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It Isn’t Done (1937)

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Clip description

Hubert Blaydon (Cecil Kellaway) answers the door to an English lawyer in a bowler hat. Mr Potter (Leslie Victor) has come from England to bestow an inheritance. Mr Blaydon is really Lord Blaydon, with an estate in England. Mrs Blaydon (Nellie Ferguson) swoons at the news.

Curator’s notes

by Paul Byrnes

The Englishman in Australia had been a source of comedy in Australian cinema since at least 1910, but the roots of the 'New Chum’ cliché go back further, to literary forms of the 19th century. Charles Rowcroft’s Tales of the Colonies, published in 1843, portrays an English settler named Crab, who complains constantly but never quite gets round to leaving. The idea of the 'whingeing Pom’ has been partly attributed to this book. Beaumont Smith’s Splendid Fellows (1934) was a typical early sound-era version of a New Chum comedy; Peter Ustinov’s stockman in The Sundowners (1960) is a later version. Ken Hall rarely resorted to New Chum clichés in his films, but It Isn’t Done is one long satirical joke about the English, starting with Mr Potter, the bowler-hatted lawyer in this scene. Hall maintained that he never made satires, because they never worked at the Australian box office, but It Isn’t Done is satire nevertheless, and it became one of Cinesound’s most successful films.

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