Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white clip shows Frank Thring senior, film director and studio head, giving a speech on stage in Melbourne in November 1931. He introduces his all-Australian talking picture program and the stars who feature in the films, expressing his pride in his achievement and his hopes for the Australian film industry. In voice-over Thring introduces each star and the roles they will play in upcoming films. As each star is introduced the picture fades to black, the star appears in a static pose and in character before turning towards the camera and smiling.

Educational value points

• This clip depicts a significant moment in the history of Australian film – the introduction of locally made motion pictures with sound, or ‘talkies’. In January 1931, $50,000 worth of US sound equipment was installed in Frank Thring’s Efftee Studios and was used for the production of Diggers. Eftee studios produced the first complete program of Australian talkies with the films Isle of Intrigue and Spur of the Moment in August 1931.

• The clip features Frank Thring senior (1882–1936) and indicates the vision and energy that made him one of Australia’s most important entrepreneurs of the cinema and a leading advocate for the Australian film industry. The managing director of Hoyts Theatres, he sold his holdings in 1930 to make Australian talking pictures. His company Efftee Studios produced features, shorts, documentaries and newsreels. He produced and directed most of its films.

• Thring’s hopes and ambitions for the future of Australian talking pictures – clearly spelled out in this clip – were not immediately realised. Australia had once been the most prolific producer of feature films in the world (between 1906 and 1911), but during the 1930s the Great Depression, the high production costs of talkies, lack of government support and a distribution monopoly by US companies brought the Australian industry close to collapse.

• Thring’s skill as a publicist can be seen in the way he advertises his films by promoting their stars and appealing to the national sentiment of Australian audiences. He uses the Hollywood publicity method of manufacturing ‘stars’ but also emphasises that the actors are Australian. Thring’s success as a salesman was demonstrated when he sold Efftee Studios’s entire output up to that time on a trip to England in 1932.

• The sense of occasion associated with the cinema in the 1930s is conveyed by the formality of Thring’s dress and his style of address, by the stage setting and the artificiality of the poses adopted by the stars. The occasion for Thring was the launch of Efftee Studios’s first Australian talking pictures, but in the 1930s people dressed up to see movies, which were shown in elaborately decorated picture ‘palaces’. Going to the cinema was regarded as an event.

• Diggers, referred to in the clip, was the first Efftee Studios talking picture and was one of Australia’s first feature-length ‘talkies’. Screenwriter Pat Hanna (1888–1973), featured in the clip, based the screenplay on his successful touring revue show. Initially the film did not have large audiences, but following its success in country towns it enjoyed success the next year in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and other capitals.