1 - “Donovan’s Reef”
(1963)
The last feature film teaming of John Wayne and John Ford which
I’d always thought was a buddy film between Wayne and Lee Marvin is
actually more a “Quiet Man”/“McClintock”/“Taming of the Shrew” Rom com
between Wayne and the (surprisingly good but little known) Elizabeth
Allan - which ends like many Wayne rom coms with him spanking her on his
knee for comedy.
It’
s set In
French Polynesia and Aussies appear at the end - a visiting ship from
the Australian navy turns up, resulting in the crew chasing the local
women down the Main Street in a pack (not making that up) and a couple
of lower ranks starting a brawl with Wayne and Marvin. They all have
Irish accents - the playing is v typical of the sort of comic drunken
sergeants played by Victor McLaglen who turned up in Ford movies
(McLaglen was dead by this stage and Chips Rafferty off making Mutiny on
the Bounty so Ford got Dick Foran to play the main Aussie) Wayne’s son
Patrick turns up as an Australian officer. They all sing Waltzing
Matilda and Wayne snr brings up the fact we were all on the same side
during the Battle of the Coral Sea.
Well at least we were in it (at a time when v few films were made in Australia)
Nb Ford later agreed to the casting of Australian Rod Taylor as Irish
playwright Sean O’Casey in Young Cassidy in part bc he figured as an
Aussie Rod might be part Irish.
2.. "Botany Bay" (1953)
Starring Alan Ladd as an American who , in the 18th century is unjustly
convicted of a crime in England and sentenced to the brand new penal
colony of Botany Bay... on a ship that just follows the first fleet. The
director (John Farrow) was Australian and one or two bit players were
as well as a few imported koalas but that's it. Some African Americans
play indigenous A
ustralians who pop up
at the end to spear baddies ("they're like our Indians," says Ladd, "if
we don't bother them they won't both us"). James Mason is a sadistic
captain and Cedric Harwicke is Governor Phillip. Based on a novel by
Nordhoff and Hall, who wrote the novel on which "Mutiny on the Bounty"
was based - like that, this has sadistic captains and heroic sailors and
a mutiny.
Judged by the
standards of its day it's not that a great movie (the Farrow/Ladd
sailing film "Two Years Before the Mast" is more interesting) but it
remains the only First Fleet movie ever (I think) and it's got Dr Smith
from Lost in Space in it!
3 - Captain Fury (1939).
Hal Roach,
best known for comedies, occasionally made other films like this
bushranger epic. Brian Aherne, a sort of poor man's Errol Flynn, the
actor you'd cast when you couldn't get George Brent, Pat Knowles or Ian
Hunter, plays the title role, an Irish convict sent to Australia who
escapes to become a good bushranger who helps the local settlers fight
against a villainous land owner
(George
Zucco). The Australian setting is not really emphasised, it's just the
usual immigrant settlers and evil land baron that you'd see in the old
West. The cast includes Victor McLaglen, John Carradine, Paul Lukas and
Douglas Dumbrille, which is cool. It's awkwardly directed but
interesting - bushranger films were absurdly banned in NSW for several
decades so its interesting to see Hollywood's take.
Part 4 - Million Dollar Mermaid (1953) and Interrupted Melody (1955)
I grouped these together because they're both biopics of Aussies made
at MGM within years at each other, both had opening scenes in Australia
but drop the country pretty quick into the story after depicting it as a
kind of version of England (to be fair, the films are set in MGM land
rather than anywhere else), both ended up being among the best mo
vies
their stars ever made - Esther Williams plays Annette Kellerman in
Mermaid, with Walter Pigeon as her dad and a cameo from a boxing
kangaroo... In Melody, Eleanor Parker plays singer Marjorie Lawrence
with Cecil Kellaway as her dad and Roger Moore as her brother (!)....
Both are superior to other biopics of Aussies around this time made by
foreigners -to wit, Sister Kenny (1946) and Melba (1952)
5- "The Man from Down Under" (1943)
To understand why this film was made, you need to know that Wallace
Beery was once a film star: Beery was a beefy, big actor who specialised
in playing lovable lunks who got up to comic antics with character
actors and cute kids; often there was a woman who wanted to marry him.
He had the vibe of James Gandolfini . Anyway for a long time his act was
very popular and he was often ranked in the top ten box office stars in
the US and MGM originally developed this story as a vehicle for Beery.
It's an original story but I'd love to know where the writers got their
inspiration - I have a theory it might be the tale of Digger Tovell, a
French orphan adopted by diggers during WW1 who was smuggled to
Australia and grew up to be a young man (tragically dying in a car
accident). If it wasn't that exactly it probably was a similar real life
tale.
This is about Jocko Wilson, an Aussie digger who at the
end of the war decides to smuggle to Belgian orphans back to Australia
and raise them as his own. Then the film leaps forward twenty years or
so and the kids are grown up - the girl is sent to finishing school, the
boy is a boxer.
The subsequent plot goes all over the shop, in a
manner reminiscent of more than a few MGM star vehicles with it's feel
of a producer going "oh we should add this... and that... and I saw this
movie last night and it was great and we should put that in as well."
The boy/man, called Nipper, participates in a big fight and wins but is
injured; his winnings enable Jocko to buy a pub in the country... really
Australia's north, thus enabling it to be bombed by the Japanese when
the Pacific War starts; the girl and boy have hots for each other but
can't do anything about it because they think they're related; an
American journalist sniffs around the girl but her "brother" jealously
punches him out; there are some Catholic Priests near the pub ("quick,
Catholic priests are popular, put that in"); a barmaid abandoned by
Jocko in France turns up to torment him; World War Two starts and Jocko
tries to enlist but is too old and unhealthy, so joins the Land Army;
then the Pacific War starts and the pub is turned into an orphanage (I
think) which is bombed by Japanese and the Japanese crash and some
pilots attack the orphanage ("quick Mrs Miniver had them fight off enemy
pilots put that in") but luckily Jocko and Nipper turn up and help
fight off the Japanese (along with their friend Ginger who machine guns
one to death!); Nipper and the girl discover they're not blood relatives
and hook up; Jocko gets a commission in the army thanks to the
intervention of the former barmaid.
It's a complete mess really,
with the film never settling on what it wants to be about. I felt the
real focus should have been on Jocko smuggling the kids back into
Australia - there's a movie in just that - but that was only the
starting point. There's all this narrative, the big romance plot being
yucky because most of the time Nipper and the girl believe they're
related but still want to hump each other. I so didn't want them to get
together.
Still it is a perfect role for Wallace Beery - ex
boxer, brave, rowdy, tough, prone to brawling, irreverent, running away
from a woman who wants to marry him (the Marie Dressler part), doing
lots of schtick with kids and dodgy mates, gambling, running pubs,
mugging.
The only problem is Charles Laughton plays the role. Now
Laughton was a brilliant actor, and his Aussie accent attempt here
isn't bad, and he makes a decent rogue. But he's never convincing as an
ex boxer, or successful former soldier (I know Laughton was one in real
life but he doesn't look like the tough two fisted hero described here).
Throughout the whole movie he feels like a superb performer who is
miscast.
No one has a decent Aussie accent though people do try -
mostly people sound cockney, though the priests are Irish. For Aussies
this is fascinating because of it's depiction of Australia and
Australians - most of the movie is set in Australia: Melbourne at first,
where Jocko has a pub, then where Nipper fights his bout, then
somewhere in north Australia. We get to see some pubs, a boxing venue,
the country, lots of priests.
Dramatically it's a mess. There are
lots of good actors and decent production values so it's easy to watch.
Historically its fascinating. (And you know something, at least
Hollywood made a film set in Australia during the war - Australians
hardly ever did).
6 - Random Australians Who Pop Up in War Films
Mark Hartley would never forgive me if I didn't bring up Richard Harris'
accent-strangling performance as the RAAF pilot at the beginning of
"Guns of Navarone" but he was only one of a series of Aussie characters
who popped up in war films of the 50s and 60s... a little reminder of
our contribution. Most of you have probably seen James Coburn in "The
Great Escape"
(1963) (accent wrong but
dialogue and attitude first rate... maybe the contribution of Aussie
Paul Brickhill who wrote the book?) there was also John Gregson in
"Above Us the Waves" (1955)... sometimes real Aussies would play them
too like John Meillon in "Guns at Batasi" (1964)... and we get a whole
film about an Australian platoon in "The Desert Rats" (1953) (although
it focuses on two Poms, Richard Burton and Robert Newton), Chips
Rafferty in "The Wackiest Ship in the Army" (1960), Peter Finch in "The
Wooden Horse" (1950), Michael Pate as the coastwatcher who rescued a
young JFK in PT 109 (1963)
It wasn't much of an acknowledgement, but then that's why we need our
own industry - and it was a lot more recognition than that given to say,
African or Indian troops who fought for the Allies
7 - Australia as a place to escape to
In the mid 1940s there was a
subgenre of American war film called "stories of glorious defeat" - for
the one time in Hollywood history it made a series of movies about a
bunch of battles that America lost, mostly because during the early days
of the war America lost all its battles (something the film constantly
puts down to "treachery"). And in the bulk of these movies you
had the characters trying to escape to Australia - "So Proudly We Hail"
(1943) (which has Allied nurses as suicide bombers), "Air Force"
(1943), "The Story of Dr Wassell" (1944). Australia does feature at the
end but pretty much just as a back drop.
(A flip side to this - "The Sea Chase" (1955) which features John Wayne
as a German sea captain (!) fleeing Sydney in 1939 to escape the
allies.)
8 - Famous Australian Stars
Prior to
Mel Gibson, the biggest Australian film star was probably Errol Flynn
who only played an Australian twice on screen in his career - "Desperate
Journey" (1942) a war film, where he plays an Australian pilot shot
down in occupied Europe. He whistles "Waltzing Matilda" and at the end
of the film says "now for Australia and a crack at those Japs". That's
about as Australian as i
t gets. In
"Montana" (1950), a Western, he plays a sheep farmer who grew up in
Australia. In his one Australian film, "In the Wake of the Bounty"
(1933), he played the British Fletcher Christian.
The biggest star after him was Rod Taylor who only played an Australian
on screen four times in his entire career (which went for over fifty
years) - "The VIPs" (1963), "The High Commissioner" (1968), "On the Run"
(1982) and "Welcome to Woop Woop" (1996). He made three Australian
films where he played foreigners - "King of the Coral Sea" (1954),
"Long John Silver" (1954), "The Picture Show Man" (1977) (I write about
this at length in my book on him).
The big star after him was
Peter Finch, who got to play Aussies a bunch of times, in Australian
movies and overseas - notably "A Town Like Alice" (1956) and "The
Shiralee" (1957)... I think because he was based in Britain, which cared
a little more about Australia than the US.
Of course along with
other Aussie stars at the time (eg Judith Anderson, Mary Maguire, Ron
Randell) it's still fun to hear the Aussie accent slip in no matter what
role they're playing.
9 - Unfilmed Australian stories.
Very very occasionally an
Australian novel/play will get the Hollywood treatment - "Stingaree"
(1934), "On the Beach" (1959), "Summer of the Seventeenth Doll" (1959),
"The Sundowners" (1960)... (I'm talking stories set in Australia, not
films based on novels by Australians which are a separate thing, eg The
Great Escape, The 7th Dawn, The Shoes of the Fisherman)
But several nov
els
were contemplated back in the day.
"The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney" by
H H Richardson, that classic novel a lot of Australians feel guilty
about not having read yet, was bought by MGM who wanted to turn it into a
Greer Garson vehicle in the late 1940s. The film never happened
(though MGM did turn another Richardson novel into the Elizabeth Taylor
film "Rhapsody" in 1954.)
Diane Cilento bought the rights to Darcy
Niland's novel "Call Me When the Cross Turns Over" in 1962 and Fox were
going to film it with her then husband Sean Connery but it didn't
happen.
Neither did a proposed version of "Careful He Might Hear You"
which Josh Logan wanted to make with Elizabeth Taylor in the 1960s (it
was later filmed in the 1980s).
Joseph Kaufman wanted to make a film of
"Come in Spinner" in the 1950s (it was filmed in the 1980s).
Its fascinating to wonder what these films would have been like and how
they would have depicted Australia - in the hands of a good director,
as in "The Sundowners" it probably would have been good - I'm more
inclined though to think they would have grabled it... which is why its
important to have our own industry, etc etc
10 - Point Break
There's a lot I could have chosen (the Aussies in "Pacific Rim") but I
thought I'd end with my favourite... the bit part actor at the end of
Point Break (1991 of course) when it goes to Bells Beach Australia... No
not Peter Phelps but the cop at the end who goes "What the f*ck, Utah?
You let him go!" Gary Roberts and Owen Rutledge
are listed in the credits as cops. I don't know who said what line but
honestly these two should be household names.
