The wonders of the on-line age - so much material that you used to have to spend weeks trawling through at various libraries is now available at the click of a switch. Such is the case with the National Archives of Australia, whose contents is being made increasingly available on line. It includes several screenplays which were registered for copyright - something not automatically given back in the day, which is a bonanza for researchers.
This was the fourth and last in Cinesound's Dad Rudd series - a follow up to Dad and Dave Come to Town. It's credited to Frank Harvey, Cinesound's regular writer, and William Freshman, an Aussie who had earned a reputation in the UK - although from memory Freshman isn't credited on the final film, Bert Bailey is. That could have been a contractual requirement.
The script isn't as good as Come to Town, although its still better than Grandad Rudd. Part of the problem is the central concept - Dad running for MP isn't that inherently funny, unlike him inheriting a fashion story. It had already been done as the third act for On Our Selection and Freshman and Harvey (as well as Ken G. Hall's uncredited comedy team who presumably worked on this) didn't come up with anything that fresh.
It is however solid "battler" drama - Dad Rudd is more prosperous now, but not as wealthy as his oily neighbour Webster, who wants to stint on a local dam and runs against Dad, controlling the media so he can't get his message out there (this is all too believable and unfortunately still resonant today). The climax involves a dam about to flood and the brave engineer - Jim Webster (played by Grant Taylor in the film), Webster's son, who is in love with Dad's daughter Anne - saving the day, and then getting the dam workers, who want to vote for Dad, across the water via flying fox to vote... which was a cute idea.
There are some decent comic set pieces - Dad buys a car but actually it's a fire truck, some keystone cops in the form of the local fire department, Entwistle (returning from Come to Town) helps Dad attract people to the meeting via using fashion models and tries to milk a cow, laughing gas substituted for other with comic results.
The romance between Jim and Anne is solid but lacks the vim and spark of that between Jill Rudd and her beau in Come to Town (it doesn't help that unlike Jill, Anne isn't really integral to the action i.e. she doesn't really have anything to do with the dam or the campaign). Mum gives another speech, Dave is a lech. There is a vamp character, Sylvia, from America, who I kept expecting to do something more; the baddie wasn't that bad. It's all solid, and the politics are moving, but it lacks X factor, for lack of a better word.
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