Australia

AMERICAN CONQUEST, AUSTRALIAN RESISTANCE: 1914 TO 1932

During World War I, the first American film exchanges in Australia opened, and they consolidated their control throughout the 1920s. With the exception of Hercules McIntyre at Universal, who financed a number of films directed by Charles Chauvel (1897–1959), including In the Wake of the Bounty (1933), Forty Thousand Horsemen (1940), and Sons of Matthew (1949), the American companies showed little interest in Australian films and production was sporadic. Consequently, many Australians, such as Louise Carbasse (1895–1980), who achieved stardom as Louise Lovely, the swimmer Annette Kellerman (1887–1975), John Gavin, Snub Pollard (1889–1962), Billy Bevan (1887–1957), Arthur Shirley (1887–1967), and Clyde Cook (1891–1984) enjoyed success in Hollywood.

Although strong patriotic feelings during World War I encouraged the production of propaganda films such as The Hero of the Dardanelles (1915), Within Our Gates, or Deeds That Won Gallipoli (1915), and The Martyrdom of Nurse Cavell (1916), the American domination continued. Before 1914 less than half of films screened in Australia were American; by 1923 the figure had grown to 94 percent. Yet the Australian cinema matured during this period and filmmakers such as Raymond Longford (1878–1959) and Franklyn Barrett (1874–1964) produced their finest films. Longford, in collaboration with his long-term partner Lottie Lyell (1890–1925), directed The Woman Suffers (1918), The Sentimental Bloke (1919), Ginger Mick (1920), On Our Selection (1920), Rudd's New Selection (1921), The Blue Mountains Mystery (1921), co-directed by Lyell, and The Dinkum Bloke (1923). Barrett, who shared Longford's interest in distinctly Australian stories, captured the harsh qualities of the Australian outback in films such as The Breaking of the Drought (1920) and A Girl of the Bush (1921). However, adequate distribution and financing was a perennial problem and Barrett, for example, retired from production in 1922 to concentrate on exhibition in Sydney and Canberra.

Another perennial problem concerned the content of the films. Should Australian films, such as The Breaking of the Drought , focus only on recognizably Australian stories and themes, or should they be more universal in the hope that they might appeal to overseas, primarily American, audiences? A concerted effort in the latter direction occurred in 1919, when the actor Reginald "Snowy" Baker (1884–1953) formed a production company with exhibitor E. J. Carroll and his brother Daniel to produce films at their newly renovated Palmerston Studios in Sydney. To this end they imported the American husband-and-wife filmmakers, the director Wilfred Lucas (1871–1940) and the screenwriter Bess Meredyth (1890–1969), together with the American actress Brownie Vernon (1895–1948), the Hollywood cinematographer Robert Doerrer, and the production assistant John K. Wells to make three films starring Baker: The Man from Kangaroo (1920), The Shadow of Lightning Ridge (1920), and The Jackeroo of Coolabong (1920). Although these films were attacked by the local critics for their "Americanisms," Australian audiences flocked to them, and they were subsequently reedited and retitled for the American market. After the completion of The Jackeroo of Coolabong , Baker left Australia with Lucas and Meredyth and enjoyed a modest career in a series of westerns and action films in Hollywood in the 1920s.

The importance of the American market was also a crucial factor in removing Raymond Longford from For the Term of His Natural Life (1927), a film he had been preparing for Australasian Films. In the hope of improving American sales, Longford was asked to step aside in favor of the visiting American director Norman Dawn (1884–1975). Dawn then proceeded to hire the American cameraman Len Roos and the Hollywood actors George Fisher (1891–1960) and Eva Novak (1898–1988) as the budget escalated to fifty thousand pounds, twenty times the cost of the average Australian film. Released in June 1927, For the Term of His Natural Life was an immediate success in Australia but, partly due to the arrival of sound, failed in America.