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Clip description
At breakfast, James Carson (Gaston Mervale) conceals a letter addressed to his daughter Cherry (Isable McDonagh billed as 'Marie Lorraine’) before claiming that no letters have arrived for her.
Note: The original aspect ratio is 1.33:1 (Academy full frame). The print of The Far Paradise obtained by the NFSA had been incorrectly duplicated at a 1.37:1 (Academy) ratio, which has cut approximately 3mm off the top and left-hand side off the frame.
Curator’s notes
This scene was filmed on a veranda of Drummoyne House in Wrights Road, Drummoyne, Sydney, where the McDonagh family lived between 1920 and 1929. Gaston Mervale, the British-born actor who played James Carson, had directed nine features for the Australian Life Biograph company in 1911, most of them starring a young Louise Carbasse, from the mid-1910s better known as the Hollywood star Louise Lovely. From 1914-1915 Mervale directed at least one film and acted in several more in the USA before returning to Australia, where he worked until the 1940s as a theatre producer, actor and drama teacher. While Gaston Mervale’s role in The Far Paradise was a thankless one of a drunken, abusive father, this sequence shows his ability to match Isabel McDonagh in underplaying to effect.
