Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip depicts events surrounding the first flight from Australia to the USA in 1934 by aviator Charles Kingsford Smith (Ron Randell). It opens with a newspaper report that Kingsford Smith is out of the Centenary air race and a pub scene in which a man doubts ‘Smithy’s’ intentions to fly the race. Kingsford Smith and co-pilot PG Taylor (played by himself) are then shown in a hangar where Smithy opens an envelope containing a white feather. He resolves to make another trans-Pacific crossing. The clip concludes with shots of the plane in the air and then landing in California.

Educational value points

• Charles Kingsford Smith (1897–1935), who was affectionately known as ‘Smithy’, was an aviator who pioneered more long-distance routes than any other pilot. A decorated pilot in the First World War, Kingsford Smith was passionate about flying and his record-breaking flights captured the public’s imagination. He was knighted in 1932 for services to aviation. However, aviation was hazardous at the time and in 1935 Smithy disappeared on a flight from England to Australia.

• Kingsford Smith and PG Taylor, who acted as navigator and co-pilot, made the crossing of the Pacific from Australia to the USA in 1934 in a single-engine Lockheed Altair named Lady Southern Cross. They left Brisbane on 22 October and, after stops in Fiji and Hawaii, landed at Oakland in California on 4 November 1934. The trip, which covered some 11,265 km mainly over the ocean, took 52 hours in flying time.

• Kingsford Smith’s earlier crossing of the Pacific, the first ever made, had been in the other direction, flying in the Southern Cross, a three-engine Fokker, with co-pilot Charles Ulm, navigator Harry Lyon and radio operator James Warner in 1928. It took just under 84 hours’ flying time. Smithy’s other feats included the first non-stop flight across Australia in 1928, becoming the first to fly around the world in 1929 and in 1930 winning the England-Australia air race.

• Kingsford Smith reportedly enjoyed the adulation that his exploits brought him and the 1934 trans-Pacific flight was partly an attempt to win back a public whom he felt had turned against him after he was forced to pull out of the 1934 Centenary air race from London to Melbourne because of engine trouble. Kingsford Smith was devastated by rumours that he never intended to fly the race, was criticised in the media and, as seen in the clip, was sent a white feather, a symbol of cowardice.

• Kingsford Smith was one of a number of celebrated Australian pioneer aviators (others included Bert Hinkler, Keith and Ross Smith and Charles Ulm), whose record-breaking long-distance flights assisted the development of commercial aviation. The predominance of Australians in the early days of aviation reflected Australia’s geographic isolation from Europe and the USA and the determination of these ambitious aviators to overcome this ‘tyranny of distance’.

• The epic nature of the trans-Pacific flight and the enormity of Kingsford Smith’s achievement are captured by various cinematic devices, including the radio announcer’s commentary and the way the background music changes from the foreboding music used when Smithy’s commitment was doubted to the jaunty score as his plane crosses the Pacific. The scene of the large crowd meeting Smithy as he touches down is also indicative of the aviator’s status as an international public figure.

• 'Wipes’ and 'dissolves’, film techniques much favoured in the 40s and 50s, are seen throughout the clip. The flight is depicted through a series of ‘wipes’, transitions between shots in which a line passes across the screen, ‘wiping’ the shot and replacing it with a new image. Wipes generally suggest time passing, but in this clip also indicate distance covered. A 'dissolve’, where the first image disappears as the second appears, makes the transition from the hangar scene to the flight.

• Smithy was the last full-length feature directed by Ken G Hall, a leading Australian filmmaker who led Cinesound Productions from 1931 to 1956. He achieved success in the 1930s with a series of comedies based on author Steele Rudd’s characters Dad and Dave and with films such as The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934) and Tall Timbers (1937). After Smithy, he focused on making documentaries and in 1957 became chief executive of TCN 9, Australia’s first television station.

A newspaper front page flashes up, announcing ‘Smithy out of air race: Engine trouble causes retirement.’ We then see men talking in a pub over beers.
Man Don’t talk rot. Don’t talk rot. Look, I hear it all around me. If you ask me, Smithy never intended to go in the air race. He got the wind up. Well, here’s looking at you.

At the hangar. Charles Kingsford Smith is opening an envelope.
Smith Doesn’t seem to be anything in it.
A feather falls out – a symbol of cowardice. He smiles ruefully, then frowns in determination.
Smith Let’s have a look at that Times atlas, Bill.
Bill Pacific’s on page 102.
Smith (inaudible)
Bill Why not?
Smith Yeah. Why not.
Smith’s wife Mary pleads with him not to attempt the Pacific crossing.
Mary Charles, you can’t. If you won’t think of me, well, think of your son!
Smith I am thinking of him, Mary.
He looks at the feather in his hand.

We see the plane soaring over the ocean. On the ground at the airport, a crowd is cheering wildly as the plane lands. A news reporter talks into his microphone.
Reporter It’s absolutely marvellous. Sir Charles Kingsford Smith flew first through the Pacific east-west and has now flown the Pacific west-east in a single-engine plane. Imagine it! 7,000 miles over water in a single-engine plane. Kingsford Smith and his renowned co-pilot and navigator, Captain PG Taylor, are being given a tremendous welcome here at Oakland Airport after one of the most fantastic flights ever made, and perhaps ever to be made. Here they come now!
Smithy exits the plane, waving to the crowd.