Cinesound Productions Pty Ltd was one of Australia's first feature film production companies. Established in June 1932, Cinesound developed out of a group of companies centred around Greater Union Theatres, that covered all facets of the film process, from production, to distribution and exhibition.
Cinesound Productions established a film studio as a subsidiary of Greater Union Theatres Pty Ltd based on the Hollywood model. The first production was On Our Selection (1932), which was an enormous financial success.
Contents |
Stuart F. Doyle and Ken Hall were the major figures involved in the establishment of Cinesound in 1931.[1][2] Stuart Doyle was the Managing Director of Greater Union Theatres, which stemmed from Australasian Films, and it was his desire to encourage an Australian film industry that provided the impetus for Cinesound to develop. Doyle appointed his then personal assistant, Ken Hall, to the position of General Manager of Cinesound, and also put him in charge as supervisor of production. In this role, Ken Hall directed all but one of the seventeen films that Cinesound produced and also handled the business affairs of the company. Hall continued to lead Cinesound until 1956.[2]
Both Doyle and Hall were very committed to the notion of showmanship, which encompassed ideas relating to the type of entertainment the public would want to enjoy, and how to effectively publicise that entertainment to the masses. The publicity campaign for The Squatter's Daughter, and its star Jocelyn Howarth, was particularly imbued with this concept. They were also interested in creating a star system along Hollywood lines promoting the idea that Cinesound was a "little Hollywood". It was this dedication to showmanship that led to all but one of Cinesound's feature films making a profit from the first release, and all of the films eventually at least broke even. In 1939 Hall said that the budgets of Cinesound films were usually between ₤10,000 and ₤20,000, and estimated that his first fourteen films had earned ₤350,000 at the box office.[3]
The success of On Our Selection and The Squatter's Daughter, along with the proposed introduction of quotas for Australian films in the mid 1930s, saw Cinesound become bullish about expansion. They increased the size of their studio to make Strike Me Lucky, and announced a series of future productions, including Grandad Rudd and an adaptation of Robbery Under Arms, as well as several films produced in Queensland over the next two years, one set in the cattle industry, another in the cane fields and a third on the Great Barrier Reef. It was proposed Cinesound would make 12 movies a year in the first year of the quota: four "super productions", four "quota specials", and four independent Cinesound productions.[4] There was also talk of establishing a studio in Melbourne at St Kilda.[5]
In 1936 they announced they would make six films a year, with one unit devoted to shooting outdoor movies.[6].
In the end the quotas did not prove effective enough to support such a program, although Cinesound kept making movies until 1940.
| Year | Date | Profit | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1933 | June 30 | ₤4,010 | Enormously successful release of On Our Selection |
| 1934 | June 30 | ₤8,800 | Continued receipts from On Our Selection plus successful release of The Squatter's Daughter |
| 1935 | June 30 | ₤4,220 | Successful release of The Silence of Dean Maitland followed by box office disappointment of Strike Me Lucky, and popularity of Grandad Rudd. Cinesound stops production for six months to enable Ken G. Hall to study production methods in Hollywood.[7] |
| 1936 | Release of Thoroughbred. Stuart Doyle announces Cinesound's films will earn 60% of their money in Australia and New Zealand, and 40% in England.[8] | ||
| 1937 | Loss of ₤5,254[9] | All of Greater Union's divisions suffered a loss during this period. In June 1937 Stuart Doyle resigns. | |
| 1937 | December 31 | ₤2,788 | Profits earned for a six month period[10], partly from It Isn't Done and Tall Timbers. |
| 1938 | July 2 | ₤7,647 | Cinesound was affected by an amendment to British film legislation which meant that Australian films no longer counted as "British" under the local quota. This saw the loss of a guaranteed market for Cinesound films, which normally sold for £6,500 - £7,500 to Britain, and forced the studio to make more broad-based comedies.[11] |
| 1938 | December 31 | ₤10,010[12] | Successful release of Let George Do It and Dad and Dave Come to Town. |
| 1939 | ₤936[13] | ||
| 1940 | ₤2,821[14] | Last Cinesound feature film produced, Dad Rudd, MP. | |
| 1941 | ₤1,242 | ||
| 1942 | ₤5,018[15] | ||
| 1943 | ₤4,973[16] | ||
| 1944 | December 31 | ₤7,223[17] | |
| 1945 | December 31 | ₤1,392[18] | |
| 1946 | December 31 | ₤1,433[19] | |
| 1947 | December 31 | ₤6,012[20] | |
| 1948 | December 31 | ₤3,355[21] |
In February 1939 a company was registered, Cinesound Features Pty. Ltd., a subsidiary of Cinesound Productions Pty. Ltd, to produce the feature productions of the parent company. The directors of the new company were the same as Cinesound Productions: Norman Rydge, Edwin Geach, and John Goulston.[22]
Cinesound established a talent school for young actors in 1938. Run by George Cross and Alec Kellaway (who acted in many Cinesound films), it offered training in "deportment, enunciation, miming, microphone technique and limbering." By 1940 the school had had over 200 students, including Grant Taylor and Yvonne East, who featured in Dad Rudd, MP (1940), plus Valerie Scanlon, Lorna Westbrook, Natalie Raine, and Mary Sinclair.[23]
Cinesound Productions produced feature films until the Second World War, when it was considered that feature films were too great a financial risk to undertake. Cinesound then concentrated on producing the Cinesound Review, a newsreel that they had been generating to exhibit alongside their feature films.
After the war, a British producer and exhibitor named J. Arthur Rank bought a controlling interest in Greater Union, and used the theatre chain primarily to exhibit British films, whilst discouraging local feature production. Hence Cinesound never regained its place as a major local film producer, and Australian film production was almost non-existent for the next two decades.
In 1940 the Australian Government decided to channel news footage to the public through the existing newsreel companies, Cinesound and Movietone. In the same year Cinesound abandoned feature production for the duration of the war.[24] By this stage it was estimated Cinesound films had earned ₤400,000 at the box office.[25]
In 1942 Cinesound provided the operational base for the film unit of the US Signal Corps to prepare newsreels for viewing to American troops in the South West Pacific theatre of the war.
In 1946 arrangements were made with the commercial film distribution companies to distribute selected Commonwealth Film Unit productions in Australian cinemas on a commercial basis. Similar arrangements existed for the release of general sponsored documentaries produced by Movietone and Cinesound.
Other Australian producers were almost totally deprived of access to commercial cinema screens.
Despite the success of Ken G Hall's last feature, Smithy, which was backed by Columbia Pictures as a means of repatriating frozen currency held in Australia due to wartime restrictions, Greater Union Theatres decided not to resume post-war production through Cinesound.
Various films were announced for production by Cinesound that were not made, including:
Of all these an adaptation of Robbery Under Arms was the most frequently discussed - Ken G. Hall later described it as "the film I wanted to make more than any other".[36] Film rights were bought from Raymond Longford and a script prepared with the movie meant to go into production in winter 1934 after making Cinesound Varieties, but it was originally postponed because of a desire to make the film in summer time.[37] Plans to make the film the next year were held up because Cinesound were unsure whether the ban against bushranging films still applied.[38] The project was consistently announced until Cinesound's withdrawl from feature film production in 1940. After the war Hall tried to produce the film independently but was unable to secure the necessary funds.