Studios made a few silent films in the late 1920s, like The Adorable Outcast and most notably The Term of His Natural Life which cost £60,000 and bombed badly at the box office [‘Cinesound Productions’, Sydney Morning Herald, 06-Aug-1934 (Trove).

Stuart F Doyle, GUT managing director, appointed former film publicist Ken G Hall as general manager of the newly formed Cinesound Productions. Two more Cinesound studio locations were opened, one at nearby Rushcutters Bay and the other at St Kilda (in Melbourne). Over an eight-year period (1932-40), with Hall at the helm as producer-director, Cinesound produced 17 feature films (16 of which were directed by Hall). The first of the sequence, On Our Selection, revolved round the adventures of one of Australian cinema’s most popular characters, Dad Rudd and his family. The film, benefiting from a new sound-recording system invented in Tasmania, was a box office triumph for Cinesound, earning £46,000 in Australia and New Zealand by the end of 1933, providing a tremendous fillip for the fledgling studios [Andrew Pike & Ross Cooper, Australian Film 1900-1977: A Guide to Feature Film Production, (1998)].

Studios # 1 at Bondi Junction※ provided a large interior space for film production, over 20,000 square feet…with more than 100 craftsmen on the staff, the facility was equipped to complete “all stages of production, processing and sound recording, in the preparation of topical, scenic, educational, industrial, and microscopic films” [SMH, 06-Aug-1934, loc.cit.]. Some newspapers of the day erroneously referred to the main studios as being #3 and the location as Waverley (an adjoining suburb of Bondi Junction).

Cinesound and Hall exploited On Our Selection’s popularity with a series of sequels, Grandad Rudd, Dad and Dave Come to Town and Dad Rudd, MP. Of these the ‘Dad and Dave’ entry especially proved a hit, matching the profitability of the original movie.

↗ Ken G Hall (centre) with American actress Helen Twelvetrees during filming of ‘Thoroughbred’ (photo: Mitchell Library)

Sydney’s ‘Little Hollywood’
While Ken G Hall’s cinematic canvas was unmistakably Australian (only one of the Cinesound movies was not set in Australia), his approach to film-making saw Hollywood clearly as the model. With the characteristic “spirit of a showman”✺, Hall wanted to shape Cinesound Studios in the Hollywood mould⊡…to create a “Little Hollywood” with a star system, hyped-up promotion of the studios’ movies, etc. [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.].

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↗ Twelvetrees outside Cinesound Studios

FT and Efftee Studios
Sydney-based Cinesound’s domestic rival in the film-making caper was Melbourne’s Efftee Studios, started by theatrical entrepreneur Frank W Thring (FT) in 1930. Thring produced the first commercially-viable sound feature-length film in Australia, Diggers (1931) in collaboration with Pat Hanna. Efftee, unlike Cinesound though, had to import the optical sound system for its movies from the USA. [‘Efftee Studios’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Other notable Efftee films of the Thirties include an adaption of CJ Dennis’ The Sentimental Bloke to the screen, and several George Wallace vehicles, His Royal Highness, Harmony Row and A Ticket in Tatts. Thring’s premature death in 1935 put paid to Efftee Studios’ productions.

 

⬆️ Australian cinema’s long tradition of Bushranger flicks beginning with the original 1906 feature film

The outlawing of bushranger films  
A 1930s Cinesound project for a film based on the popular Australian novel, Robbery Under Arms was quashed as it would have transgressed the standing prohibition by the NSW government (in force since 1912), banning movies about bushrangers✪ [‘Bonuses for Films’, Sydney Morning Herald, 20-Oct-1934 (Trove); ‘Bushranger ban’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Shirley Ann Richards: Cinesound’s contract female star  
In accordance with Ken G Hall’s star-making approach, he fostered the career of actress Shirley Ann Richards, starring her in several of his films (It Isn’t Done, Tall Timbers, Lovers and Luggers and Dad and Dave Come to Town). Richards, Cinesound’s only star under long-term contract, later emigrated to America and had a reasonably high profile Hollywood career (under the name Ann Richards).

The Kellaway brothers and Cinesound  
Alec Kellaway and his more famous brother Cecil were feature players for Hall and Cinesound. Alec was a regular performer, appearing in a raft of the studio’s movies including The Broken Melody, Mr Chedworth Steps Out and several of the Dad Rudd series. South African-born Cecil Kellaway started his acting career on the Australian stage, establishing himself first as a top Australian theatre star before appearing in two Cinesound films where his performances opened studio doors in Hollywood for him…Kellaway subsequently carved out a career as a major character actor in numerous US films.

George Wallace, Aussie “king of comedy”  
In addition to being a prominent actor in Efftee Studios musical-comedies, George Wallace was Ken G Hall’s “go-to” favourite comic performer, starring in two late 1930s Cinesound films directed by Hall – Let George Do It and Gone to the Dogs.With the outbreak of world war Cinesound called a halt on feature film production. During the war years the studios directed all energies into making newsreels, initially covering the war against Japan and beyond that on all aspects of Australiana.

Newsreel rivalry: Cinesound Vs Movietone: the focus on newsreels by Cinesound was not a novel innovation. From its outset Cinesound produced newsreels – short documentary films containing news stories and items of topical interest – in competition with the rival Fox Movietone company. The two newsreels differed in content, Cinesound concentrated on Australian only topics while Movietone covered a mix of international and national news✤.
Newsreels in Australia prior to 1956 occupied a unique place in media and communications. Before the introduction of television, cinema-goers’ exposure to newsreels (part of the “warm-up” for the main feature) were the only images Australians saw of their land – the footage of elections, natural disasters and other such events [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.]. Thus, newsreels like the Cinesound Review, with its distinctive red kangaroo symbol, were an important source of news and current affairs, and were an integral part of the cinema program [‘Cinesound Movietone Australian Newsreels’, (ASO) (Poppy De Souza), www.aso.gov.au]✙. According to Anthony Buckley, the newsreels reflected Ken G Hall’s “pride and spirited nationalism” [Buckley, A, ‘Obituary: Ken G. Hall’, The Independent (London), 17-Feb-1994].

The studios site post-Cinesound
In 1951 Cinesound sold off the Ebley Street building which became a factory manufacturing American soft drink. However, between 1956 and 1973 the building reverted to the world of visual communications, housing various film and television production companies including Ajax Films. Following that, it housed a furniture retailer. Today it is the home of a Spotlight store (fabrics and home interiors) [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.].

Ken G Hall in his autobiography contended that Cinesound Productions never lost money on any feature films. Some did very well – crime drama The Silence of Dean Maitland, for instance, for an outlay of £10,000 returned takings of more than £70,000 in Australia and the UK [Graham Shirley & Brian Adams, Australian Cinema: The First Eighty Years, (1989)]. One Cinesound movie however, strictly-speaking, probably did lose money…Roy Rene’s single venture into celluloid, Strike Me Lucky, in which ‘Mo’s’ humour, robbed of it’s spontaneity in live performance didn’t translate well to the big screen and was reflected in negative critical reviews and at the box office [Film Review: ‘Strike Me Lucky’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19-Nov-1934 (Trove)]. Despite Hall’s faith in the studios’ films, from 1937 there was a decline in box office returns (prompting GUT head Doyle to resign). Another (external) factor affecting Cinesound profitability occurred in 1938 with the passing of the Cinematograph Films Act in the UK…under this legislation Australian films no longer counted as local, their removal from the British quota meant a loss of market for Cinesound and other Australian movie producers [Waverley Lib, loc.cit.].

The war resulted in a temporary halt to Cinesound feature films, however the studios made only one more (postwar) feature film, Smithy, a biopic about pioneering aviator Charles Kingsford Smith in 1946. Another blow to Cinesound’s future prospects at this time was a move by Rank Organisation – the British film giant purchased a controlling interest in Greater Union, preferring to use it to exhibit its own UK films in Australia [‘The first wave of Australian feature film production FROM EARLY PROMISE TO FADING HOPES’, http://afcarchive.screenaustralia.gov.au].

⬆️ ‘Smithy’ star Ron Randell later pursued a career in Hollywood

Stuart Doyle’s contribution  
WWII took all the impetus out of the Australian industry, there was a shortage of performers and crew due to recruitment and conscription. Stock available for film was also in short supply, what there was directed first and foremost to making propaganda and news films in support of the allies’ side. More particular to Cinesound’s challenges, the loss of MD Stuart Doyle before the war was especially telling. Film production is high cost (especially sound which proved massively more expensive) and high risk…Hall’s ability to pursue a good number of projects in the Thirties, depended on Doyle’s willingness to take a risk with Cinesound. When he departed, he was replaced by a “risk-adverse accountant who favoured real estate over film production” [ibid.].

Footnote: Cinesound Talent School  
The Cinesound people eventually established its own talent school for young actors. Run by George Cross and Alec Kellaway (a regular player in Cinesound movies)…offering training in “deportment, enunciation, miming, microphone technique and limbering”✥. By 1940 the school had had over 200 students including Grant Taylor, later a prominent actor in Australian movies and TV dramas [‘Cinesound Talent School, SMH, 02-Feb-1939, (Trove); Cinesound Productions’, Wiki, op.cit.].

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※ In 2002 GUT merged with Village Roadshow, these days Greater Union picture theatres go under the name ‘Event Cinemas’

✺ a trait shared by Greater Union boss Doyle
⊡ the company even closed down production at Bondi for several months in 1935 to let Hall go off to Hollywood to study American film techniques

✪ the state authorities felt that the popularity of the bushranger film genre would exert an ‘unhealthy’ influence on Australians, especially on the young, and make them more resistant to authority

✤ the two newsreel providers merged in 1970, forming the Australian Movie Magazine which folded in 1975

✙ the 1978 film drama Newsfront is a fictionalised account of newsreel makers in Australia between the late Forties and mid Fifties which includes actual newsreel footage from the period

✥ school director Kellaway’s brief was teaching dramatics and mic technique

Ealing’s Cinematic Voyage – West London W3 to Pagewood NSW: Studios in the Sand Hills of South Sydney

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Cinema, Local history, Media & Communications, Popular Culture

Ealing is a name synonymous with British film comedy, Ealing comedies of the late 1940s through the 1950s…high quality, well written and acted feature films such as Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Lavender Hill Mob, The Man in the White Suit and The Ladykillers✲.

Ealing’s film association with Australia is less well known. It’s genesis lay with Ealing’s movie mogul and powerful postwar image-maker, Michael Balcon. With the Second World War still raging, Balcon despatched documentary film director Harry Watt to Australia to explore its filmable story possibilities. Balcon was looking to make films which reflected “the strength, diversity and stoicism of the (British) Commonwealth” [‘Ealing Studios in Australia: An Introduction ‘, (Stephen Morgan) (2012), www.thefarparadise.wordpress.com].

Pagewood before Ealing …
Once Ealing committed to Australia as a film production location, it sought out appropriate studios for projects, which it found in the southern Sydney suburb of Pagewood. These studios in fact were already operating as a film production unit…constructed in 1935 for National Studios❄ in anticipation of an expansion of the local film industry as a result of the Film Quota Act (1936) which imposed a minimum domestic quota on the level of film distribution in New South Wales❂. The studios’ first production was Charles Chauvel’s Uncivilised and other significant, early Australian movies were shot there – including Columbia’s “Australian Western” Rangle River (1936) and Ken G Hall’s Dad Rudd, MP (1940) – but a pattern of closures of National Studios (1937-40, 1942-45) hampered its efforts to establish itself as a film production unit [Sydney Morning Herald, 27-May-1936 (Trove)].

In 1946 Harry Watt fulfilled the task set him by Studio head Balcon by writing and directing the first feature for Ealing “down under”. The Overlanders, the story of an epic cattle drive across the continent, made Chips Rafferty an international star and an Australian screen icon.

The success of The Overlanders prompted Ealing to establish a film base in Australia. At the beginning of 1949 it acquired the struggling Pagewood studios❇. Ealing took over a “shambles of a place” (rundown through neglect and misuse by both the Australian and US armies during WWII occupancy), but nonetheless it invested considerable capital into the property to create state-of-the-art film studios with first-rate sound-engineering departments, cutting room and sound stage – a concern worth all up £100,000 [“The studio for indoor filming of ‘Kangaroo’ “, Barrier Miner (Broken Hill), 11-Sep-1950 (Trove)].

Chips Rafferty was chosen to head up the cast of Watt’s next Ealing Australian movie Eureka Stockade (1949) – the dramatic and symbolic story of miner resistance to overbearing British rule on the 1850s goldfields. ‘Eureka’ (released in the US as Massacre Hill failed at the box office (general consensus of critics was that Chips was miscast in the lead role of the 1850s Irish-Australian rebel Peter Lalor).

Bitter Springs directed by Ralph Smart followed…this time with Chips more comfortable returning to the role of courageous pioneering bushman in the Australian outback. The most interesting aspect of Bitter Springs is that it was prepared to tackle the polemical topic of indigenous land rights – in the movie white settlers clash with local Aboriginal people (Pitjantjatjara and Kokatha Mula tribes) over the possession of land. This screen subject was 25 to 30 years ahead of its time, however an assimilationist mindset prevails in its handling…in one scene Wally (Chip’s character) betrays the gross ignorance of Europeans about Aboriginal Australian – when the fair-minded territorial ranger (Michael Pate) questions the planned land grab, Wally summarily dismisses the Aborigines’ claim to the disputed land, stating that the Aboriginal culture was only about 1,000 years old! [Morgan, loc.cit.]✥. One jarring note is that the serious theme of Bitter Springs is undermined by Ealing’s decision to cast comic Tommy Trinder in the movie, Trinder’s character’s constant cracking of jokes tends to deflate the build-up of tension arising from the film’s central conflict between the blacks and the whites [Byrnes, ‘ASO’].

Chips Rafferty ▼

After 1950 however Ealing made few of its own films at the Pagewood Studios, instead it leased out the premises to other movie production companies, eg, to 20th Century Fox who made Kangaroo (1952) at Pagewood with Maureen O’Hara, the first technicolor film made in Australia.

Closing chapters of Ealing Pagewood

In 1952 the Pagewood Studios shut down production◙ (in what was meant to be a temporary move only), but the following year Ealing sold the studios to Associated Television which renamed the studios “Television City” and leased it to independent film producers. A 1954 independent production of the “Treasure Island” tale, Long John Silver, (with Robert Newton) was filmed at Pagewood (interiors) and exteriors shot at the Royal National Park [‘AAARRRHH There Matey! – The Strange and Wondrous Tale of Bill Constable & the Cinemascope Pirates of Pagewood…’ (Bob Hill, Oct 2018) www.apdg.org.au].

Ealing had been trying to make Robbery Under Arms in Australia since 1949 but it was finally completed by Ealing’s parent company Rank Organisation in 1957 – with some footage shot at Pagewood but mostly in London (exteriors: Flinders Ranges and near Bourke) [‘Film World Weather in Australia Disappoints Studio’, The West Australian, 03-Nov-1949, (Trove)].

Pagewood on it’s last legs

The final film to be made (or partly made) at what had become Television City (Pagewood) was a film version of the hit Australian play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1958/59). ‘Doll’ was made by Burt Lancaster’s HHL company using US and British leads…the production however took radical liberties with Lawler’s play and the film was ultra-Americanised with unsatisfactory results. In 1959 the Pagewood site was sold to General Motors Holden Australia which allowed the car manufacturer to expand its existing plant in the suburb. In the Eighties the studios’ land (and the adjacent bus depot) were redeveloped again, becoming the location of Westfield’s huge Eastgardens shopping mall and a housing estate built by the Meriton Group [‘Pagewood Studios’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

GMH Pagewood ▼


Ealing’s last Antipodean hooray

The Siege of Pinchgut (1959) was Ealing’s last film shot in and with an Australian setting (and as it transpired, it proved to be the company’s final ever adult feature). Harry Watt came back to direct what was a grim convicts-on-the-run drama filmed around Fort Denison (Pinchgut) in Sydney Harbour. ‘Pinchgut’, released in the US as Four Desperate Men, did not succeed at the box office⊛.

Australia closed for film-makers!

Ealing’s venture in Australia was never really a secure one…the follow up films to The Overlanders yielded only disappointing returns. The writing was on the wall for Ealing’s Australian enterprise from the time Menzies’ Liberal-Country Party won power in Australia in 1949 and took an antithetical attitude towards domestic film production. The LCP government refused to renew Ealing’s lease on the Pagewood Studios (a bitter pill for Ealing who’d already spent considerable funds on the Pagewood project). In a move which set the industry in Australia back decades, the government deemed that “film making was not an essential industry” and pointed out that the lease-holders (Ealing) were not an Australian residents in any case [The A-Z of Australian and New Zealand Cinema, (Albert Moran & Errol Vieth), (2009)].

If that wasn’t the tipping point for Ealing, it came with the studios’ own assessment… Balcon authorised the company’s accountant to undertake an financial evaluation of the Australian studios’ viability – which was negative [ibid.]. In the words of Eric Williams (manager at the Ealing Pagewood Studios), ultimately Ealing found it “impossible to maintain continuous production at a range of 12,000 miles”. That there was no Australian sponsor for productions was put forward as an additional disincentive for staying [‘Decision a blow to film industry’, The Mail (Adelaide), 26-Jan-1952 (Trove)].

PostScript: The failure of Ealing’s Australian venture was merely one chapter in the larger story of Ealing Studios’ global rise and fall. The rising costs and risks of big budget films of the parent company in Britain, large staff numbers and increasing expenditures, all contributed to the toll of financial problems plaguing Ealing and the UK industry as a whole…leading to Ealing’s eventual demise (this accumulation of pressures forced production head Balcon to unload Ealing in 1955).Note: the original 1930s studios in West London (above) were bought by the BBC in the 1990s and resurrected as a facility for hire [‘Remembering Ealing Studios and the golden age of British film’, BBC News, (Vincent Dowd), 30-Aug-2015, www.bbc.com].


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✲ and by association, synonymous also with actor Alec Guinness, the star of most of this “purple patch” of Ealing classics

❄ at the time National Studios was built, Pagewood was largely an undeveloped wasteland of grassy sand hills, although at Daceyville, a few kilometres to the north, a model garden suburb had been carved out of the same sand hills in the 1920s – see my July 2018 blog Planning for a Working Class Lifestyle Upgrade, a Template for the Sydney Garden Suburb: Daceyville, NSW

❂ unfortunately the state government failed to back its own law, not allocating adequate funding to its implementation… when resisted by Hollywood distributors the legislation was killed off by the end of 1937

❇ Pagewood’s rival film production houses in Sydney, Cinesound at Bondi Junction and Figtree Studios at Lane Cove had folded, and turned into, respectively, a cordial factory and a transport depot [Barrier Miner, 11-Sep-1950]

✥ Wally’s band of settlers reinforce the stereotype with “disparaging views about stone-age men who do nothing with the land” [‘Bitter Springs (1950)’ Synopsis, (Paul Byrnes), ASO mobile, www.aso.gov.au]

◙ described by Ken G Hall as “a fatal blow” to the national film industry which would relegate Australia to “the bottom of the list of the world’s 60 film producing countries”

⊛ although an historical point of interest of the movie are shots of what was left of the old Fort Macquarie Tram Depot then being demolished for the construction of Sydney Opera House [‘Siege of Pinchgut’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]