Australian
Screen

Clip description

Jimmy Cook (Sandy McVea), an Aboriginal detective, has been assigned to the Special Service to help Jack Airlie (Snowy Baker) crack a ring of German spies operating in Australia during the First World War. On Sunday morning, Jack’s butler Glassop (Gerald Harcourt) discovers Jimmy sleeping on his employer’s sofa. Indignant, the butler tips him on the floor, as Jack rises for his daily exercise. This includes a rowing machine and a boxing ball which Jack uses to turn the tables on the butler. Jimmy finds this very amusing.

Note: The original aspect ratio is 1.33:1 (Academy full frame). The print of The Enemy Within obtained by the NFSA had been incorrectly duplicated at an 1.37:1 (Academy) ratio, which has cut approximately 3 mm off the top and left-hand side off the frame.

Curator’s notes

Sandy McVea was well known in Sydney boxing circles, having fought at Snowy Baker’s Sydney Stadium on several occasions, but his casting as Jack Airlie’s sidekick in this movie was highly unusual for the time. A number of Baker’s friends and relatives appear in the film but it would be wrong to assume that McVea’s casting was politically progressive. More likely it was partly as a novelty, and partly because the story required an Aboriginal ‘black tracker’ later in the pursuit of the German gang. On the other hand, they could have used McVea as a tracker without also making him an experienced detective who works in the Special Service.

There are very few Aborigines in silent Australian cinema – even fewer who have acknowledged skills and employment in the wider world. This scene is clearly political in its comedy: the butler objects to a black man sleeping on his master’s couch and leaving his boots on the floor. When Jack arises and sees the tension, he pays his butler back for the humiliation of his friend, by knocking him onto the sofa, giving Jimmy the last laugh.